Multicultural Foundation

APop or The Australian Population Institute http://www.apop.com.au/, is an organisation put together by developers and other members of the growth lobby to promote a 'big Australia' - that is, a huge population in Australia. APop campaigns for higher and higher immigration and also for policies for bigger families. Although almost entirely officiated by members from industries driving the growth lobby, the organisation has hosted talks by high profile and credible-sounding people, like university lecturers or authors, which added cachet to their big Australia agenda. The ABC used to quote them a lot as though they were a disinterested demographic organisation, but seems to have stopped doing this in past few years, perhaps due to complaints about APop's growth agenda affecting its objectivity, but perhaps more likely due to a decline in APop activities.

(Updated 10 July 2012 at end of article.)Housing prices are going down and the small coterie of people who profit from unaffordable housing and land costs and the other forms of resource inflation and associated human misery have found it necessary to invent yet another force to massage unwanted population growth and high immigration in Australia. This one, the New Migration Council to advocate for a bigger Australia" calls itself an NGO rather than a think-tank or an association or a foundation, but it has multi-million dollar backing and is way out of the league of traditional advocates of community causes most people associate with NGOs. See also the latest members of the Multicultural Foundation - Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.

A few years ago I heard about the Australian Multicultural Foundation in the context of donations by the Scanlon Foundation (formerly the Brencorp Foundation) to the Australian Academy of Technical Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) for the production of the "Scanlon Report on "The technological implications of Australia at 30 million in 2030". The AMF was also the recipient of Scanlon Foundation funding together with the Institute of Global Movements, at Monash University, run by Professor Nieuwenhuysen, who used to be with the Bureau of Immigration. What initially got my attention was the enormous amount of money and publicity the AMF and the IGF attracted. Then what absolutely arrested my attention was the membership of the Australian Multicultural Foundation - made up largely of prime ministers and almost-prime ministers of every political complexion. I then became interested in the history of the AMF and decided to try to track down its origins and early associations. This is an interim report.

What organisation has only 24 members of which the first ten comprise the current Prime Minister and nine past and present Australian Prime Ministers or Prime Ministerial contenders? And why would they be so dedicated to an organisation with a focus so antithetical to democracy and Australians? Read on.