Pericles

I quoted political leaders from local and state government and from both major parties, yet you dismiss that as 'a couple of politicians covering their backsides'. These are the very people who are responsible for housing, finding employment and providing the necessities of life for the populous 'Big Australia' Mr Rudd dreams of.

Your ad hominem attack on Bob Carr diminishes your credibility and suggests that you have no counter arguments. If you have the facts to dispel his assessment why not give them?

If you really want to take anyone to task for flawed comparison (and great whacking generalisation unsupported by fact), you could start with the person who made this foolish claim, "As far as water is concerned, we are constrained substantially by government diktat - the "no dams" policy. For centuries, civilizations around the world have built dams in order to provide their water supplies".

Suffice it to say that if you have knowledge of good water collection areas and suitable dam sites to supply water for Rudd's Big Australia, please don't keep them to yourself. You could start with Toowoomba if you like, where because of recent good rains and water from the Wivenhoe, the water limit is 140 litres per day.

However, even given the restricted availability of suitable dam sites, politics is still the art of the possible and there are other considerations, as Anna Bligh would readily attest after being stomped on by Garrett.

Asking the hard questions about such critical resources as water and sustainability is not anti-immigration as you might pretend, it is essential to the risk analysis and prudent planning that government should undertake (and why not publically?) before commiting itself to big decisions. As is abundantly clear from the current insulation debacle (Garrett again), the reluctance to perform its due diligence before commiting itself to major decisions is the Achilles' Heel of the federal government.

Lack of due diligence and lack of planning are also the hallmarks of Rudd's Big Australia and both state and local government leaders all around the country are telling him just that.

We have in OZ an ever increasing number of people who will never work , who will be unable to feed themselves , clothe , medicate ,manage Health issues or house themselves , we are challenged now to provide for them .

We need to progress our breeding rate to meet their requirements lest we be labelled a Third world Country with Qnsland Shonkies selling phoney work Visas and offering Passage to the Amazon to pick Bananas in a fleet of old Stebers all UV'd and scared .

Get with the breeding program avoid the stigma of being daubed Ossie People Smugglers and Homeless Starving People Deniers .

Posted by Shadow Minister on Tuesday, 23 February 2010 at 7:25:39 AM:

"Any article that makes ridiculous comparisons
to start with holds no credibility.

Norway has the North Sea Oil and huge hydro electric,
and other resources with a 4m population. So much so
that the government almost does not even need income tax.

So the alternative solution is to find huge oil and
other reserves?

get real."



A throw-away line or two that I just cannot bear to let go to waste, Shadow Minister. Whilst I am by no means convinced that the comparisons made in the article are relevant, the following information appears just too serendipitously apposite to fail to bring it to viewers' notice: http://www.scandoil.com/moxie-bm2/news/central-petroleum-to-drill-five-coal-seam-gas-well.shtml

So, paraphrasing the first sentence of your own second paragraph, it would seem 'Australia has (among other things) the Pedirka Basin coal, coal seam gas, Helium, and salt deposits and huge solar and hot dry rock resources with a 22m population.' The Pedirka Basin coal seams have an aggregate thickness of over 100 metres, with the thickest being around 40 metres thick, and extend over thousands of square kilometres. Reserves, although deep, are estimated in the trillions of tonnes.

I am, of course, trusting that the report reflects reality with respect to Central Petroleum Ltd's prospects in my attempt to fulfil your exhortation to 'get real'.

Interestingly, the above-linked report was published in the Scandinavian Oil-Gas Magazine.

Also interesting how little this has been noised about here in Australia. Perhaps this latter circumstance might go part way to explaining the Jurassic tendencies you observe in the Prime Minister in your current General Discussion topic '"We won't be going nuclear": Dinosaur Rudd'. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3458&page=0

Refocusing upon the article, it makes one wonder as to the possible mechanisms that enable Australian governments to view a projected 36 million population so differently to that of the community they are supposed to represent.

That's kinda... stretching the concept, just a little, Cornflower.

>>Your ad hominem attack on Bob Carr...<<

Whoa there.

Quote: "Only someone who lives outside NSW, and therefore doesn't live with the legacy of his period of arrogant inactivity could possibly consider him credible on the topic of infrastructure.<<

If I had called him a pseudo-intellectual windbag, or a lazy up-himself do-nothing, or a condescending sleaze-merchant, that would be ad hominem.

But might I suggest that to ascribe the same label to the phrase "his period of arrogant activity" is pretty much an over-reaction?

>>Your ad hominem attack on Bob Carr diminishes your credibility and suggests that you have no counter arguments<<

I was merely questioning his pontification credentials. People in glass houses, and all that.

But just to set me completely straight on the subject, would you care to nominate an infrastructure project in NSW that Mr Carr can be justly proud of?

One that would confer upon him the bragging rights necessary to blame nature, and normal day-to-day government responsibilities (which he would prefer to call "insurmountable challenges", no doubt), for his administration's terminal inactivity?

Thought not.

And Fester, yes I did read the report.

>>Here is a link to the full report containing the above quote...<<

I also read the CSIRO report from which it took much of its irrigation-related information, the "Northern Australia Sustainable Yields Project"

Which states, specifically, "New storage sites and storage-yield reliabilities, however, were not assessed."

And one of its "key Findings"?

"There is a paucity of quality data for water resource accounting for northern Australia."

Quelle surprise énorme.

The entire report reads as a Green manifesto, with as much blurb about maintaining wetlands for migratory birds as real information on the viability of water supplies.

>>Pericles, I would ask you where you think all the water and food to support a larger population is going to come from?<<

I bet we'll find it when we need to. It's what people do.

In the meantime, it's all playing nicely into the hands of the anti-immigration mob.

"I bet we'll find it when we need to. It's what people do."

Sometimes they find water, sometimes they dont. I would rather have proof than take something on faith. The available evidence gives me little reason for optimism about Northern Australia supporting many millions of people.

"its cost [water supply] is a convenient peg on which the anti-immigration lobby can hang their xenophobic hats"

Physical reality makes a better peg than falsely linking one's opinion to one's morality, though feel free to try and prove a correlation if you can. But there are other pegs, one of which is the infrastructure cost for each citizen. What would you estimate the cost per citizen to be? Ballooning government debt would suggest that the figure is quite substantial: Add the peg questioning whether immigration provides any per capita economic benefit, and I really struggle to see much sense in pursuing a policy with high cost, great risk and uncertainty, and more likelihood of worsening the average lot of Australian citizens.

"I bet we'll find it when we need to. It's what people do."

I said that to my bank manager when he asked how I was going to pay back a $5 million loan on a firefighters salary and the bastard wouldn't give me the loan. Doesn't he understand how the world works. By the way I wonder when we are going to find a cure for cancer. I would have thought that we really needed one, but since we haven't got a cure yet maybe not.

I love the idea that the Intergenerational report using only Japan and Italy is just the way things happen, but Berger using Norway and then listing several other countries is a high crime against humanity.

The point regarding GDP growth is made even stronger considering that it is average GDP not median GDP that is used in the Lindsay Tanner argument. In 2004 Peter Costello, a proponent of high population growth, initiated a study by the Productivity commission to determine the impacts of an increase in skilled immigration. The study found that average wages dropped slightly with increased immigration and noted that the real big winners of increased immigration were the wealthy. In other words high immigration makes rich people richer (which is why they promote it, except Dick Smith thank God) and the average guy gets nothing but a degraded environment and higher costs for housing, food, water, power, etc.

We have to start living sustainably some day. It is either up to us or to our children when the problems are all harder to solve. I'd rather start today.