Gillard a fraud on population: Latham

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This was published 13 years ago

Gillard a fraud on population: Latham

By Michelle Grattan

JULIA Gillard's sustainable population policy has been strongly condemned by former Labor leader Mark Latham as ''a fraud'' designed to be merely a political strategy to hold western Sydney seats.

Ms Gillard said yesterday the population debate was not an immigration debate.

But Mr Latham insisted it had to be about cutting immigration.

After consistently rejecting a ''big Australia'' Ms Gillard, who has campaigned on two days in western Sydney, said: ''I don't believe that this is an immigration debate … I believe it is a debate about planning and policy choices''.

It was about ''where we want to see growth, where there are jobs, where there's opportunity, about how we deal with issues like water shortages, like the quality of our soils''.

In a withering attack on Ms Gillard, who was an ally when he was leader, Mr Latham told Sky TV: ''If Gillard wants to have a population debate and policy, it needs by definition to be an immigration debate and an immigration reduction.''

He said any sensible leader would take the approach of former NSW premier Bob Carr ''of saying that good planning is not enough''.

The policy was a fraud designed to appeal to western Sydney voters worried about asylum seekers, he said. The ''sustainability thing'' was also about ''sending a message''.

''I think that some smartie in the Labor Party has worked out that this could perhaps help save four seats in western Sydney and it can be used as a proxy in the climate change debate. It's clever politics'' but ''it's a fraud of the worst order,'' Mr Latham said.

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He said that ''expensive infrastructure is not enough. We need to take off the population pressure.''

Ms Gillard's insistence that the population debate was not about immigration came after criticism from business, worried about the implications of lower immigration on growth and workforce needs.

Ms Gillard is expected to release her climate policy this week.

It is known that the NSW Right pushed her on the importance of both the asylum seeker and the population issue.

Ms Gillard said she did not want to leave undisturbed a situation where in some parts of the country there was high youth unemployment of up to 20 per cent while other parts were crying out for skilled labour.

''Let's get it all right, get the training policies right, the health, the infrastructure, education services right,'' she said.

''Let's have skilled migrants go where we need them and let the aim of all this be sustainability and making our life better not harder.''

She had spoken this week to representatives of western Sydney councils who ''don't want to just see a rush to a big Australia''.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said Ms Gillard had made a ridiculous claim that immigration had nothing to do with curtailing population growth. ''She says she wants to do something about sustainable population, but she doesn't want to address the primary reason that population is growing significantly,'' he said. ''Any prime minister who says they want to do something about getting population growth under control obviously has to address immigration''.

With AAP

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