One of the more unusual aspects of the anti-people lobby is that apart from having no idea about how economies run or notions of trade, value adding in production, R&D value, or even basic stuff about capitalism and market economies that a 10 year knows, is the preoccupation with growth. I can't work out whether they are naive anarcho- syndicalists or reconstructed Pol Pot style socialists.

Does it not strike others as peculiar that we have a former Democrat Senator who spends much of his time driving his tractor on his 40 acre farm in the Adelaide hills paid for by our taxes, telling us that capitalism is evil and that we need to throw the economy back to 1931 - with about the same amount of people?

Anyone wanting a further increase in population must be able to put forward workable plans to somehow find more water, and not just coal.

Liquefied natural gas mining is one answer.

There are literally millions of litres of water coming out of the ground during this mining process, as it is the water that holds the gas underground.

Treat it and place in in huge reserves.

Now I would go further and say that a ban should be placed on the development of use able farm land and switch development to semi, or even, unsuitable farm land. We have millions of acres of the stuff.

OK. Here goes. The anti-pops thinking only works if you believe the end of the world is nigh and the most persistent end of world scenario is that we're going to run out of 'stuff'. Guess what? We've known one day/year or a 1000 years from now, that we're going to run out of stuff.

But the anti-people lobby use this proposition in a teleological way (arguing from final causes). They say we can only survive if we stop using so much stuff now and for them, that means less people. People are the problem. Consumption is the problem.

But the world is going to end one day so it's not going to make much difference. No mention by the anti-pops of the voracious robber corporations. It's you and me who are the problems - and especially fertile women and terrorist Muslims who like-wise want to procreate here.

And here's the kicker - the anti-people faction don't believe in human agency. Science is crap. We have no free will. We're lemmings, etc. Technology is dangerous and it's too late anyway.

Bollocks.

Here's snap shot as of now of Oz'd pop. It's in free fall, with net immigration slumping 37 per cent year on year in the March quarter to its lowest level in years.

The Bureau of Statistics states that immigration plummeted from 98,138 in March 2009 to just 61,780 in the same quarter this year. It is the lowest figure for a March quarter since the bureau adopted new definitions in 2006 - which actually caused all the yak about population in the first place. They changed their basic assumptions which blew out the top end projections thereby creating an OH MY GOD type headline..

Total population growth for the year to March fell by 15 per cent, from a record 471,475 in the year to March 2009 to 403,082 a year later. Australia's population growth rate dropped from 2.2 per cent to 1.8 per cent.

One problem we face is that of being to fussy.

We have vast areas of non, or semi populated areas which we simply don't wish to use as they are considered either to be, to dry, or boring.

As it turns out, many of these less populated areas are also rich in minerals or gas.

So, what is needed is to use these resources to our advantage so that these regions can support communities and for that to happen we must create jobs, and not just mining jobs.

LNG produces huge quantities of water. So if we were to treat this water we could then look towards relocating industry that are large users of water. Golden circle comes to mind with millions of litres of water used each day, just to wash fruit, only to be dumped afterwards.

Then, once these industries are finished with the water, it can be piped to the power stations, or nuclear stations for re-use.

Government could buy vast areas of semi-arid land, develop it and provide affordable housing, but only when there are jobs available.

This land sells for about $200 per acre, compared to $200,000 per acre in the suburbs.

Now the real problem we face, is that if we don't do something like this, someone else most likely will, and they will do it in a hostile manner.

Just remember, they have much less space than we do.

Excellent article John.

This huge subject is now getting some of the attention that it deserves in political circles, thanks first and foremost to Kelvin Thomson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVhRsq_WpFI

Cheryl

You say:

"The Bureau of Statistics states that immigration plummeted from 98,138 in March 2009 to just 61,780 in the same quarter this year. It is the lowest figure for a March quarter since the bureau adopted new definitions in 2006 - which actually caused all the yak about population in the first place."

Would you be kind enough to post a link to these ststistics; I can never find my way ariound the BOS web site.

At first glance I suspect a bit of skuldugery here, ie statistical manipulation, for example are Kiwis included? But I am happy to be proved wrong.