Everyone is flapping about all the problems of increasing population.

It won't happen !

To build the houses and infrastructure to support this theoretical
surge will need significantly increased energy.
We haven't got it. At present we are selling off to China and Japan
as much as we can dig up and get onto ships.
Oil production is now starting down the slippery slope.
Coal production world wide will peak within ten years. China however
may cause coal depletion earlier than expected.

In these circumstances, contraction is much more likely than growth.

If you want to have a worry, worry about the real problem.

Loxton - We will always be a nation of immigrants. If we always allow high immigration because we have had high immigration in the past, then we will grow forever. We can't grow forever, so when should we stop having high immigration? I say we should have net zero immigration now so that we can start becoming sustainable and give our children and grandchildren a chance to live in a world with a high standard of living like we have now and an end to poverty. Why couldn't our goal in Australia be to make the world a better place by curing cancer and diabetes and reducing poverty, rather than just trying to make the rich get richer.

Secondly I agree with Fester. We should be supplying skilled labour to the rest of the world, not stealing it to make ourselves richer. We could build hospitals and schools in developing countries and do more good for those countries than taking in 200,000 skilled workers that could be helping build those countries. After those skilled workers are gone the developing countries have to start all over again training new skilled workers. We should leave those workers there and help them with the training of even more skilled workers. There are over a billion people in the world that are illiterate. Over a billion who have no toilet. They have to go in the road or in a paddock. More people live in slums with no running water or sanitation in Dhaka, Mexico City and Cairo than live in Sydney. Why can't it be our goal to do a little to help them rather than do a lot to make rich property developers richer?

ericc

There seems to be an assumption coming through these pages that the migration flows only into Australia.

At any moment, close to 1 million Australians are living overseas. For a country grappling with skills shortage, having roughly 5% of the populace living and working overseas is a huge drain, particularly when we have shortages of doctors, nurses, engineers and so on. I don't disagree that we should be using our skills to make the world a better place, but I would argue that we are already doing this. A study by the Lowy institute found, as a group expatriate Australians are better qualified and well paid; 45% have a post-graduate degree compared to 9% of the Australian workforce back home.

So we are losing our best and brightest. It only makes sense that we should make up the shortfall with good people from other countries. The simple truth is that we are living in a globalised world where labour moves to where wages or rewards exist. This may make the rich richer, but it also means labour can also seek out the best deal.

Loxton –I think I sort of agree with you, but I have done a little more study on the numbers. I’m for net zero immigration not high immigration. If 60,000 leave then we should bring in 60,000. If all 60,000 have post graduate degrees then great. We are currently bringing in 300,000.

1. Have you got the percentage of immigrants last year that had post graduate degrees. There is a sense that you are arguing that with 300,000 immigrants last year that 135,000 of them (45%) had advanced degrees. Perhaps not.

2. How many of those 45% post graduate degrees are going to developing countries to help them develop. Not many.

We are not bringing in immigrants to replace PhD’s who have gone overseas to America or Britain to work in Research Facilities. We are bringing in semi-skilled migrants often with poor language skills to keep wages low and increase demand for housing and other consumables.

The over-riding concern though is: When does population growth stop? When do we start to get sustainable? When do we start to plan for our children’s future rather than just try to make the rich richer, today? When do we start stopping biodiversity loss rather than increasing it? When do we start allowing more water to stay in the rivers rather than less? Which year will we use less fossil fuels than the previous year?

The economic conditions for the average worker are slightly worse with high immigration and the environment is far worse with high immigration. That doesn't mean that you can't get a job in Australia if you are a highly qualified immigrant. It means that the number of immigrants should be limited to the number that migrate overseas.

Loxton, "At any moment, close to 1 million Australians are living overseas."

That comes as no surprise because the wily thing to do is get Australian citizenship for the education of the children and for the health and old age entitlements when needed.

Australia, Canada, NZ all wear their hearts on their sleeve and pretend not to know how their citizenship can easily be abused.