ozzie, Pauline Hanson was made into a media celebrity and was given far more publicity than her level of electoral support deserved. Her views were aired over and over in the mass media - newspapers, television, radio - yet still the best she could do was score 8%.

The great majority of Australians voted for two parties that were both committed to an immigration intake that was significantly larger than 'net zero'.

SONYA 2: Howard and Menzies both supported and implemented large immigration programs: neither supported zero net intake. It was under Menzies - the Member of the Order of the Rising Sun also known as "Pig Iron Bob" - that the 'White Australia Policy' was significantly dismantled (through reforms in 1957). Pauline Hanson had much more in common with the insular nationalism and racism of ALP Leader, Arthur Calwell, than with Menzies.

In the post-war era, the big decrease in immigration intake occured under Whitlam, who ended the mass immigration program that had thrived under Menzies. Whitlam significantly reduced the intake. Remember those years of greatly reduced immigration? No unemployment? Interest rates? Small businesses doing well? (If you reply that immigration doesn't determine those things, then I'll agree - and you'll be proving my point).

The current dog-whistling by Gillard and Abbott merely reflects their desperation and vacuousness. They treat us like fools. Gillard even pretends that infrastructural problems in the western suburbs are the product of immigration rather than failed government policy.

Neither party will advocate zero net intake, and the actual intake will remain significantly above that. Time will tell, ozzie.

The world is interconnected and nations are interdependent as never before. You're resisting an historical trend that is irreversible.

I really must disengage now

"We should be opening our borders to many more people and voting for parties that think big and see human beings as an asset."

So countries with high population growth rates like Ethiopia, Somalia and Bangladesh should be held up as positive examples for the population growth cultists? Why then are these nations festering scumholes of extreme poverty, misery, and corruption? Perhaps the truth is that people are a potential asset to the extent that we have the means to develop their potential? People aren't born electricians, engineers, nurses, plumbers etc. Roads, railways, schools, hospitals, power stations etc dont form as geological features. All must be trained or built, which requires a substantial amount of capital, and all are part of our civilisation. The current ballooning infrastructure debt is less the result of incompetence as it is the impossibility of trying to provide a first world civilisation for a population growing at eight times the oecd average.

Pol Pot tried to circumvent the belief that a high quality of life required an expensive supporting infrastructure by trying to make an agrarian nirvana. I dont think that his experiment was much of a success. How else then do the population growth cultists propose providing the supporting infrastructure for Australia's massive rate of population growth, other than by denying the problem exists or believing it due to a coincident increase in government incompetence?

If it wasn't for immigration a certain O Aussie wouldn't have a wife.