"The main political parties have never consulted with core Australians on multiculturalism, immigration, refugees or citizenship." So what? They have not consulted us on anything much else, either. They evidently believe their mission is to govern us, not to serve us.

I think that Abbott should take heed of Mr Pasquarelli's sage, considered and well-researched advice. One only needs to recall the fate of the last politician to be the recipient of that advice.

Fascinating to read an anti-immigration rant that doesn't mention the word (or notion) "sustainability" once. Still, it's to his credit that he's open about his xenophobia, rather than taking the dog-whistling approach favoured by Abbott & co.

Well let's put it to a referendum - let the people decide.

Why is no politician willing to put the people they serve ahead of vested interests on this issue. SBS's Insight held an interesting program the other night on population. Even the capitalists were largely agreed that capitalism is not only about growth but economic wellbeing and having the resources to cope with populations.

Infrastructure was also the biggest issue concerning most people - not enough planning to cope with big influxes into Melbourne and Sydney.

We can argue all day about population sustainability, immigration and multiculturalism but at the end of the day it will end up being environmentalists vs racists vs business interests etc.

Let's just make a decision on what is an agreed 'sustainable' level based on science and economic modelling and work towards that goal.

Then put it to a vote and be done with it.

The latest report on migration:

http://www.immi.gov.au/media/statistics/pdf/report-on-migration-program-2008-09.pdf

I've been looking at the big picture for the Australian Economy of late.

Without going into sources.. I hope others who might doubt can provide links to the contrary if they exist.

Mining seems to account for around 30% of our gross exports.

To my stunned shock..the other major export is... wait.. EDUCATION.
(mid 30%)

But when one looks closer... that education export is driven (from what I can gather) by a juicy carrot of 'Permanent Residence' on completion of the particular course which is on 'the list'.

That list has recently been pruned down (last week) but it still exists.

So..we are not so much exporting education as much as importing people.

Any economy MUST have 'originating' value to export.. in order to maintain a true balance of trade.

IF.... mining (which will run out) and Education...which is 'soft immigration' will produce more and more job seekers.. the obvious question arises.

"WHAT"....will they eventually "do" ?

Our economy for working class Aussies is already dead.. the corpse has only reached rigamortis and stagnation... putrifaction and smell are yet to come as the body decays.

Most work in Australia at present seems to be in 'consumption' based areas.. which can only be sustained by the other 2 major exports(?)..
-Money out/consumed.. must equal money IN.... earned.
-If money "IN" will evaporate when we have dug all the stuff out of the ground...... what ? I suggest a clamour for the ramaining available jobs and social disruption of staggering proportions.

I hope I'm wrong.

Forkes and pelican are both right, no government has a mandate for a 'Big Australia' with its obvious loss of quality of life for most people, pressure on the environment and lack of solutions for the infrastructure problems that are woefully apparent such as inadequate water and expensive energy.

No government has a mandate for the annual leapfrogging for even higher records of immigration. Quick, fill Australia to the brim, but for what purpose? The urgency to house a booming population continues to result in good agricultural land being forever lost to housing estates.

In the West and in Japan the downturn in the number of children women are choosing to have should be taken as a normal reaction to the political, social and economic environment in which they find themselves. It should be taken as a bellwether for the future direction of society not as a an impediment for short-term profits that should be ruthlessly overcome.

It is significant that while there is much government and business can do to and at low cost that could dramatically improve the lot of parents who work, nothing is done. Even the relatively simple concept of job sharing has withered on the vine for decades because government and business are set in their ways and prone to taking the easy way out. The same is true in town and transport planning where minor changes could greatly assist families and improve lifestyle for all at low cost.

It isn't regular doubling of population that Australia is lacking, it is leaders with vision who are prepared to risk direct consultation with the electorate on needs and solutions. Meanwhile all we are getting from Messrs Rudd and Abbott is the usual superficial scare campaign. Both are running scared of any debate on population, infrastructure and sustainability, because neither party has done any planning and that is obvious. More deck chairs please and so what if the ship is listing?

no_THIS_ismeBD - erhm, I think you've read the wrong set of figures. DFAT stats show that services in total, of which education is a part, accounts for around 20 per cent of exports.. the services industry in total may account for 30 per cent of the economy (actually I think its more..

The article would have carried a lot more weight if it had bothered to quote a few figures, but that might have spoiled the argument. Skilled immigration to Australia has been well in excess of unskilled for decades now..

Australia's population in 1970 was a touch over 12.6 million. Today, the population is approaching 22.4 million. That's an increase of about 10 million in 40 years or an average of 250,000 a year net.

At the same rate of growth, Australia's population in 2050 would be about 32 million.

The current net immigration rate, however, is 451,000 (in the year to September 2009)or 2.1 per cent on a bigger base. At the rate of 450,000 increase per year for the next 40 years, Australia's population in 2050 would be more than 40 million. Again, as the base increases, the actual rate of population growth might be greater, since birth rates are higher in many immigrant communities.

However, birth rates have declined and immigration has increased. Of the 451,000 population increase last year, an estimated 297,000 were immigrants. The impact of such an immigration rate will clearly be greater than in the past.

Worse, immigration both legal and illegal, has skewed towards sources which are manifestly incompatible with western democracies, as the serious Islamist violence in numerous European countries (UK, France, Sweden, the Netherlands,Germany, Belgium, Denmark....)attests.

It's a little appreciated fact that immigration policy in this country is largely influenced by migrants who drive the multi-culti industry (and have done for decades), including from within the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and its predecessors.

Tell us, Mr Rudd, what is the magic formula by which you will prevent the situation here from deteriorating to European levels? Here's a hint: hand-wringing and faux compassion won't work.

This is incredible. There was recently an article last Weds in OLO which linked the SPA with One Nation and their anti-immigration policies. Now we have an article from the titular head of One Nation expousing exactly the same line. It really does make you believe in synchronocity.

I had harboured a few doubts that the bearded gnomes were racists. I wanted to believe that their barking mad dogma had a ray of human compassion, but no, it's ASIANS and MUSLIMS out!

John forgot to link population with rising sea levels. Please see previous comments that this neatly dovetails in to the Mayan prophesy about the end of the world. My citation is the movie 2012.

Thankyou cumudgeon

Unforunately while yesterday I was able to access DFAT stats.. today I've been SLOwwwwwwwed to 64k because of exceeding bandwidth *sigh*
I couldn't access them without watching a screen for an hour while it re-loaded.
Still.. 20% is a lot.

"Services" ? hmmm I wonder what these are in more detail because I suspect they will not even begin to plug the hole left by the mining industry when it runs out of 'stuff'..or.. worse still and more imminent..when some other country decides to get some fast cash flow from some 'special price' iron ore or coal they have recently brought online.
Such an eventuality could destroy the Aussie Economy overnight.. unless of course our supply arrangements are tied into contracts that are rock solid for a decade.
One even scarier thought is that we simply cannot afford to pay the labor rates which would make industrial investment attractive in Aus.

Car industry propped up by 'special deals' with Unions and Government handouts ? hmm verrrrry short term and purely 'political' I suggest.

I thought you said you weren't coming back to OLO, PorkyBoaz.

Cheryl's got my vote.

... and mine, Bryan

One of the benefits of sites like OLO is that unconventional ideologies get exposed to scrutiny. Sometimes they have interesting insightful things to say, and sometimes they don’t. This is definitely the latter category. The author does a nice job of hoisting himself with his own petard – racist, populist, fact-free junk.

We now have “core” Australians? Who gets to judge who’s core and non-core? Based on this article, I’m happy to self-designate on the second category.

Cheryl

I notice you say the author cries out 'Asians and Muslims out'....

would you mind cutting and pasting that particular quote, as I had trouble locating it in the article.

I did notice he mentioned the 'quality' of the immigrant.. I presume by that he has the best interests of upstanding aussies like you in mind where he (if he had the choice) would refuse a visa to people with National Socialist background ? I assume also he might hesitate to embrace those who were LTTE members ?
How about you? would you offer visa's to national socialist 'connected' people (those who did not have any conviction for specific war crimes) or.. LTTE members who were running from those they had been trying to kill ?

I really did not get the impression from the article that it was 'Asians and Muslims OUT' as you put it..

Perhaps a mild exaggeration on your part ? because it would never ever be anything like xenophobia oops..I mean Pasquarelli-phobia.
U know "phobia".. irrational fear.

Well AlGore, it does seem a bit rich that John is not only against the quantity of migrants but also the quality. So he is using the anti-population argument in a devious way. Why haven't the SPA come out against that. They are very shy.

It's like saying you don't mind black people living next door to you as long as their criminally-minded, bomb crazed kids don't play with yours.

I could be old fashioned but many of the migrants I know are small business owners. Their success is a result of their hard work and the tolerance of the society of difference in which they live.

A. Would agree that the history of migrant settlement in Australia has been remarkably successful?

B. Or, would you say that there are packs of gun crazed Muslim gunmen waiting to attack us as we celebrate ANZAC Day?

I'll leave it up to you. You university entrance hinges on this answer.

The Australian newspaper strongly supports the business elite, so they want to discredit anyone who opposes unending growth in population or consumption. That is why they gave column space to John Pasquarelli, a former adviser to Pauline Hanson, in the hope of smearing others with racism by association, even if they have had nothing to do with One Nation and their concerns are based on damage to the environment, availability of water, food security, given peak oil and phosphate, etc.

The Australian's tactics suit Cheryl just fine, so she has just tried to smear Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), even though among their objectives is

"To advocate low immigration rates while rejecting any selection based on race."

Cheryl no doubt knows this because she has claimed to visit the SPA website. If she could find anything racist to link to, she no doubt would have done so to give herself credibility. Since she hasn't, it is reasonable to believe that she is making it up as she goes along.

"Ownership of Australia legitimately rests with the Aborigines and all those whose ancestors helped lay down its pastoral, industrial and cultural foundations and who served the nation in war. The remaining shareholders are those who have totally assimilated and whose allegiance is solely to that of Australia. Dual citizens are not included in the mix."

Silly me! I thought that owning a house and land and paying taxes for over thirty years might give me a say in the disposition of our wealth, but obviously not. I'm just a migrant.

Seriously, any approach which treats immigration policy as if it were up to a unilateral decision by Kevin Rudd or anyone else is just staggeringly naive. What do you think would China and India will do, Mr Pasquarelli, if we reduce our migrant intake to a trickle? Nod and smile politely? The least we can expect is a massive trade war which will beggar this country: and if that's all that happens we should consider ourselves lucky. It's pure fantasy to pretend that we could close our borders without major repercussions. All we can do is what we are doing now -- steer and push a little from time to time: and in general, as Cheryl suggests above, we are doing reasonably well.

"Instead, all Australian governments, in their pursuit of multiculturalism, have bowed to the UN, particularly on the question of refugees, ordinary Australians having been sold out by their elected representatives, most of whom covet a cushy UN job."

Damn the UN. I didn't know they were that cunning. I mean, they sat back and let the Serbs ... but enough.

Divergence, you and me have had our differences, granted. But I reckon you can see that John Pas is riding the anti-population sentiment for all its worth. He has co-opted your argument and is now turning it in to a race issue.

I have sometimes had a go at the SPA and others, saying that this was always a possibility and now it has happened.

Hi Cheryl

"It's like saying you don't mind black people living next door to you as long as their criminally-minded, bomb crazed kids don't play with yours."

Thankyou for giving me a smile so early in the morning.

Have you been spending time on 'StormFront' by any chance ? :)

Let me pose a question to you.. "Is immigration closely conneded to political outcomes and social engineering?"

Let the UK labour party answer that.

http://www.freebritannia.org/post?id=3765819

Let's unpack this obviously right wing tabloidish web site content a bit and distil it to just one quotation of interest...from a Labour source.

[Former Labour minister Frank Field said: 'I am speechless at the idea that people thought they could socially engineer a nation on this basis.']

Is this a lie, misquote, or true?

More ....

Andrew Neather, a speechwriter who worked in Downing Street for Tony Blair and in the Home Office for Jack Straw and David Blunkett, said Labour's relaxation of controls was a plan to 'open up the UK to mass migration'.

As well as bringing in hundreds of thousands to plug labour market gaps, there was also a 'driving political purpose' behind immigration policy, he claimed.

Ministers hoped to change the country radically and 'rub the Right's nose in diversity'. But Mr Neather said senior Labour figures were reluctant to discuss the policy, fearing it would alienate its 'core working-class vote'.

NOTE.
You could probably 'google' any phrase in that to find original articles
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html

Divergence

I accept that some opponents of migration are not motivated by racism, but it is clearly the case that some are – as the author and some of his supporters in these forums attest.

Furthermore, some groups and individuals motivated at least part by racism use environmental concerns as a cloak of respectability to disguise their true intent in opposing immigration – as I believe was the case when Pauline Hanson purported to oppose immigration on environmental grounds:

http://australianpolitics.com/parties/onenation/immigration-policy-98.shtml

And while your own perspectives may differ from John’s, anti-population rhetoric of the political left has some similar themes – paranoia about elites and their secret agendas, a deeply pessimistic view of current society and a strong sense that things are getting worse – the environment is in crisis, the rich get richer and the poor poorer, banks and multinationals are out of control, we are slaves to “neo-liberalism”/”economic rationalism” etc.

The left and right wings of the anti-population movement may have more in common than either is willing to admit.

Cheryl,

In your previous post, you implied that SPA was racist, not just that it had made arguments that could be picked up by racists. For that matter, there is no better way to create racism than for the population boosters to bring in large numbers of people from different ethnic groups and pit them against each other in competition for inadequate supplies of jobs, housing, public services, and amenities.

Jon F,

Where is your evidence that the governments of China or India care in the slightest about our immigration policy, so long as we don't specifically discriminate against their citizens? They have restrictions on the foreigners who can enter their countries.

Australia looks big and empty on the map, but most of it is desert, with only about 6% of it arable, and a lot of that land pretty marginal. See these maps of rainfall and soil quality from Dr. Chris Watson of the CSIRO:

http://www.australianpoet.com/boundless.htmlinal

The leaders of China and India are not so stupid that they don't know that we have no capacity to solve their overpopulation problems, and they have a strong interest in us continuing to export minerals and agricultural products to them, instead of consuming everything ourselves. Take a look at a satellite picture of the earth at night. You can see where the people are from the lights. If China can't populate its own deserts, what the hell would it want with ours?

If we really were being pressed to take large numbers of invaders in the guise of immigrants, then that is an argument for nuclear weapons, not an expanded immigration program.

Well said Rhian. The extremes of Left and Right are more similar than different. The use of "smear" tactics is common to both, its sort of "if you're not with us you are against us" taken to extremes.
Many in the country are not racist but do have issues with culture. It is important in the country to trust and understand your neighbours, much more so than city folk can understand. A ghetto in the city can be ignored, in a small country town it can destroy the local community and create ever-rising tensions. It is very important not to brand cultural issues and the wish for a peaceful society with intolerance and racism.
Having said that, I know that both sides use smear tactics. Racists use ecological and cultural arguments, and business interests will use just about any tactic to get what they want such as dodgy "institutes" and relentless media campaigns.
There is also idealism vs pragmatism. Can we really stay as small as we'd like and "look after ourselves" when 90% of the world starts getting hungry or has to mover due to global changes? Can an insular culture survive?

Hadn't realized you had been quite so busy, Boaz.

>>Let me pose a question to you.. "Is immigration closely conneded to political outcomes and social engineering?" Let the UK labour party answer that...<<

Apart from the obvious impoliteness of asking a question, then providing your own response, I'm pretty sure "the UK Labour party" didn't give the answer you offered.

It was provided by a blog entitled "Free Britannia". No prizes for guessing their approach to immigration, eh?

But I did appreciate the footnote, bearing in mind that it was written less than a year ago:

"In 2001 I wrote on this very board that if NuLab and the Tories did not do something about mass immigration from aggressive and hostile Third World cultures that the population would turn to the BNP. Am I prescient? NO! But I do know human nature, which is something that the socialists on both sides of the aisle deny even exists!"

Given their performance in the 2010 election, he should have left it at "Am I prescient? NO!"

You forgot, I suppose, in your excitement, that the UK is part of the EC, where there's high mobility across borders, especially for work. So for a while, there have been a lot of Polish people in the hospitality business (and extremely good they were too), who are now unfortunately drifting back home. Soon, there'll be a dearth of plumbers too.

But "social engineering"?

You'd need more supporting evidence than comments on a right-wing blog to get that one to fly.

Dear Pericles.. in your zeal to flush out a 'something'...you neglected just one important fact.. actually it's the most important fact.

The location of that quote is irrelevant.. because it was itself quoting a major media outlet...which in turn was quoting the source himself.

You seem to have deliberately ignored the qualification as follows:

"Let's unpack this obviously right wing tabloidish web site content a bit and distil it to just one quotation of interest...from a Labour source."

And you have the (insert name of irrational behavior here) to suggest that it came from a source where there is no prize for guessing where they stand on immigration ? as if the issue was not raised in the original post ?

You can't be serious? Please.. you give meaning to the word 'duffer' when you do that.

So..perhaps the question should be repeated.

Is this a lie, misquote, or true?

You would maintain your splendid reputation for 'accuracy' by actually demonstrating some of it in consistency. Rather than throwing that baby out with the bathwater of some phobia you have.

Is it a lie? a misquote? or true?

That dear Pericles is what a serious person would ask re that post.
Oh..and as to the reference to who I might be?

"ego eime" copy and paste and mr Google will translate for you.

Rhian,

On p. 151 of the 2006 Australian Productivity Commission report, you can see the results of a simulation of a doubling of skilled migration. The results were that owners of capital (and the migrants themselves) were the big beneficiaries. The lobbying efforts by big business for more population growth and high immigration are documented with extensive references in Mark O'Connor's book "Overloading Australia". This is a fact, not a conspiracy theory. The US has had similar growthist policies to Australia and instituted mass migration in 1965 after 44 years of near zero net. This graph shows real incomes for the different social classes over the years. The bottom 60% have had essentially stagnant real incomes since the 1970s, while the rich have received enormous percentage gains.

http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/03/09/the-best-inequality-graph/

Before the Haber-Bosch process, which is responsible now for half the nitrogen in our bodies, and the Green Revolution, people were really only up against the low productivity of agriculture. Now we are up against global shortages or losses of arable land, fresh water, biodiversity, fish stocks, fossil fuels and minerals that are vital for our agriculture and technology, and capacity of the environment to safely absorb wastes. See the "nine thresholds" paper from Nature, probably the foremost peer-reviewed science journal in the world. The link below is to a related open paper with the same lead author.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

If you want to claim that the environment is in great shape and that we don't need to "prepare for ill, and not for good", you are arguing with the mainstream scientific community, not just a few ignorant fringe Greenies.