Why the assumption that high immigration is a carefully planned policy to benefit the Australian public? What is wrong with thinking it the result of people pursuing their own interests? At least with the latter assumption the profit motive is very clear. In contrast, the economic justification for high immigration is very nebulous.

If you had a block of land on the edge of town and the prospect of seeing the land developed for housing due to population growth, would you be more interested in a policy which benefited the nation or a policy which would benefit you personally? The idea that someone would be putting the prospect of national benefit ahead of personal profit seems a silly one.

The Gillard gove or fill-in gove. is talking about 'sustainability'. Looking at Australia as a sustrainable country. I would like to hear how and what the gove. views or measures 'sustainability'? How would Julia Gillard measure or calculate 'sustainability' using herself as a measure to calculate this? Or is sustainability measured as sustrainabilty (non such word)?

Divergence, waiting for you to respond to this question from previous exchange: "Can you indicate what you regard as an appropriate net intake for Australia?"

Surely sustainability is hypothetically possible, no matter what the population: there is no necessary correlation between sustainability and low population growth. It depends on so many other factors, infrastructure, the rate and type of economic activity, education funding, water economies, and so on.

Think of it the other way around: what population could Australia support if there were no major highways or railways, reliance on an agricultural economy with very little manufacturing or mining, and a very elitist (i.e. small) higher education system ? In other words, a package that is vaguely similar to Australia a hundred years ago ? In those circumstances, four or five million would be stretching the limits.

Conversely, and still hypothetically, if a future government decided, let's say, to process much of the products of mining on-shore, and aimed to rival Singapore as a financial, and research, centre. Imagine if we had TAFE and higher education sectors which could provide much of the skilled personnel for a transformed economy (still hypothetically). Imagine if we can crack the problems of affordable renewable energy and water shortages (banning cotton and rice production, and allowing the water flows to get down to South Australia would be a start). Of course, there would have to be massive investment in transport infrastructure, higher education and urban services.

But with continued immigration of skilled workers, and a more compassionate refugee settlement policy, is there any doubt that Australia could, hypothetically, support a much bigger population than forty million ?

People are not necessarily the problem, but they must be part of the solution :)

So please, no more dog-whistling about sustainability as low rates of growth, and low rates of growth as an attack on immigration and refugee resettlement.

Joe Lane

byork, "Can you indicate what you regard as an appropriate net intake for Australia?"

Easy peasy, this is supposed to be a democracy and a very substantial majority of the electors are demanding that government immediately reel back Rudd's massive immigration that doubled the previous record number. What ego-maniac leader puts diversity and a doubled population as the highest prioritises of government without seeking a mandate for such enormous social change? Rudd had no mandate whatsoever for any of it.

Or are you pretending that in a democracy the electors should be obliged to justify what they want, even when they were not asked in the first place?

If Australians treasured their democratic rights and freedoms as do (say) the French they would be out in their thousands to protest about the loss of democracy and of individual rights that have been a feature of government in the last decade and more.

The real question is how can democracy be regained in Australia, when the major political parties are determined to thumb their noses at it. As for immigration, let the parties put forward a convincing business case that takes into account the needs, wishes and betterment of the Australian population before just charging ahead like a bull at a gate to ramp up numbers as Rudd did.

Cornflower? I thought it was Divergence who raised the issue of numbers, of size, and with whom I was engaging. Oh well, Cornflower, could you actually suggest a number then?