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What passes for a housing policy in Peter Dutton’s budget reply confirms my long-held conviction that the essence of conservative politics is to do nothing until they absolutely must do something. Thus, Dutton’s solution is to cut immigration (“ Migration Man to the rescue ”, 20/5). But how will this immediately help the 140,000 permanent migrants who would arrive each year under Dutton find housing? What will Dutton do to stimulate the building of new housing? He has no significant plans to increase funding for services to cater for the increasing population.
The housing crisis has been building for many years and the Coalition did nothing about it in nearly 10 years in office. Whatever its faults, Labor is at least trying to address the housing problem, making up for traditional Coalition inaction. Michael Meszaros, Alphington An unjustified reduction Peter Dutton recently announced that a Coalition government would reduce our refugee intake under the UN Resettlement Program to 13,750, noting that Australia had been a very generous supporter of this program.
Before sharing his apparent pride on our humanity, we might consider the following: the UN program accounts for about 5per cent of all refugees recognised, registe.