Melting pot of Australian migrants shows strain
Updated
Last week, our sister program on the ABC, AM, toured Australia's northern-eastern state of Queensland to gauge the way the quickly growing population there is coping with issues such as fewer resources and assimulation. One town the team visited was Logan, with its large immigrant population of 185 nationalities.
Locals there are concerned about recent fights between the Indigenous Aboriginal and Samoan communities... after a fight left a local Aboriginal man dead. Annie Guest went out and about and reports that many of the residents here are already weary of development and change, and just want their lifestyle to stay the same.
Presenter: Annie Guest
Speaker: Various residents of town of Logan, Queensland
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ANNIE GUEST: Ian Clark gardens while listening to the radio. It's a peaceful scene on the 55 acre block he bought on Logan's rural fringe 30 years ago.
IAN CLARK: I came on acreage just because I had horses and I like the rural lifestyle although I've always worked in town.
ANNIE GUEST: Ian Clark worries about how Australia would sustain 60 per cent more people by 2050. Logan's 270,000-strong population is expected to mirror national growth and the council is planning three cities.
IAN CLARK: More development, it's pushing further out, it's bound to happen, more population in south east Queensland, they've got to go somewhere but it's a shame to see sort of some good country carved up.
ANNIE GUEST: Growth will be fuelled by more babies and immigration. At the moment Australia takes about 168,000 migrants annually, of these about 13,000 are refugees.
At the Logan Central Cafe, Anita Pritchard and her employee Tanya Burns are divided on population growth.
ANITA PRITCHARD: It will be good for our business, more people coming in, more customers.
TANYA BURNS: I think it's too crowded now and I hate how I drive down the street and all the bush is gone and they'll put 40 units in which means hundreds of families and it's like, eew. You can't get car parks, schools are too full to deal with people so it's like we'll suspend them.
ANNIE GUEST: It creates a dilemma doesn't it? How do you have a better economy without more people?
TANYA BURNS: Yep, and then it's harder for our kids coming out of school to access a job as well.
ANNIE GUEST: Unemployment is average but there are pockets where it reaches 17 per cent, with high crime, welfare and truancy. And there's concern water supply, roads and hospitals struggle under the existing population. That comprises 185 ethnic groups and tensions simmer between the big Samoan community and Aborigines after a feud left the uncle of an Aboriginal football star dead.
BETTY MCGRADY: Our people are now a little bit scared to go out at night because there are gangs roaming.
ANNIE GUEST: And Aboriginal child protection worker Aunty Betty McGrady believes services are redirected to migrants.
BETTY MCGRADY: The focus should be on the first people of this nation. Logan seems to be the dumping ground for immigration.
ANNIE GUEST: So where do you see all this going for your community?
BETTY MCGRADY: I doubt whether we'll be able to be recognised.
JOHN PALE: Nobody deny the fact that the Indigenous or the Aborigines are the first people in this land.
ANNIE GUEST: But John Pale from Logan's Voice of Samoa adds they're not innocent bystanders.
JOHN PALE: Often time we get harassed because of these drunken guys.
ANNIE GUEST: Meanwhile, migrants gather at the settlement agency. Here the agency called ACCESS [Assisting Collaborative Community Employment Support Services] helps 1,000 new migrants every year, 60 per cent get jobs quickly but they're hampered by a lack of public transport, 300 are refugees. Publicans complain some bring traditional rivalry but ACCESS executive director, Daniel Zingifuaborno says it's not an ongoing problem as things are. [To Daniel Zingifuaborno] How do you think that this area will cope as Australia heads towards that 35-million population by 2050?
DANIEL ZINGIFUABORNO: I mean if government policy is effective, it's going to be a very vibrant city.
ANNIE GUEST: And if it's not done correctly?
DANIEL ZINGIFUABORNO: That's where you'll start to see people fighting.
ANNIE GUEST: Daniel Zingifuaborno says migrants need welcoming, but the recent boat people debate is damaging.
DANIEL ZINGIFUABORNO: It actually activate, in all the pain we have, it activates trauma.
TEACHER: And the word we learned for that was?
CHILDREN: Dresser. Dresser.
ANNIE GUEST: There are children from 30 ethnic groups at The Woodridge Primary School. The principal Garry Molloy has been applauded for engaging community liaison officers to help students adjust.
GARRY MOLLOY: From time to time the children have episodes where, you know, they become very angry or working in the garden they might come up to the teacher and say that's not a very deep hole. I've been in a place where the whole family had to get into a hole and be protected by firing, shots being fired over our heads.
ANNIE GUEST: Garry Molloy says if population predictions are right, significantly more language and other resources will be needed.