Pericles said;
Japan built one of the world's most powerful economic engines during a
period of population growth. Proving that there is no direct causal
relationship between larger populations and "worse problems".

Japan had an unlimited supply of cheap oil and coal.
With that you can do anything.
We live in a different world now and it bears no relationship to what
is being faced now. It is why the Japanese economy is in the doldrums
these days. They have significant unemployment these days.
China is a much cheaper manufacturer of everything on which
Japan built its fortune.

Never mind you are certainly not alone in your beliefs, witness the
mindset of our politicians and they are only reflecting the general
populations dreaming.

Since 1983 we have burnt more oil per year than we have found each year.
The world now burns about 5 times the amount we find each year.
We import half of what we use and people think we can just keep
increasing the population !

Anyone who thinks growth can continue indefinately is either a
madman or an economist.

I vociferously attack the anti-pops whenever I can find the time because their 'arguments' are sourced from within a coiterie of hard line environmentalists, YouTube posts and fellow tribes on the loony left living in Byron Bay and Melany.

I came out hard in this session and timed how long it would take before the usual suspects at the Unsustainable UnPeople Lobby took to email each other – about two hours.

Their posts invariably take the same form: closed system analysis, we’re coming to the end of the world, the life boat scenario, anti-immigration, pining for a lost arcadia, an almost total ignorance of modern economics and trade principles and when all is lost, they go for the man or woman.

I’m not alone in thinking that there are some cult-like features in this psychology. The accent on genetics and socio-biology and their contempt of a woman’s reproductive rights is not necessarily a male response but certainly a response which hasn’t had much female intellectual input.

They suffer from the kind of closed group thinking that made headlines in Jonestown in Sth Africa and the Heaven’s Gate cult.

That's exactly what I mean, Bazz.

>>Anyone who thinks growth can continue indefinately [sic] is either a madman or an economist.<<

I am not suggesting for one moment that the only path to take is to grow until we burst. By suggesting that the only alternative available to drastic population control is exponential growth, you are deliberately missing the point.

There are many opportunities to develop and grow Australia into a better and more prosperous country. What is missing is the political will to do so. And the political will is absent because so many of the citizenry share your view that we should look backwards to the fifties, and pretend that life was really-truly-rooly great back then.

Hasbeen leads the way.

>>When I was a kid in Sydney, virtually everyone lived within 45 minutes drive of a beach. There was parking free when you got there, & room in the surf. Hell, I could even drive into the city on a Saturday night, park in the street, & take in movie with my girl. What heaven.<<

Reality check: not everyone hankers after an insular, low-aspirational suburban lifestyle. The fact that so many folk back then worked their butts off to make sure their kids were well educated, and create the prosperity that we now enjoy, is testimony to that.

What saddens me about the "back-to-the-backyard-Hills-hoist" attitude is its effect on future generations. While Hasbeen might "take a smaller house, TV, car & a lot less income any day, if I could have that life style back", imposing that decision on the rest of us impacts all future Australians.

That's a pretty selfish approach. And one that is highly visible to the youth of the country, who see Hasbeen's generation as being primarily responsible for the comparatively narrower life choices that they have today.

Telling them that they should be happy with less simply adds insult to injury.

Funny. When the subject is immigration the population cargo cult criticise the Japanese as weird and insular for their opposition, and desperately in need of some foreign genes to refurbish the decaying gene pool. But with population growth they hold up the Japanese as an example. But what about India and the Philippines? Clearly Japan's prosperity is not founded on a "have lots of kids" basis. I wonder if education and diligence might have played a role?

In 1994 the Federal Government conducted the “Jones Inquiry” into the population issue. The expertise of CSIRO ecologist Doug Cocks was drawn upon to assist. He withdrew from that to write his seminal book “PEOPLE POLICY”, published 1996. The issues debated in this book are still relevant.

Cocks’ introduction states:
“This book has been written for a number of reasons. The first is to convince as many Australians as possible that we have enough and possibly too many people living in this country. The second is to make more people aware that Australia’s population growth can be stopped within a generation or so by the relatively simple expedient of reducing net migration into this country to a few tens of thousands per annum. A third is to demonstrate that the population question is important, irrespective of one’s views on Australia’s rate of population change and ultimate population size. That is, the consequences of getting it wrong could be quite unpleasant. A fourth is that writing a book that takes population-immigration questions seriously constitutes a protest against all the gobbledegook, newspeak and throwaway lines that politicians and other ‘leaders’ offer as for their positions and actions concerning population-immigration matters. I want to do what I can to force population-immigration issues onto the political agenda and unhorse the politicians and others who want to keep them off.”

Mark Oconnor’s article demonstrates that the gobbledegook, newspeak and throwaway lines (and worse) are still alive and well in the political arena and its bureaucracy; and in the most poisonous responses to the article.

Olduvai: you clearly did not read what I wrote. Persons counted as "immigrants" for the purposes of the statistics include a wide variety of classifications. I was making the point that of the total inflow the government is only able to control a relatively small proportion. The government's "target" of 170,000 or any figure it nominates is the net figure, i.e. the difference between what goes out and what comes in. That figure is never achieved for the reasons I set out in the space constraints permitted.
The other central point I was making that you wilfully ignore in favor of fatuous allegations of "hand waving" on my part is that net migration is one of only several factors in the population growth/decline equation. Even with zero net migration our current age structure and birth rate means that the population will continue to grow significantly for at least one and more likely two decades. That is the policy reality that has to be dealt with, not the more esoteric concepts found in mmuch of the above correspondence.