Continued immigration to Australia backed

Calls to lower the level of overseas immigration to Australia have been rejected by a government minister.

MP Kelvin Thompson had argued that curbs should be put in place, but finance minister Lindsay Tanner told the Property Council of Australia: "The argument that Australia is already overpopulated is nonsense."

In a copy of his speech obtained by the Melbourne Age, he said: "If Australia seeks to persuade the rest of the world that we are overpopulated, we will be rightly laughed at.''

Rather, he noted, the country should consider improving its urban planning, noting that European cities tend to have far higher population densities than Australian ones.

Britons looking to buy a property in Australia may be encouraged by such comments, as they might also have been by recent remarks from Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens.

He stated that the extent of the country's recovery from the economic downturn has been so impressive that it exceeds that which "even most of the optimists" were predicting.

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