Funny thing is that the people desperate to come here are from highly populated countries, not Switzerland or Iceland. The author assumes there is nothing wrong with getting 80% of our energy from burning fossil fuels, nor stretching our water supply to the limit. We have about 0.8m unemployed with more expected. Young people cannot afford to buy a house within a half hour commute of a city CBD.

All of this seems to be saying Australia has more than enough people. Those new arrivals become immediate service users and many will become future welfare dependents. Does mean we will need even more future taxpayers? Meanwhile costs of food, energy and water keep rising.

Some good points, Taswegian.

Andrew Leigh’s arguments are typical of elite groups over the past generation. The article exudes a confidence that bigger is better without giving any supporting evidence.

Evidence that bigger is not better is dealt with by diversions. For example, he argues that traffic congestion, which is obviously a consequence of higher densities, is better dealt with by planning policies, not population policies. Australia’s suburbanites known that planning has never been able to catch up with population growth, because the same people who insist on boosting our population also advocate or allow lower taxes.

The big issue with population now is not ‘How many?’, but ‘Who will decide?’ what our population growth should be.

We can see the dysfunction which results from letting Governments run by big business decide. The Commonwealth brings in up to a quarter of a million people each year and dumps them on the States, who then force selected local areas to bear the brunt of increased densities, whether they want them or not.

The alternative is for the people to decide, through the We Will Decide process. Using the census, let people decide whether they want increased or decreased population density in their local area. The average answer decides the result for that area. The consequence would be that development which would permit a density higher than the local decision would be prevented.

Then take the total of all local decisions and that can determine the self-interest component of our migration intake. Let the Government decide how many refugees to bring in, but let us determine whether it’s in our interests to have more people in our own area. The process is fully set out at www.wewilldecide.info. The elites, which includes the media, ignore We Will Decide, because they profit from high immigration and want to keep that decision for themselves.

Taswegian, Phillip, you make good points. Australia can only support the population it has now through profligate use of scarce and depleting resources.
The folly of another aspect our immigration programme was brought out by Tanveer Ahmed in ”The Bottom of the Pit” OLO Tues 18th March 2014. He was bemoaning the racial problems in Logan where unemployed Sudanese, Pacific Islanders and Aboriginals were involved in gang warfare. You would have to ask the question, why bring these sorts of people into the country in the first place?
Immigration into Australia should be restricted to a few specialist occupations which are needed here

The internet makes the benefits (e.g. ideas and cultural exchange) of mass immigration obsolete. Migration nowadays is about getting people into apartment buildings and reducing wages in order to maintain the rich/poor gap....for no other reason does mass immigration make sense.

All comments so far are right on the money.

Andrew, what are you saying? You support a big Australia, but you seem to have a pretty rudimentary set of reasons for this.

Please, talk to your colleague Kelvin Thomson and explore with him just why bigger is not better.