<< The first and obvious step (as well as a huge save in our taxes) is to: STOP THE BABY BONUS. >>

Absolutely Severin.

<< We still need immigrants to make up for the skills shortage, thanks to the short sightedness of previous governments. >>

Dick Smith is advocating 70 000 per annum, which would be about net zero, and within which there would still be a significant skills category, as well as an expanded refugee intake. I concur.

Thanks Ludwig

I watched the doco and saw a part of the Q&A. How out of touch was John Elliot?

I thought D.S.'s humanitarian approach to immigration the most pragmatic. Our skills shortage was created here and can be remedied here as well.

It is up to us to urge our pollies to support infrastructure where it is needed: education, transport, health, communication and environment - not necessarily in that order but it requires a multi-layered response. There is no quick fix as the John Elliot's seem to think, therefore we need to ask, who is more likely to deliver a sustainable Australia?

It is simply not possible to provide the infrastructure that would be required for anywhere near the environmentally unsustainable population of big business's Big Australia.

Even if the money were available and the community is already being taxed to the hilt, the trades are simply not available to do the work. -Unless that becomes yet another immigration hike for skills, followed by another hike in building for more housing and for more infrastructure. It is as Dick Smith suggests, it is a carousel that is spinning ever faster.

On top of that we should not be forgetting that there is no accrual accounting by government and consequently no provision of funds for maintenance of existing and largely old infrastructure, or for its replacement. A new Sydney Harbour bridge anyone?

It is unreasonable to require that young Australian couples should continue to defer their one and a bit children or not have children, because of high housing costs, or through lack of fertility control options (or will) in other countries.

The democratic problem remains, Australians voted with their minds, hearts and feet in the Seventies for zero population growth (ZPG) and achieved it, realising full well the problems of sustainability and over-crowding. However, big business and government decided to frustrate the will of the electorate and went ahead with large scale immigration nonetheless.

Australians still demand ZPG and have woken up to the sly attempts of politicians to slip the issue onto the back burner again. The Greens did the same, suggesting a population review some time after the election, yeah right!

It should be remembered too, that the so-called problem of aging 'baby boomers' was largely attributable to large scale immigration post WW2 and the waves of migrants since, together with their extended families. In the Eighties for instance there were large hikes in immigration to build residential housing and infrastructure, guess why? It isn't only in war that truth is the first casualty, it is always apparent where there are windfalls of profit to be made.

Of course Australia's immigration is a Ponzi Scheme, it always was one.