Refugees give town a boost

Concerned Bunbury residents should take notice of Katanning’s positive experience with refugees on the back of plans to relocate refugee families to the area, according to Katanning Shire Council’s acting chief executive officer Carl Beck.

Mr Beck said Katanning had welcomed hundreds of migrants over the past three decades and people in Bunbury should not be worried about the Department of Immigration’s plans to relocate refugees to the city.

‘‘Our population has been stable for the last 10 years and if it hadn’t been for getting 50 or 60 migrants moving to town each year we could have quite easily been 500 or so people less in our community now,’’ he said.

Katanning currently has a big Afghan, Malay and Burmese community as well as a big community of Muslim Cocos-Malay people from the Cocos Islands who established a mosque in the town in the 1970s.

Mr Beck said there had been concerns from local residents when people first started arriving in the town however those fears failed to eventuate.

‘‘The Afghans who have been here for a couple of years, most of them have bought their own properties in town,’’ he said.

‘‘They’ve worked hard, lived five or six to a flat then as soon as they’ve got their money they start to invest it by buying properties and doing all those things that Australians do.’’

He said there were occasionally problems with the language barrier however within a couple of months most people had learned enough English to hold a conversation.

Opposition spokesman for Multicultural Interests John Hyde said Katanning was a clear example of how well a migrant community could integrate into an Australian town as well as providing economic benefit.

Mr Hyde welcomed the plan to resettle Burmese refugees in Bunbury.

‘‘Certainly in a place like Bunbury there is a need for more diversity in workers and you’ve got a huge benefit from having a multicultural community,’’ he said.

Bunbury Mayor David Smith agreed Katanning was a good example of a community which had integrated well and said there were plenty of jobs available in Bunbury for migrant workers.

He said Bunbury could accommodate the extra population growth with the region currently growing by 2500 to 3000 people each year.