Is that it?

Let me pop a few of Dick's bubbles. There is no population crisis nor a food crisis in Australia. In 2008 Treasury revised its population projections (note the word 'projection') so that Oz's pop in the mid range (schedule B) might reach 35 million in the year 2050. At current rates with recent cuts to immigration it will struggle to reach that. But it was always going to reach close to that. We knew that back in the 80s.

Is it a crisis? No. Population is people and people are the drivers of capital and innovation in our society. Note that Dick and others don't use the word 'society' very much. That's because the anti-pops are instrumentalists - we (you and me) are just economic units and our worth is measured by how much we consume.

Is Australia going to run out of food now or in the mid future? No. We export $40B worth of food per year and that is growing. We import $6B mainly from New Zealand and Asia re reciprocal trade arrangements. Food we have.

Their ideas are protectionist and a throw back to the horrific anti-trade days of the 1930s. They are throw backs.

The anti-pops believe the world is a closed system and that we're all doomed anyway for a whole range of barking mad reasons such as global warming, rising sea levels, earthquakes and anything that smacks of apocalypse and catastrophe. The only catastrophe I can see is if we take their anti-immigration and anti-Muslim ideas seriously. The anti-pops think social justice means recycling your garbage on a Tuesday night.

Dick Smith recently ran TV ads where his staff were a happy multicultural group of people, happily displaying Dick's range of electrical products. But this is not the future for the anti-pops. They are against not only having a multicultural society, they are against capitalism (no growth) - the very same system that Dick used to become a multimillionaire. Hypocritical? I'll let you decide.

Cheryl,

Are you saying that the world "isn't" a closed system?

While I sympathise with the author's position, that "The pursuitof endless growth is the least intelligent response we can make", I question the artificial and parochial limits that structure his thinking. By "artificial" I mean he thinks by default within the growth capitalist paradigm he feigns to despise. And by "parochial" I mean he fails to consider the ethics of his luxurious zero-population-growth position. Capitalism is based on endless growth, period. And population increase offers the best guarantee, ceteris paribus, that it will be maintained. But other things are 'not' equal; the economic growth juggernaut is patently insane in its destructive impacts and within inevitable earthly limits. In this context, Australia opting to halt population growth means it must maintain economic growth by other means. And this it will optimally achieve via resource exports, that is by driving the growth engine, and concomitant population increase, off-shore. It's a moot point whether Australia can maintain its living standards with a stable population (Queensland has just been deemed the worst performing economy in Australia precisely because of stagnant population growth), but there is no question as to the dubious ethics of its luxuriating in a relatively provincial haven that it maintains by unsustainable practices, including population growth "off shore".
We have to stop thinking nationalistically, we are part of a world system, economically and environmentally, and if Dick Smith wants to do something about ecological unsustainability, he should be attacking the root cause: an economic system that demands endless growth.
Seen in this light, Dick, you present as part of the problem, and your parochial lobbying is irrational, unethical and hypocritical; in fact just another aspect of Western conceit.

Dick Smith is correct . Continuing population growth would be a lesser problem if most of the additional residents went to live in places which are not already overcrowded [ assuming that such places had adequate water supplies ] . In reality , most will live in Sydney , Melbourne and greater Brisbane . Most will be encouraged by the pro - growthers to travel by car [ particularly 4WDs ] and live in Mc Mansions .
The pro - growthers ' media will constantly demand better public transport , then complain about the cost of providing it and criticise it when it is provided . The cost of extending facilities to ever further spreading suburbs will escalate , but every attempt by governments to increase taxes to extend facilities , or to require developers to meet the cost as a condition of planning approval will be condemned .

The inevitable contribution from Australia's resident multi-millionaire doomsayer. Should have seen that coming.

Dick Smith is a "successful Australian". Which means that he has made a lot of money for himself, selling cheap imported electronic gear. Bully for him. Australia needs shopkeepers.

Presumably on the basis that his success as a shopkeeper somehow endows him with superior insight into the issue, he was last August allowed to screen an hour-long "documentary" that promoted his personal views on Australia's population.

In it, he wandered through a fact-lite, emotion-rich rant that played the fear factor at every opportunity, much as he does here... "ghastly natural disasters have shown that we are just one unexpected shock away from crisis".

Fear of the future is always an easy card to play. The simple fact that we have no idea what will happen tomorrow, nags away at us constantly. People like Smith play on those fears, with horror scenarios based on nothing more than a hankering for how it used to be in the fifties.

As Peter Curson, Professor of Population and Security at the University of Sydney observed at the time of the doco, "Australian society will be quite different in 40 or so years time with presumably different goals, priorities and adaptive strategies".

Smith's assumption, as it was with Malthus, is "if nothing changes".

"I think I may fairly make two postulata. First, that food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, that the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state... Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." Thomas Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population.

Malthus wrote six editions of this essay between 1798 and 1826. Let us hope that we do not have to endure the same from our home-grown Malthusian.

Malthus was at least prepared to argue from scholarship, rather than from the script of a second-rate disaster movie.

Cheryl

People who advocate for a sustainable population are critical thinkers. We are cautious because we can see the potential problems that it will cause. We do not pretend to know the truth. We do not believe that a society's success is assured because it has population growth, free trade and diversity. We believe the world is much more complex than that, and if you lack this foresight that is your loss.