"We should also recognise that, if there is a genuine problem with population growth itself, then there’s a case for paring back the welfare payments that encourage Australians to have children."
Too bloody right. Your baby.... Your problem

Quality? Hmm. If that's what we want?

Then we need to give these folk a better reason to pull up stakes and travel to this place at the bottom of the world! Because what we have here is no longer anything to write home about!

Overcrowded cities, right-wing extremists and rolling traffic jams the new normal!?

When with just a modicum of vision and genuine representatives representing us, instead of selling the joint down the river to some of the most reprehensible folk we could ever want to do deals with?

If character tests were ever equally applied? Folk like Adani wouldn't get a look in, let alone a huge resource like that in the Galilee basin!?

And real wages that have gone backwards and further when compared to and contrasted with other economies?

As always we have some of the highest energy prices in the world and our tax system ain't nothing to write home about either! Nor opportunities in manufacture.

We could compete with emerging economies if we embraced full and inevitable automation! Plus cooperative capitalism and the lowest cost energy in the world, MSR thorium.

Forget that it is also carbon free!

Or that coupled to deionisation dialysis desalination we could not only drought-proof the joint but open up millions of acres of arid land for agricultural development.

And as we did so give landless but highly qualified folk a reason to up stakes and relocate along with a conga line of high tech manufacture and oodles of self-funded retirees.

Pointless bring quality people out here and then ask them to pilot taxi cabs etc. to earn a crust! And greeted by visionless gormless pollies only ever concerned about reelection and little else!

Would you be welcomed anywhere else mate? As someone of inestimable quality!? If you had a nil bank balance and bereft of your generous taxpayer-funded pension? I think not!

Alan B.

Shorten should watch out. The liars are reducing immigration in an attempt to collapse the economy once Labor gets in.
A government housing program will negate the threat and keep tradies in work and help the homeless problem but blow out the deficit.

Since Immigration handed the visa application process to agents, only those with money have a good chance to settle in Australia. So, in actual fact it is the quality AND quantity of money an applicant can hand over !
The decent people trying to build a better life here have nil chance even after paying life-time savings to the Dept of Immigration.

Overcrowded cities, right-wing extremists and rolling traffic jams the new normal!?
Alan b,
You forgot the Left-wing extremists who demand in return for nothing !

"Congestion is a consequence of a lack of infrastructure, not simply a reflection of the size of our big cities. There are plenty of bigger cities around the world where congestion is not an issue."

No, congestion is a consequence of Australia's extreme, immigration-driven population growth outstripping our ability to finance and build new infrastructure.

A 2013 report by the Productivity Commission warned that total private and public investment requirements needed to keep up with projected population growth over the next half century are estimated to be more than 5-times the cumulative investment made over the last half century.

Modelling by KPMG has shown that, despite Australia’s infrastructure investment binge, it is still failing to keep pace with the country’s manic immigration-driven population growth, with 3.5% growth in public spending on infrastructure required just to cover depreciation and population growth.

Infrastructure Australia modelling shows that both Melbourne’s and Sydney’s living standards will be crushed as their populations surge to 7.3 million and 7.4 million by 2046, regardless of how they grow, with worsening congestion and reduced access to jobs, hospitals, schools and green space.

Source: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/11/kpmg-new-infrastructure-falling-short-population-ponzi/

Yes, there are bigger cities around the world where congestion is not an issue. But those cities aren't facing the extreme population growth pressures currently being inflicted on the likes of Sydney and Melbourne.

We need to slow growth by cutting immigration.