Good article ..

How easily the people are fooled by savvy media teams and jingoism.

"This is our future we’re talking about – it’s not something that should be taken lightly." yet the media applauded the 2020 best and Brightest festivities. I think the short temr thinking of the ALP is poisonous to Australia, at least PM Howard had vision, whatever you thought of it, the ALP only sees power and the next election.

Let's face it, we're a shallow people easily maniulated by "media managers", look at Queensland and NSW, and now the federal arena is becoming the same.

PM JWH nailed it when he asked what it was the ALP wanted to do with power. It's an opportunity to do something for the country, not just your mates and yourself.

Meanwhile there was no real systematic infrastructure planning or expenditure by the Howard government.

Indeed as far as I know, much of our infrastructure deteriorated during the Howard years. While at the same time billions of dollars were given away as middle class welfare.

In the mean tine Bernadi is an advocate of the more is better, never ending growth and expansion school of short-term thinking.

The "market" will provide.

Very good, Cory Bernardi.

Rudd has certainly stuffed up the population issue good and proper.

The Coalition could hardly fail to capitalise on this to some extent. But unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be to a sufficiently big extent. Abbott certainly doesn’t inspire me in terms of sustainability, balance, population stabilisation or protecting our future wellbeing.

It seems that the best the Coalition could come up with is a somewhat lower but still very high rate of immigration and a somewhat but hardly significantly better planning regime to cater for this influx.

What we desperately need is a population policy that will progressively wind down immigration to net zero over the next few years so that the national population can reach a stable level of not more than 26 million.

And we need a Coalition government (or perhaps a Labor government minus Rudd and with Kelvin Thomson as leader) that will stand up against the likes of Saul Eslake (see his article on population growth on Online Opinion on 3rd May) and other economists and business leaders and espouse an economic regime that is based on a steady state rather than never-ending expansionism.

Could I ask you Cory;

To just what extent would you have your party wind back immigration?

Do you want us to head towards a stable population or are you just in favour of a somewhat lower population level by 2050 than is now projected with it continuing to grow indefinitely after that?

This is rich, coming from an ideologue whose idea of planning for the future is to let the free market rip. Senator Bernardi is one of those Minchin-following fundamentalists, who is forced by his neo-liberal ideology to deny the evidence on global overheating, because to do otherwise would be to admit the unthinkable - that the free market sometimes gets it wrong and needs intervention. In this case, the free market has got it so wrong, the very existence of our species is threatened. Its malfunction could hardly be more profound, yet Bernardi and his Liberal mates blunder on, blinded to the idea that their free market "let it rip" ideology may be much more damaging to Australia than any planned immigration in conjunction with emission regulation. Go away, Senator. Your party had its chance. And in 12 years in power, the best you could think up as a contribution to infrastructure was to spend the profits of the minerals boom by awarding tax cut after tax cut to the rich.

Ban the Burqa Bernardi has done it again.

http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/for-australias-sake-we-need-to-ban-the-burqa-20100506-ubun.html

I would have thought that this guy needs to find another portfolio. The media adviser who wrote this has effectively committed the Libs to stopping all immigration, cutting the Baby Bonus and parental leave.

That's good say the anti-pops! That's bad say the Liberal Party election strategists.

Of course Bernardi (and Abbott) does have an interest in population - mainly controlling women's reproductive rights.

My question is, when people start stating population numbers they believe our country can sustain (Ludwig- 26 million, as well as many others), do you assume the current level of consumption of resources? I note that this number always seems to be close to the current population, I wonder why?

If so, does this mean if somehow Australians were to half their consumption of resources, then this number could double (eg. 52 million)?

It seems the main problem is the excess consumption of resources, rather than the number of people.