The footage of the latest boatload of people to chug through our waters is currently on loop on Sky News. Images of our prime minister parading around on a patrol boat dominate the front pages today.
Here’s a breakdown of the media mentions of boat people/asylum seekers since Monday across print, television and radio (care of Media Monitors):
Lay those huge numbers against this neat graphic (care of Tim Bennett at Electron Soup):
You could be forgiven for thinking the importance the prime minister is placing on this issue vastly outweighs the lonely little orange person on this chart.
There is one set of numbers we haven’t considered yet. That’d be the Labor government’s internal polling. We’re guessing that’s the maths that really explains all the fuss over this lone stick figure.
This diagram understates the level of migration.
If you check out the population flow statistics from the Department of immigrations report, you actually find that Net permanent migration makes up 64.6% of new Australians. Natural increase makes up 35.6% of new arrivals…very different to what is illistrated above. http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/statistics/popflows2008-09/pop-flows-appendix.pdf
I don’t like salmon coloured stick figures – gotta stop them getting in!!!!
I don’t care how much money is spent – how many rights are trampled – just stop them before they get here!!!!
But do the media monitors ever tell us what the people are saying because no matter where I listen it is mostly to mock Gillard and Abbott.
Paint it how you like, its queue pushing, and its not fair to those who wait their turn.
Surely we don’t believe they get in a boat in Sri lanka or Afghanistan and paddle here.
I am astounded at the high percentage this portrays.
Scott: perhaps the difference in the figures relates to the categories being used. The immigration department figures are for what it calls Net Overseas Migration (NOM) which it defines as: “a measure of the net addition (or loss) to Australia’s resident population from migration. NOM is net permanent and long-term overseas migration plus an adjustment for changes in travel intentions.”
I suspect that Mr Bennett’s “Net Permanent Migration” figure is calculated on a different basis.
I could be wrong, but!