Dick Smith's immigration warning for Australia

Australian businessman Dick Smith. Photo / AAP

Entrepreneur Dick Smith says it is "not accidental" that immigration skyrocketed by 27 per cent last year, accusing Australian politicians of cooking the books to keep economic growth figures artificially high.

The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show net overseas migration for the year ending 30 June 2017 was 245,000, with New South Wales and Victoria recording their highest ever levels.

NSW added 98,600 migrants, while Victoria added 86,900 — an increase on the previous year of 31 per cent and 23 per cent respectively. "This growth has seen both states surpass their previous recorded high in 2008-09," ABS demography director Beidar Cho said.

Australia is now the fastest growing country in the OECD. With the country adding a new overseas migrant at a rate of one every two minutes and 20 seconds, the population is set to hit 25 million within months.

"It's just an absolute disaster for our children and grandchildren," said Smith, an outspoken critic of Australia's high immigration rate who has repeatedly called for Australia's political parties to have a "population plan".

"It will destroy Australia as we know it today. We're going to end up like the US where you have something like 50 million people on the dole who will never have a job," he said. "It's just complete madness. With automation and robotics there will be fewer meaningful jobs, we'll end up just being a nation selling coffee to each other."

While mass immigration boosts the overall GDP figure and makes politicians "look as if they are doing well", we "don't have growth per capita". "There's no doubt, it's not accidental," Smith said.

"We're in complete control of our immigration rate. With an economic system that requires perpetual growth, this is the way of getting it. The only other way is hard work, getting better productivity."