Casey people heading east

CARDINIA Shire is the place to be if you’re from Casey but not if you’re from abroad, statistics show.
From 2001 to 2006, 5991 City of Casey residents moved to the Cardinia Shire while only 2138 went the other way.
Few overseas-born people live in Cardinia: only 14.2 per cent of its 56,000-plus population, estimated in 2006, are from outside Australia.
And Informed Decisions consultant Glenn Capuano, who spoke at a Cardinia population briefing on Friday, doesn’t expect this trend to change.
“Cardinia has low cultural diversity, it hasn’t increased a lot (from 2001 to 2006),” he said.
The majority of Cardinia’s 7980 immigrants were born in the UK (3616) and New Zealand (719). Close to half – 3220 – were of non-English speaking background, most (1.1 per cent of the population, 594 people) from the Netherlands.
Mr Capuano said cultural diversity in Cardinia would increase with population but that it was a “staged process”.
Mr Capuano said Dandenong was the first point of call for immigrants, although growth there was waning.
While 10,926 people moved to Greater Dandenong from 2001 to 2006, 20,099 people moved away. And 9463 of them moved to the City of Casey. Mr Capuano said cultural diversity was increasing in Casey.
“It’s increasing slowly. Casey has always been more diverse in the past 20 years or so (than Cardinia),” he said.
Almost 31 per cent of Casey residents were born outside Australia, with the majority coming from Britain, Sri Lanka, India and New Zealand.