Scratch a populationist, and you will usually find a xenophobe. Asian and African countries like India, Pakistan and Nigeria could easily and happily supply all the working-age people that Australia needs for the foreseeable future, and barely notice it. Set up proper systems for integrating them into our culture, and the problem is solved. But this seems to be what the 'populate or perish' advocates most fear: not fewer people, but fewer people of the 'right' colour.

Ever since history began, population pressures have solved themselves by migration. Lately we have begun to find ways to make that migration voluntary and peaceful rather than violent and disruptive. It would be a tragedy if putting up barriers against the migrants we need caused a reversion to the historical norms of invasion and slaughter.

< …our population pressure is arguably the opposite: we need more people, not less. >

Yep, that is indeed a very tiny thought bubble!

And pray tell, what happens when your hoard of young people get old. You will need an even greater hoard of new young ones to look after them. You are putting us on an ever increasing treadmill.

Get real

David

And we cannot feed ourselves now.
And do not mention peak oil, fertilizers etc.

Ross Elliot

No matter how many times you say it, doesn't make it true.

Everything is finite.

We either plan for it or live in teeny tiny thought bubble land.

Here then is a tiny thought.

If, as you say, we need more people, not less, then let them be the right people, PLEASE.

The dangers of populating with the wrong people are being seen all over the world. Weak and indecisive governments, of which we have a glaring example, will bring this country down to the ultimate status as a receiving centre for all the wrong, (unsuitable) people that fail to fit both out values, and cultural philosophies, a recipe for disaster.

The desire to promote multiculturalism is a great mistake.

I have respect for the opinions of Dick Smith most of the time and before I would discard his comments on this subject, I would have to read his reasoning again, not just selected quotations.

An additional problem in promoting a greater population is the ability (and quality) of the elected representatives in Australia, historically suffering under the penalty of a house of self-serving fools in Canberra, duplicated in all the states where the problems of population expansion have never been addressed seriously and never will. We have gridlock in every city, now even in the sterile Canberra, country towns with little or no facilities, transport infrastructure that is falling apart and so it has always been.

Overcome that problem and find the quality politicians who will make it work and perhaps the formula may improve somewhat.

But I doubt it.

Ross Elliott, have you used steroids to bulk-out this Nation Building article? It doesn’t look at all healthy.

To bring it back to a more healthy condition, might I recommend a visit to www.environment.gov.au/sustasinablepopulation and click on “submissions now available on line”.

While there take in the offering by the Australian Water Association. It’s measured and factual dissertation could provide a stabilizing platform for thought.
After digesting the Australian Water Association’s submission, it would be appropriate to visit the submission by the Johnstone Ecological Society as a second progressive step. However, take a bex and a good lie down as a precaution against its robustly perceptive comments. The many accurate comments made there could cause quite a fizz in your singularly limited bubble of thought.

After 50 years of mass migration to Australia and a more than doubling of our population in this time when does the author think population growth will start to fix the problems of an ageing society?

Before I looked at Ross Elliotts CV, I felt sure that he would be in the property market and I was pleased to find that I was right on target.
He starts off with the usual attack on Malthus and Ehrlich that all pro populationists use, even though they did not possess 20/20 foresight and the benefit of the Net for research.

Then we move on to Dick Smith who does not have a market or political axe to grind and so can call it as it is.
He then quotes from Bloomberg “'Shrinking Societies: the other Population Crisis”.
The real crisis is that we are not reducing world population quickly enough and not that we are reducing population too much.
“Europe, Korea, and Japan have gone into panic mode” He quotes. Who is panicking there? More property developers? And he then trots out the old chestnut “we not going to be able to support all the old people.”
Using that argument, the problem is never ending because obviously the increased population that he craves will get old them selves and then we will have to find even more to support them.
The rest is the usual hotch potch of “ growth is good” and “bigger is better” that any Real Estate agent worth his commission would trot out. With not a mention of infra structure, food, water, peakoil and so on

Sarnian beat me to it;
Of course Ross Eliot, a person whose (personal) prosperity is based in the property market (selling properties to more people), NEEDS more people here or HE will panic- and whatever is good for Ross and his delightful friends must be good for us- oh wait- he never explained that part, even though he kept repeatedly insisting he 'could explain it' to us if we were only 'willing to listen'.

Even the debunked "what do we do about our aging population" nugget:
Let's see, we have a few choices:
-Introduce more people who, at present, are not old, requiring that an even larger intake will be required to pay for their retirements when they DO become old, and so on.
-Nurture a culture where old people (read, older than 30) are not seen as useless and actually given equal consideration by employers, so they may continue to work.
Wait a minute- these were both already covered by Dick Smith's doco- I shouldn't even have to repeat these, minus the fact Ross Elliot- who was part of the audience watching it- simply avoided answering this entire time and clearly, is pretending still hasn't even heard.

Let's face it- another self-serving lobbyist trying to fling dirt on someone who calls out his money-spinner as unsustainable and undesirable to everyone but him- while carefully avoiding to tell us too much about what he actually wants himself because chances are we might not like it; including explicitly that the alternative to highrise is to lay out a few broad acres of suburbia around existing cities and over former agricultural and parkland (denying the people of the city these resources and burdening them with further congestion, and division of finite resources like water and forcing up the cost of living to fund desal plants to alleviate)- or putting these acres in a remote desert area- which of course is no good for Ross because these simply aren't as sellable.

Ross - I see a few posters have trotted out the scare stores with Peter A claiming - in the teeth of all evidence - that we cannot feed ourselves. (Last DFAT/ABS stats put our food exports at double our imports) and citing peak oil, which is now dead as a scare story. (Goggle fracking and shale).

Population projections are a waste of time, but then efforts to draw a line in the sand and say that Australia can only handle a certain amount of population are easily refuted by pointing to the population densities of the likes of Singapore and parts of Europe. Why can they have those much higher population densities and we can't?

One quibble I will make is that one of the writers you cite, Ross, blames Japan's economic ills on an aging population. Nope. As far as I know, no-one supports that one. Japan's problems stem from its failure to let the market correct problems from the bust of the early 1990s. the Japanese government did not want to let the economy go into what would have been a very painful recession, and the Japanese people have been paying for that decision ever since (albeit not so much in the decade just gone).

Australia needs more people like a PONZI scheme needs more investors.

Canberra has been running an immigrant PONZI scheme on both sides of the house since Hawke said " Labor will never lose another election"

As for Australia needing more workers to cope with an ageing population, i can tell you this:

Nature takes care of ageing populations, always has and always will. And in a way disinterested foreign slaves never will.

Replacement skills and labour are supposed to be taken care of by a free and dedicated (not undercapitalised) education/apprentice system. A system that since Hawk, successive governments have outsourced and privatised into a 'non-func'. The main reason for this is to give their respective corporate backers a reason to import skills at way below true cost while externalising all the social costs to already stressed out Aussy communities and onto our VERY fragile and dying Environment - from red-centre to shores.

Australia needs to revolt and hang up those minority ponzi-spruikers and GST Mandarins who dare to DICTATE the way average Australians must serve THEIR purpose while being forced into piggy backing thousands of unknown basket cases from around the world. A world where it is the RIGHT of 5 billion people to come here and screw up our desert environment if it is the right on any ONE person, investor or morally imperious PM.

So peak oil is a dead scare story?
You wish.
In case you have not noticed, the price of oil is steadily climbing making it eventually too costly for Australians to buy petrol or diesel.
Don’t believe me? Well let’s wait and see for a few months.
As for the alternatives of Fracking & shale (the same thing really) ask the poor sods that live in the tar sands area of Alberta what they think of the idea.
It an environmental disaster but I know that some people is not concerned with small obstacles like that.
Two metric tons of rock are required to obtain a barrel of synthetic crude.
Three barrels of water are needed per barrel of oil produced,
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2005/09/oil_shale_retor.html
file:///G:/PEAKS/PEAK%20OIL/PEAK%20OIL%20SCAMS/bakken.asp%20snopes.htm

Why can’t we have high density population areas like Singapore and parts of Europe?
Well have you ever been there? I think not but have you ever read about and investigated these places and compared them with Australia? I think not.
Really Curmudgeon, you have excelled in your post this time. Please I earnestly ask you to do some research before you write. Otherwise I will have to think that you are an ultracrepidarian.

On the note of Population density in Europe and Singapore- I should point out that Singapore is a city-state with a population of 5 million (about half a million more than Sydney) with urban density triple of Sydney, as there simply isn't enough space for so many houses, and as such only very few actually live in a house than a highrise.

In Europe, I'm not really certain what the point of raising it is, as most of the places with a high standard of living have either:
1- a LOW population
2- A high population dispersed among the country in smaller-populated towns interconnected by efficient high-speed road and rail infrastructure.
3- Even cities like Berlin have LESS people than Sydney. (a million less).

In both cases, they have high density among a small population- but a high standard of living in most of these places due to competent (and more importantly, comparatively honest and level-headed) managers and administrators of infrastructure, planning and resources.

If you can find enough people to form corresponding administrative bodies in Australia that are neither incompentent, crooked, or loonies who entertain nutty ideas of what their constituents need, we can re-evaluate if this discourse is worthwhile.

Then there is a matter of getting people OUT of the capital cities and living dispersed among small country towns (and of course, hoping the people already IN those towns don't mind).

A STRONG ECONOMY IS A MORAL IMERATIVE THAT even JUSTIFIES RUNNING AUSTRALIA AS AN IMMIGRATION PONZI SCHEME AND LOADING THE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF THAT SCHEME ONTO AVERAGE AUSTRALIANS..

HALLELUJAH!

This song reminds me of my human-ness and our broken-ness. That we often lust after things and people we should not and in the end try to justify it and still give it all praise (HALLELUJAH) just as David and Sampson did in the Bible. I feel the sadness because there is no great middle or ending to these type of immigration PONZI SCHEME affairs...only the beginning with the attraction and the actual act of making endless immigration LAW. Beyond that...there is no real substance in the course therefore surrendering not to the relationships but to the consequences with little communication and a HALLELUJAH...praising the multicultural relationships anyway as we often times do to try to bring glory to our mistakes!

>>
Now I've heard there was a secret multicutureal chord
That Julia played, and it displeased the Lord
But you don't really care for overpopulation, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major rift
The baffled Queen composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Sarian - no, sorry, as you yourself seem to have agreed, peak oil is dead. You admit that the reserves are there but claim that there are barriers to extracting the oil. I don't think you realise that the technology has changed or that there are different types of shale. The article you cite mentions the Canadian company Suncorp abandoning the Queensland shales. Quite right, they decided to concentrate on oil sands, which is a multibillion barrel resource. The oil bearing stuff unlocked by recent technology would be different again. The barriers you mention mean that the oil will be more expensive to extract - the water can be recovered, for example.

Time to move on from the peak oil story.

King Hazza - okay, you agree that higher densities of living are possible, just not in what you believe are Aus conditions. Take some time to find a comparison of the areas covered by Sydney and Melbourne, versus New York and London. You'll see that the Aus cities, although they contain a fraction of the population of those cities actually have a larger land area. Now try to imagine what the barriers would be to a slight increase in the occupation densities of the aus cities. Actually this is happening now, sort of, through the switch to medium-density zoning in various areas.

What you think of as the small towns in Europe and the US would in fact be part of the urban sprawl of the large Aus cities.

But the story is more complicated than that, as the area for up to two hours drive time around the major cities in Aus is really a sort of slightly-populated catchment of workers for the cities - semi-retirees on model farms are very common. We do not have a lot of large cities very close together but that is just the way things have worked out here.

In all, it is quite difficult to bleieve that increases in population will cause any noticeable problems for the rest of us.

In all, it isn't difficult AT ALL to believe that increases in population cause gargantuan problems for the rest of us: I mean we are LIVING in this shite: like babies born in toilets, pre-pubescent transport systems and electricity hijacking.

They must be selling rhetoric at Macca’s these days. Whether it’s climate change, immigration, or population growth, the arguments are identical, ubiquitous, and not particularly nutritious. Let’s get real for a moment.

Under no conceivable criterion can Australia be considered ‘overpopulated’. Those who never leave Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane might get that impression, but it’s a transparent nonsense. Anyone who thinks the non-urban bits of Oz are uninhabitable desert has been watching too many documentaries. We could triple our population, and still IMPROVE the environment.

Immigration mitigates the problem of an ageing population because the fecundity of Australian RESIDENTS is below the replacement rate. Reproduction decreases as prosperity increases. The first generation of immigrants will have more children than the second, etc. If we banned immigration, our population would shrink, rapidly.

Yes, our capital cities are full. Problems are due to wretched town planning, lack of investment in infrastructure, and lack of alternatives. Small and medium-sized towns are viable, efficient, environmentally much more sound than megacities, and popular worldwide. But not in Australia, where 95% of infrastructure funding goes to where 55% of the population lives: state capitals.

Older Australians aren’t useless. Regarding employment, they’re very much victims of discrimination. In many societies, teachers are positively elderly. Workers need training at age 50 as well as age 18, if they’re to stay productive — university and TAFE need to wake up to that (or be forced at gunpoint to do it). Yes, raise the retirement age. But stop penalising savings — we want old people to support themselves, but their only options for doing so are super (you have to quit work) and the family home (you can’t spend it). Stupid.

Population growth worldwide is expected to stabilise by 2050, owing to reduced fecundity brought on by increased prosperity. Yes, Australia has a problem. It’s fixable, but not by closing our borders. We aren’t anywhere close to running short of resources — if world population ceases to grow, technology continues to develop, and we make sensible plans for how to deal with a pretty benign future.

I know whose tiny thought bubble needs a sharp prick.

I groaned reading the same old tried rehash of nothing.

1. People don't grow old *forever*. Eventually they die. The baby boomer retirees are a *temporary* phenomenon. Subsequent generations are smaller.

2. Immigrants reflect a similar age range, so do nothing to alter it.
Immigrants also grow old. If immigration were to address this, you'd need to limit it to *young* people.

3. Only 60% of the last decade's immigrants were "skilled". The other half a million were completely useless.

4. Our major cities are sardine cans. But where do immigrants live? Do they move to the country towns and regional cities? No. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane.

5. *World* population growth figures are irrelevant. Australian *density* statisitics are irrelevant (most of the land is uninhabitable). Australia has its own capacity limits, so its irrelevant comparing world figures.

6. Less human labour will be needed in the future as more and more work is mechanised. Taxes will still be collected from *companies*.

Dick Smith did not say that we should have a two child policy, the Murdock Press did.

www.dicksmithpopulation.com.au

Also it doesn't matter how you write it. "Population growth is declining" every 5 days there a million more people on this planet, so I would say this is something we need to be concerned about as our planet isn't getting any bigger.

Practical population and land management to consolidate sustainability of the existing world population could be achieved.

Thinking has to move away from multi billion dollar unproductive National Broadband Network construction and into productive infrastructure development, such as wet north water harvesting and aquaducting through more arable and habitable land.

Big population centres southward need a more sustainable water supply that could also be achieved by utilizing presently unused northern water instead of local southern water.

The Darling River catchment already runs well up into Queensland, no need for aquaducting all the way.

NBN billions could build the connection and increase productivity and exports. This would help consolidate present population well-being very quickly while generating revenue from business and employment and exports instead of from 'carbon pricing'.

I anti-pops campaign has run out of puff. Things got sticky for them when they lost the middle ground of the environment movement and they got a bollocking from Bob Brown recently for being half baked cranks.

Things went further pear-shaped for the Sustainable People Lobby when they inadvertently sided with the no-immigration lobby represented pretty much by Tony Abbott.

Even though most of the anti-pop leaders are engineers, geneticists and IT boffins, many thought they had pitched their tents way to the right - which is pretty much where they belong.

One positive aspect from this 'debate' has been the importance of urban design of our cities. It's odd we don't debate that more considering the centripedal drift of people to cities across the world and the fact that traditional fuel sources will only get more expensive.

Cudmugeon, some good points, but these also come at costs;

I wouldn't really rate New York or London as examples- they're simply awful, cramped, polluted cities with very poor social interactions and moderately high crime- that don't really demonstrate any positives about urban living but plenty of negatives.

Better cities like Singapore, Berlin and Amsterdam are also highly compressed in space and resource consumption (and spare time outside transit), and homeownders have limited capacity for independent power and water generation, meaning it's very expensive and dependent on third parties.
Furthermore, in urban environments there is simply no resources or things to do available that do not require payment (listing things to do in a city would mostly involve paying for pubs, clubs, movies, services and products- people with no interests in these things simply have nothing to do.

In short no matter how good the city otherwise is, contraints on shared resources and stronger dependence on third-party services and products will always apply- and only engages people that are culturally compatible with being constantly immersed with many other people

You are right that multiple separate compressed cities (Europe) are far superior to singular compressed MEGAcities (Australia and Asia) mainly due to de-compression of traffic into efficient freeways, with spacial considerations allowing people to park outside and walk to work in 10 minutes in most cases, and easy public transport coverage). It's cheaper, saves immense amount of time for commuters and reduces pollution and traffic congestion.
It makes a huge amount of difference, although in terms of household issues the compression issue remains.

Donkeygod;
Problem is where will the extra people go? Building a whole new city is a viable option- but nobody wants to touch it. Some towns call for more people and more urbanization, while to some it's the kiss of death to go urban.

Ross Elliott is a realist. According to our economic reality he's quite right, we do need a population boom in order to sustain growth and current modes of consumption. Are all those railing against the idea, including Dick Smith, prepared to accept a plummeting standard of living in reparation? Because that's the ultimate cost attached to the idea of "sustainable" populations. Environmentally sustainable populations are economically unsustainable.
I despise the indignant, spoiled brats out there who rail against overpopulation and other forms of environmental degradation, but would run a mile before they'd accept a material sacrifice. If you don't like population growth and environmental rape, rail against the system that demands it and remember, you can't have your standard of living "and" sustainability.

Quite the contrary, Squeers

Historically, people outbreed their resources and overexploit their environment, so living conditions tend to deteriorate. A graph of living standards vs. time would would be a decreasing curve with some sharp spikes where new crops or new technology have expanded the carrying capacity, or where some disaster has pruned back the population. The good times never last, however, because they always result in more and more mouths to eat up any surplus and restore the accustomed level of misery. Curmudgeon, Cheryl et al. are living in such a spike, so they believe it is typical.

The physical anthropologist Lawrence Angel examined a great many human bones from different periods in the Eastern Mediterranean and found sharp declines in average height and life expectancy from the Palaeolithic. There was some improvement during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but after that, it was downhill all the way to the Industrial Revolution.

Prof. Paolo Malanima has some very good articles on real wages in Italy from 1270 to 1913.

http://www.paolomalanima.it/default_file/Articles/Wages_%20Productivity.pdf

Figure 10 in this paper shows it all, but here are two quotes.

"Over a long period, an inverse correlation between population and wage rates dominates: at least from the beginning of the series until 1820. Wage rates increase only in times of population decline, such as the golden age for workers between 1350 and 1450, and the 1630-1750 period."

"From the ratio of the cost of the basic requirements for survival - the poverty line - to the average hourly wage, we deduce that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries workers had to work 500-1000 hours per year simply to survive, whereas in the nineteenth century about 1500 hours were necessary."

Our politicians and the media are trying to tell us otherwise, because the elite are more concerned with total than per capita
GNP, i.e., population growth is good for them, but not for the rest of us.

Concerns about food security, even in Australia, don't just come from wild eyed Greenies. Those who believe otherwise might take a look at this 2010 report on food security from the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council.

http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/FoodSecurity_web.pdf

"The likelihood of a food crisis directly affecting the Australian population may appear remote given that we have enjoyed cheap, safe and high quality food for many decades and we produce enough food today to feed 60 million people. However, if our population grows to 35-40 million and climate change constrains food production, we can expect to see years where we will import more food than we export."

Among the threats they identify are vulnerability to climate change and climate variability, slowing productivity growth, "increasing land degradation and soil fertility decline coupled with loss of productive land in peri-urban regions due to urban encroachment", and increasing reliance on imports of food and of food production inputs wirh "susceptibility of these supplies to pressures outside our control".

Curmudgeon skates over the economic effects of lower energy returned over energy invested, feeding into the prices of almost everything, making life very much harder for ordinary people, and encouraging them to find scapegoats. He also ignores threats from fracking to the environment, and to water and food security in particular. France has now introduced a moratorium on exploration for fracking because of these concerns.

http://www.energydigital.com/sectors/oil-and-gas/france-bans-drilling-fracking-exploration-shale-natural-gas

Divergence,
I agree with you completely apropos the powers that be: "population growth is good for them, but not for the rest of us",
but the flaw in the comfort you take from Malinama's thinking is in terms of nationalistic models. Australia (for example) draws it's wealth from the global system. So while, as Malinama says, "wage rates increase only in times of population decline, such as the golden age for workers between 1350 and 1450, and the 1630-1750 period", planned population decline in Australia would be more a sign of naive decadence than competitive advantage, and certainly not a case for complacency or increased wage rates. Cheap exploitable labour remains in ready supply around the world. The only thing that affords us the luxury of even speculating on population stability is the fact that we're resource rich. And even supposing the world was confronted with a shortage of labour, long before then it would be the market that was wanting.
We surely cannot expect wage rates to increase by emulating population decline? As if population decline was a trigger for higher wagaes..?
That would be great if it was true?

All Pyramid schemes eventually collapse. Its their intended purpose.

The LOUDEST voices for the Labor-run Ponzi or Pyramid immigration scheme that's inflicting our NATION are mostly from desperate souls who THINK they are high enough up the pyramid to make squillions off the evil ponzi trickle-up mechanisms.

The desperation in their totally unsubstantiated rhetoric reflects the fact they are facing hard times too and falsely believe that speeding up immigration, the sell out of Australia to PONZI, is the only way things will improve for THEM.

Many would rightly say these people should be lynched for this treason. But spare a thought. They are being screwed by Labor just as surely as everyone else in this Nation. People like DonkCurmCheryl probably think immigration imparts wealth through shares, property prices or direct marketplace Growth.

But Labor knows all too well its Ponzi is all about GST. And the DonkCurmCheryls will never get their grubby mitts on that Top of the Pyramid motherload. Poor bastards, they'll just get the odium, the blame and the fall-out as GFC#2 and civil disorder crunchtime get ever closer - as the Pyramid begins its inevitable collapse.

I tend to be exceedingly suspicious of so-called ‘paradigm shifts’, but in terms of population growth, there’s good reason to believe the 2nd half of the 20th century is genuinely sui generis.

Worries about a ‘population explosion’ in the 50s and 60s were very real. Data indicating exponential growth leading to Malthusian catastrophe was ... unassailable. There simply weren’t any good counter-arguments. The science was well and truly settled. Today’s AGW crowd would rejoice to be on such solid ground.

But it didn’t happen. All of a sudden, we discovered new wheat strains which prevented famine in India. New rice strains followed. Chemical fertilisers reached the 3rd world: food production increased dramatically, while the amount of land required to support a given population decreased. Developed countries began to make good use of cheap labour in undeveloped countries. DDT reduced the incidence of malaria. Infant mortality decreased.

Yet, contrary to all expectation, the rate of population growth slowed. China’s one-child policy has been dropped, because it’s no longer needed. Populations in developed countries are shrinking to the point where immigrants are needed to sustain a 21st century workforce. If current trends continue, human numbers will be shrinking in 40 years.

How did scientists and policy-makers miss all this? They assumed, based on unassailable historical evidence, that increased population decreased prosperity, and vice versa. Somewhere in the mid-20th century, though, the sign of this equation changed: increasing prosperity now decreases population growth. Why? Technology, probably, but that’s a pretty vague answer. We need to do better.

Still, 'sustainability' in the long term, means a stable, preferably shrinking, human population. Over the last half-century, we’ve come a long way to achieving that. We’ve also learned to do much, much more with much, much less, especially with regard to food production. If we humans can slow, then reduce, population growth, that plus technology is what’ll save the planet — not immigration policy, not tax policy, and not Ross Garnaut or Dick Smith.

Squeers I would be very much appreciative if you could actually explain how a larger population increases a standard of living;
"Environmentally sustainable populations are economically unsustainable. " Like most of Europe, apparently- whose countries despite being low pop and stagnant for a very long time remain on the highest economic brackets- in fact, even large countries with stabilizing populations perform better than those with rapidly increasing ones.

"I despise the indignant, spoiled brats out there who rail against overpopulation and other forms of environmental degradation, but would run a mile before they'd accept a material sacrifice. "
Why? If the option is there that allows both, take it I say.

donkeygod,

The "Green Revolution" in India is only now being fully played out.

Environmental degradation is now in stark evidence with depleted water tables, poisoning of the land due to the overuse of pesticides and fertilizers. Erosion and general soil degradation abound.

This, coupled with the loss by Indian peasants of knowledge and the usurping of their agency in their ability to share seeds results in them having to now "buy" the new strains of rice every time they sow.
Multi-national pharmaceutical corporations developed these new strains (and pesticides and fertilisers) then flew like bees to a honey-pot to the third world for the massive profits on offer.

It's really only a short term solution, as it's not environmentally sustainable in the longer term, - one presumes the piper will eventually have to be paid.

Correct Poirot.

It will eventually dawn on the people, the “your standard of living” is going to decline.
Is our standard sustainable? Of course not. Sustainable growth is the biggest oxymoron so far.
If you fill a container with a family of rats and provide some food everyday, they will survive. As time passes the family will increase and have more pressure on them as they compete for food (and water, Ipads, largescreen TS, SUVs and so on).
If you gradually decrease the amount of supplies arriving into the finite container the competition increases until it is so fierce that they are eating each other.
I know that some will say “but we have plenty of food, water, Ipods, and so on but in case you have not noticed the world is a round ball. It does not stretch off into infinity.
The logic is that one day it will run out of something and then continue running out till the day arrives that we will have eat each other to survive.
Yes we are very clever and will find alternative things to eke out our lives but if we were so clever surely it would be better not to place ourselves in this fix in the first place?

King Hazza,

I support stable and even diminishing populations, and I certainly don't see any "genuine" quality of life in consumerism and mass culure. But I argue that so long as we are part of the world economic system we can't be excused from its fundamental dynamic: growth. I actually believe we would rediscover quality of life by seemingly paradoxically suffering cuts in living standards.

As I allude above, stable populations such as those you refer to, are economically sustained via off-shore markets and exploitation. We have to get past this mind-set that national borders have any geological significance, they're abstractions via which we rationalise our comparative advantage, wealth and the off-shore effects, as well as vitiate our ethical obligations. In the current paradigm, economic growth has to be maintained somewhere; if we want to retain the luxury of a modest population, and that would certainly be my preference, and western lifestyles, we have either to continue flogging our resource wealth or find new ways to bring capital in; either way, we rely on continued expansion "outside" our convenient borders. We contribute to the overpopulation and rape of the planet whether our population grows or not, ergo we should acknowledge the onus of our portion of responsibility. The economies of countries with stable populations are maintained by exploiting foreign resources, labour and markets.
Pragmatically, Australia could halt population growth and retain standards of living by continuing to export its mineral wealth, and hopefully by doing some value-adding of its own, though that would make us rather dependent and vulnerable to global economic fluctuations, and unsustained by internal economic growth.
But there are also matters of geopolitical realism to consider and our responsibilities in the "global" context of overpopulation, refugees, international security etc.
The only viable and "ethical" way for us to halt population growth then is to be self-sufficient--even then we ought to address the ethics of our good fortune in presiding over such an abundant land mass--and we can't be, in terms of security alone; meanwhile, the atmosphere remains like a goldfish bowl and doesn't care about borders.

KAEP,
It's not a "Labor" plot (though granted popular Labor and Liberal in Australia are identical); the ponzi scheme is run by conservative neoliberals. It has little to do with politics and everything to do with economic hegemony.

Well said Squeers & Poirot.

King Hazza - I would not disagree with in your response to me. Sure those cities could be better, just as Sydney or Melbourne could be more livable.. but then the challenge is to make our cities livable at higher population densities, rather than try to hold back the tide of population growth.

Actually Squeers economic prosperity does not require growth of a workforce- merely sustained high levels of output, purchase and consumption of whatever we can produce and export- which is being covered increasingly by technology. Our vulnerability to global markets speaks for itself in the US recession- which is very little, even despite Labor being in charge at the time.

Cudmudgeon- I definitely hear you and agree. But would insist that cities should never exceed so many million people or km2 in size;
Sydney is simply a failure down to its most basic design- too many people side-by-side and too few business/trading centers dispersed over an area just ensures crowding and gridlock; Either way we would look at it, we would need to balance removal of traffic jams (by shrinking the width of each suburb into a smaller geologically separate town and interconnecting them via autobahns/rail) against the need to offset the human detriments of crowding by dispersing the population outwards over a larger area;
And the only way to achieve both is simply to encourage more people already living in existing cities to relocate to other cities (or create new ones interstate) that are inviting enough to vacate Sydney for- and try to redraw the space they left with something more livable and functional, hoping there is enough space left over to do it right)

Earlier colinsett suggested that people would do well to get on to www.environment.gov.au/sustainability/population/consultation/submissions.html where there are a huge number of submissions that are directly relevant to this discussion. I entirely agree with that suggestion. Colinsett suggested submissions by the Australian Water Association and also by Johnstone Ecological Society are worth a read. I urge commenters on OLO to read some of the submissions because they are generally thoughtful and full attempts to grapple with what is crucially important matter. I have to confess that I was responsible for the first draft of the Johnstone Ecological Society's submission. However pro population growthers can find plenty of soul companions in submissions by local Councils, development bodies, mining and exploration companies, Business councils, assorted Chambers of Trade et al.
In addition to the AWA and JES submissions I would suggest, as a small sample of views opposing big population growth in Australia, the following: Doctors for the Environment Australia, Kelvin Thomson MP. the West of Elgar Residents Association and (for an excellent discussion of problems in SE Queensland), Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland Bayside Branch.
Specially for Cheryl, who sees people like me (anti pops as she calls us), as 'way to the Right', I commend a pro big growth submission that will gladden her heart. It is by the Citizens Electoral Council.

King Hazza,
There’s nothing in your post that contradicts anything I said, though neither does it take anything I said into account.

Eyejaw (and Colinset presumably),
Thanks for directing me back to the submissions link and I’ve “skimmed” a few, including, and more extensively, the Johnstone Ecological Society's submission.
I respect the passionate feelings that went into composing the document, and which remain ‘embalmed’ within it (in bold), but while I also sympathise and feel just as affronted on behalf of this fragile continent as the document’s authors, the grim news is I fear that such considerations, of sustainability, will receive no regard. Economic considerations shall not be gainsaid and growth shall be pursued with all the unreasoning vigour of holy writ.
In fairness to the prosecutors of globalisation, laissez faire is the only equitable procedure in a fundamentalist world of competitive markets, where all qualitative considerations are reduced to the quanta of economic realism. The great thing about such a system is it relegates “irrationalities” (ethics etc.) and even questions of viability and sustainability to the collateral considerations category, and thus already sidelined, economic growth being the raison d’etra and, quite simply, non-negotiable.
I would be delighted if someone would disabuse me of this gloomy prospect.

Eyejaw,

Your Johnstone Ecological Society was submission was excellent, especially on p. 2 where you confront the cornucopian optimists with reality and lay out Australia's problems with poor, thin soils, low and variable water supplies, and flat land with very high evaporation rates, making water storage difficult or impossible.

Donkeygod,

World grain production per person peaked in 1984, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization food price index is at its highest level ever.

http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/foodpricesindex/en/

Global population is still growing at about 80 million a year, at a lower growth rate than in the past, but from a larger base. Because of demographic momentum, it can take up to 70 years after replacement level fertility has been attained for a population to stop growing. China's population is still growing, even with the one child policy, which was only intended to last for 30 years. They have relaxed some aspects of it, but it is still in place. Even with the current global population, it would take the resources of 3 Earths to give everyone a modest Western European standard of living. See the Global Footprint Network or this graph from New Scientist

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2624/26243101.jpg

The left hand axis indicates ranking of countries and groups of countries on the UN Human Development Index.

Squeers,

Globalisation was stopped before in Western countries, after World War I, essentially because the various elites were afraid of the guillotine. This resulted in more equality, higher wages and better working conditions for ordinary people. This graph shows the share of national income going to the top 1% since 1900 in several countries. Note the Great Compression in the middle of the 20th century.

http://clubtroppo.com.au/2006/08/24/policy-and-perhaps-culture-matter-for-income-distribution/

Even before the war, significant tensions and labour unrest were brewing. In the US, there were pitched battles between strikers and federal troops or what were effectively private armies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_the_United_States

World War I shut off international trade and mass migration, giving many people in the US, especially black people, decent pay and working conditions for the first time.

After the war, US and European elites were badly frightened by what was happening in Russia, but the US elite decided to revert to business as usual. Violent labour unrest returned with a vengeance, and there were bloody riots between black people and the migrants who were displacing them from their jobs as mass migration was resumed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_St._Louis_Riot

Some of those "hardworking immigrants" from Europe were violent anarchists or communists, and delighted to share their ideology with the locals. There were a number of serious anarchist bombings, and the anarchists also sent letter bombs to individual politicians and prominent businessmen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_bombings

The elite began caving in in the early 1920s, abolishing mass migration and imposing tariffs on international trade.

For one who is 'in housing' every arrival means more money for the bank-book. Beautiful money!

The one resource we desperately need is being killed off by our education system, bright young minds ! Our present system is playing right into the hands of Globalisation.

Divergence,
the interwar period is fascinating. If you read Hobsbawm's "Age of Extremes", he argues that the reaction against globalisation was fascistic. Despite the paranoia of the Cold War period the only real threat to the world order was fascism, which was mollified by Keynesianism. The communists were jumping the gun in a world that wasn't ripe for it. I'd argue that enlightened self-interest is not a spontaneous reaction to economic fundamentalism; fascism is.
The response, as you say, was a degree of equity between rich and poor, and this gives hope that such a situation could be repeated. Indeed it's being argued in books published since the GFC (for instance "New Capitalism" by Kevin Doogan) that neoliberalism (globalisation) remains essentially conservative (rather than stateless) and ergo vulnerable to hard-nosed negotiators. But these are negotiations preferred by the rich host nation, and whatever benefits accrued are projected as a purely internal redistribution of wealth, and cold comfort in terms both of international equity and environmental sustainability. More important, corporate vulnerability in terms of its conservative, stay-at-home bias, does not extend to broad-brush reforms such as economic pacifism.
tbc

The writer is biased for personal gain and cannot speak for the general good. This speaker for the Property Council wants us all to live meaner so the suburb developers can continue to make money.

Australia is fundamentally different to what it was in 1960. Most easy water sources are fully used. BUT most important, cheap and abundant oil is no longer available. As we enter into the decline of world oil supply after the Peak Oil point, growth economies become impossible. (Cost of oil at 5% of GDP makes growth impossible)

As a result of more expensive energy and resultant recessison, unemployment will approach numbers not seen since the Great Depression. The result will be that all those immigrants will be standing in line waiting for a handout. Is this what the author wants?

Everyone should join the Stable Population Party of Australia to get the message across.
cheers

cheers

Michael Dw,

Well said.
Over population is the biggest problem in the world today.
The only country which is tackling it is China.
We could all take a lesson from there.

Samian,
I agree that world increase in population is the major problem and increasing our immigration will not solve that.

However China is not the only country doing something about that. Iran has lowered its birthrate from 3.2% to 1.2%. Am told in Japan parents incur penalties if they have more than one child, but that needs verifacation. Heard rumours that India had something going or was considering such.

The biggest obstacle to reducing birthrates is religion.

Australia will one day support a population between 50 & 100 million. It is inevitable and no "social" policy intervention should inhibit this from happening.

The factors allowing this population growth to be economically & environmentally sustainable will include, but not be limited to:

1. Cellulosic ethanol for transport fuel
2. Renewable industrial & household energy from biomass, solar & geothermal, perhaps even nuclear
3. food security planning & agricultural efficiency
4. Water use & treatment planning
5. Natural Resource Planning
6. urban planning
7. The rule of law

As these factors are developed and implemented the population will follow. In these circumstances - why cap population at all?

To intervene with some kind of population policy would be to undertake "social engineering", nothing more, nothing less. It's the kind of stuff that the Nazi's were about.

Good old Aus - fifty to one hundred million, no probs?!

But, the best brains the boosters come up with focus on growth: that, it seems, is our basic need - not some exact (or otherwise) number.

And all of the evidence, from past experience they have already lumbered us with, indicates that the faster we grow, the faster we have to run to catch up: If we grew at 1.7 per cent last year, we will have to grow at 1.8 per cent next year to catch up with whatever we are trying to catch up with - infrastructure needs, environmental repair, etc..

From the lessons they are trying to donkey us with, that cornucopian carrot dangled in front of us, we need to trot along faster each year to repair all the ills accumulated in the last one: it will be from a brisk walk at our current 22.6 million, to a fast trot at 50, and a breath-taking gallop at 100.

Are we being treated like donkeys? Could we infer, based on their arguments, that those boosters are goats?

I'm enjoying how the negatives insist that only methods of fascism can be employed in this situation involving the government actually FORCING people to do anything:
How about this?
1- scrap the baby bonus or any other financial INCENTIVE to have or not have children
2- Stricter immigration requirements to only people with some secular education, and moderate viewpoints towards social realities of Australia. This extends to refugees also. Also advertise these policies abroad to ensure that only people comfortable with secularism and tolerance of moderate people and gay people- among other community members, will be encouraged to come.
3- Encourage and promote contraceptives; remove the stigma.
4- De-demonize abortions in the media and counteract church stereotypes..
5- Allow local residents to input and veto property developments in their local area through CIR and compulsory referendums (something Ross Eliot would surely be furious about but would ensure that development would only occur at the benefit and needs of residents who actually live there and their own population needs).

The end result is a greatly reduced incentive to populate, all of which entirely voluntary with absolutely no input by government at all in anyone's actions. Housing options would shift to places they are actually available, instead of compress wherever lazy developers find most convenient to market.
The best part is, it actually enhances people's rights instead of diminishing them (well, except for developers to impose themselves on communities who don't want it).

There was a second part to my last that I had to wait to post, and then lost.
Oh well. I was saying how the very notion of population restraint was a western conceit, a luxury, and that given the nature of the beast, insatiable growth, also a delusion--and already taking the familiar form of xenophobia that caught on like a virus between the wars, witness Michael Dw's comment: "As a result of more expensive energy and resultant recessison, unemployment will approach numbers not seen since the Great Depression. The result will be that all those immigrants will be standing in line waiting for a handout". All those immigrants are Aussies are they not, or human beings at the least, and therefore our equals..? I don't understand the distinction?

I thus find Dean K's crystal ball gazing delusional, based as it is on the premise that capitalism will continue in a rude state of health unhindered. All such prognostications are projections based on business as usual. But that doesn't look possible, the elephant in the room being peak oil. Dean K's seven point plan is fantasy, that is as applied to current populations, which are unsustainable by anything approaching western standards.
If my notion of capitalism is correct, that it either grows or dies, all such derivitive thinking will end up in the rubbish bin where it belongs.
Interesting times ahead.

Sorry, Mitchell sometimes stands in for Squeers.

King Hazza,

Why scrap the Baby bonus when Oz's natural population without immigrants is in decline?

I like the idea of a financial inducement to not have children - but what happens if one slips through? Do they have to pay the money back or hand over the kid?

2- Stricter immigration requirements to only people with some secular education - that puts out the whole Middle East. They're Muslims you know.

3- No prob with promoting contraceptives and sex education too.

4- How do you 'De-demonize' abortions in the media and counteract church stereotypes when the next PM Tony Abbott is against abortion?

5- Compulsory local referenda? That's for cranks like the gun lobby. Don't go down that path.

I'm glad you didn't mention cutting international students - that's a priority of the Sustainable People Lobby.

You guys know that population is falling in large parts of Europe and Japan don't you? If the anti-pops put just one tenth of their intellectual effort in to designing cities of the future, we'll, we'd still be stuffed, but it would keep them busy for a while.

Cheryl-

1) my post said I do not endorse any form of financial incentive OR disincentive to have children; Simply remove all forms of allowance or tax so having children in itself is a tax-neutral option.

2)Then they'd have to demonstrate how their non-secular education substantiates an education in general, AND demonstrate a secular disposition. If they only went to some Quranic recital school- too bad for them.

3)Naturally

4)Good question- not voting for him in the first place and demanding a proper replacement leader for the Liberals would hopefully a good starting point- voting him out some time later would have to be the next one.

5) No it isn't. CIR is for everyone that demands democratic accountability; that varies from outspoken fringes of society- to mentally sound, educated people like the moderate, liberal SOS and anti-corruption people and democracy enthusiasts like Ted Mack from the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. Narrowing CIR to a single demographic is like saying that only Christian fundamentalists enjoy eating carrots.

CIR might be OK King Hazza, but how do we repeal bad laws made by those who vote with the majority and pass laws such as people must only have one child, all Muslims need to eat pork or haircuts must only be allowed on Thursdays?

I prefer (but only just) being represented by a Bi cameral parliament rather than the mob. But I can certainly see the emotional appeal. So could Robespierre.

Can anyone varify if these figures are true ?

The Australian Federal Government provides the following financial assistance:-
BENEFIT
AUSTRALIAN AGED PENSIONER
Weekly allowance
$253.00
Weekly Spouse allowance
$56.00
Additional weekly hardship allowance
$0.00

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS/REFUGEES LIVING IN AUSTRALIA
$472.50
Weekly Spouse allowance
$472.50
Additional weekly hardship allowance
$145.00

TOTAL YEARLY BENEFIT
$16,068.00
$56,680.00

Cheryl and some others clearly don't understand about demographic momentum. They seem to think that we would have a declining population right now without immigration. In fact, according to the ABS, 156,500 people were added by natural increase in the year to Sept. 30, 2010. This was 46% of total population growth, with the rest due to net immigration. It is true that the fertility rate is slightly below replacement level and has been since 1976, but growth by natural increase isn't expected to stop until the 2030s, although this depends on people's family size decisions. It takes most of a human lifetime to change over from the pyramid-shaped age distribution of rapid population growth to the columnar age distribition of a stable population. Before this happens, the young adult generation having the babies will far outnumber the elderly generation where most of the deaths occur. See

http://beacheconomist.com/popdis2.gif

Hang on a sec - you're saying we're below replacement pop without immigration and you agree with the ABS figures of schedule B that we're at 1.9 births?

And you agree that at initial conditions (now) we will continue to have approx (minus immigrant births) a birth frequency of 1.8 or 1.9 (it is slowly decreasing).

The the problem, so far as you're concerned is entirely about immigrants and reproduction of immigrants in Australia. You're more Enoch Powell rather than Baden Powell.

Divergence, if we have already populated the future, what do you propose to do about it? You therefore need to reduce the number of people who have already been born

Want immigrants familiar with secularism? Try White/Western populations.

Sex education? White.
Democracy? White.
Skills? White.
Moderate birth rates? White.
Rule of law? White.
Personal liberty? White.
Property rights? White.
Literacy? White.
Numeracy? White.
Wealth? White.

You name it, if it's something we want in Australia, you can find it in other White populations.

So instead of trying to row upstream, why not do the obvious?

Restrict immigration to countries with majority White/Western populations, with similar standards of living (that may exclude some Eastern European and Latin American countries until their standards imprrove).

Every single migrant doesn't have to be White, just born and raised in one of those First World countries, so familiar with these modern, Western social elements.

But no, we can't do that.
That might offend someone.
Let's destroy our future instead. As long as nobody's offended!

Individual

Get your facts straight:

Basic Age Pension for single person is:

$335.45 per week

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/compose-message-article.asp?article=11907

This does not include any supplements such as rental assistance.

The most a refugee granted a visa is entitled to is a one-off payment - do some homework and check for yourself:

http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/payments/crisis.htm

"Crisis Payment helps you if you are in severe financial hardship because you have experienced an extreme circumstance such as domestic violence or a natural disaster, you have been released from gaol or psychiatric confinement, or you have arrived in Australia for the first time on a qualifying humanitarian visa."

Get your facts straight:
Ammonite,
I'd have thought it was crystal clear to anyone with an ounce of brain that that was the purpose of my enquiry ?

Cheryl- extremes are repealed by giving convincing arguments why they should, if in fact the alternative is wrong in reality and not in the perceptions of those that disagree.
Meanwhile, a parliamentarian (or even an unelected politician for that matter) can be bribed by banks, extreme Christian groups, gun lobbies to see things their way by tailoring only to their personal desires at the expense of basic human rights;

I doubt you would get much luck joining various Middle East wars, privatizing public assets to corrupt organizations like MAcquarie Bank or Telstra, shutting down medical research, hospitals, mental hospitals, schools to sell the real-estate or fund religious chapalins in schools, internet censorship, banning stem cells, APEC, WYD temporary police-states, and medical practices that pander more to Cardinal Pell, the Christian Democrats-
-among many other things, if we had CIR.

Shockaholic
Don't forget most of East Asia- people in these countries are very much most of these things (though democracy isn't quite in their control, despite popular protests in most of these countries for the contrary).

Individual

I have provided clear evidence that your claims vis a vis Centrelink payments to Age pensioners and refugees is completely wrong.

Therefore, your post above makes no sense.

Japan is not an economic basket case because of its aging population.
This artictle "What does it mean for an economy to ‘turn Japanese’ and what determines whether it will?" clear demonstrates Japan's impressive economic record in recent years.

http://ckmurray.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-does-it-mean-for-economy-to-turn.html#more

You are still confused, Cheryl. Even without immigration or immigrant fertility, the population would still be growing, and it would keep on growing until the 2030s, assuming that the fertility rate stays at 1.9-2.0. Replacement level fertility only means that the next generation won't be any bigger than its parents' generation. Imagine a town where no one moves in or out. The town is founded by 100 people, the first generation. Each couple has 4 children, so there are 200 people in the second generation. Each couple in the second generation has 4 children, so there are 400 people in the third generation. The third generation now adopts replacement level fertility, so there are 400 people in the fourth generation as well. While these last children are being born, the first generation all die. The town has lost 100 people to death, but gained 400 people by birth, a net gain of 300 people. The growth will continue at slower and slower rates until all the generations are the same size (apart from extreme old age). I hope that this is clear. I have seen calculations that India's population would double before it eventually stabilised, even if they adopted replacement level fertility tomorrow and maintained it thereafter.

No one has suggested that we can stop all population growth immediately. We are locked into some population growth due to demographic momentum, but it is temporary. Once it has stopped, we can stabilise the population with some mild subsidies for children and/or modest net immigration, or we can allow it to slowly decline to whatever level is optimum. Immigration can go on at zero net, currently about 80,000 a year.

no probs on natural growth Divergence. Subtracting immigration, it's moderately low at 1.9.

Agree with you that on the maths the initial conditions for natural growth are pretty much set until 2030.

Do you therefore say that in Australia at least, we should therefore limit the number of immigrants or is that problematic because those that are here now must necessarily be included in any equation which involves a population projection?

I suppose what I'm getting at is that much of the anti-populationist rhetoric targets immigration, and I understand why (although disagree with it). But the whole argument is moot if population growth is an immutable fact until 2030.

Are you saying we educate kids now to limit numbers beyond 2030?

I am only a simple accountant, so perhaps I am missing something about Mr Elliot's no doubt learned article . In particular, I must be missing something about his concerns with coping with an aging population if we stop population growth.

Perhaps Mr Elliot would like to answer some simple questions.

Can Australia's population grow forever? Obvious answer is NO.

When it does inevitably have to stop growing, will we (more accurately, our children and grandchildren) have to adapt to an aging population. Obvious answer is YES.

Will it be easier to adapt to an aging population now when we have about 22 million, or when it is 35, 50, 100, 150 million? I suggest the obvious answer is YES.

Is it therefore the correct course of action for our nation to stop population growth now and work out now how we are going to cope with the aging population, and get on with it? Again, the answer is obvious (but then, I am only a simple accountant).

Coping with an aging population is nowhere near the problem Mr Elliot and his ilk seem to think, but as sure as hell, it will be harder to deal with later, rather than sooner.

And, of course, I could go on and discuss the problems population growth is bringing us like pressure on water supplies, food security in an age of peak oil, losses of flora and fauna, housing affordability, clogged roads etc etc. In due course, I would like to hear what Mr Elliot has to say about those matters, in particular, how a bigger population is going to help.


Bob Couch
Convenor
Stop Population Growth Now (Inc)

__._,_.___

Some commonsense from Bob Couch.With population growth we risk it all.

Bob Couch you have hit the nail on the head.
A breath of reason after all the waffle about technical fixes and just plain head in the sand.
Now if anyone is interested in the real truth about where we are and where we are going, may I suggest that you beg, borrow or even buy a copy of a book by Paul Gilding called “The great Disruption”.
Pay particular attention to chapter 3 with an open mind.

It is sad to see some of the comments on this thread sinking to cheap abuse. Xenophobe, half baked cranks, or Enoch Powell add nothing to the discussion. Neither is it right to assume that everyone who is concerned about population numbers is dumb. I know of no evidence to support that view. I shall try in two comments to illustrate the great gulf in thinking that exists between my (conservationists) view and that of the arch population group, the business community, led by Heather Ridout.
The JES Submission to the government's Inquiry into population that I referred to earlier stated clearly the geographic/geological and climatic characteristics assumptions it made with reference to Australia. They were:
The land has not been glaciated and very little of the land is of volcanic origin. As a consequence the vast majority of the soils are both poor and thin.
The rainfall is generally low and wildly variable. Even in the one of the wettest catchments, the Johnstone, there are years when the smaller streams are severely stressed. That is a source of huge friction between irrigators and conservationists.
The majority of the continent is very flat. Hence there are few, sometimes no, places suitable for river damming. That is notable in respect of the big rivers flowing into the Gulf.
There are large areas in the Tropics. Consequently evaporation levels are very high indeed. That affects agricultural opportunities directly. It further exacerbates the difficulties of finding suitable water storage sites; the evaporation losses would be staggering with shallow impounding lakes.
The combination of poor soil, erratic rainfall, high evaporation and lack of storage ability are the hard realities. Any policy that does not accept them as a fact is absurd, Knut like and is doomed to fail.

The 'Productivity and Prosperity' expert panel, one of three for the government's Issues paper re population, when talking about 'Regions' and in particular possibilities in the North criticise the recent Taskforce Report that found that there were only 'opportunities for.....and mosaic agriculture'. That means no major opportunities but some little bits scattered about. Ridout doesn't like that so 'it is time to further investigate soils and water availability'. That translates to: you got it wrong, do it again and get it right this time. What a classic refusal to face reality, how ridiculous. But they get worse from there.
Under the subheading 'Plenty of water but droughts and flooding rains' Ridout et al put forward the thesis that vast areas of Australia have rainfalls that are 'comparable with much of Europe and North America.' Their Figure 7.1 shows a truly vast area of Australia a nice green colour, the same colour as Europe and parts of North America. They recognise the variation problem but simplistically sees that as just 'the greatest challenge is water management.'
There is no doubt that Ridout et al is postulating the ridiculous: that, say, an area just north of Mount Isa would be as productive as, say, East Anglia, all that is needed is water management. The most generous interpretation is that Ridout et al are staggeringly ignorant. The alternative is worse.
It is hard to think of a more clear cut difference than that which exists between Johnstone Ecological Society's assumptions and thinking as given in my previous post previous post on the one hand and that of Ridout et al on the other.
Just to cheer us all up however I am glad to report that other areas of the globe that Ridout et al show as green and hence presumably, like all of northern Australia, capable of agriculture are south east Greenland, all of Iceland, large parts of northern Siberia, south western Alaska and the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Cheryl,

Some population growth is inevitable, but that does not mean it is OK to have a whole lot more of it. The Australian Academy of Sciences recommended 23 million as a safe upper limit back in 1994, before there was an understanding of the full impact of peak oil, peak phosphate, etc. However, I don't think that the situation is so immediately serious that we need to look at an enforced one child policy or at no immigration at all, while emigration continues. Such policies will reduce the impact of demographic momentum, which may be crucial if a country is really facing collapse, but is likely to create other serious problems down the line.

My ideas on what should be done are in line with Kelvin Thomson's Fourteen Point Plan. The current fertility rate is fine, slightly below replacement level, so we don't need to educate people, although it would not go amiss to end the government bribes to have children and some of the subsidies to large families, apart from heavily means tested welfare payments. I would reduce immigration to zero net, currently about 80,000 a year. This would include all categories, New Zealanders, refugees, etc. Once we get the population where we want it (for the time being) we encourage people to have a few more babies and/or allow a modest amount of net immigration.

King Hazza "Shockaholic [my name is Shockadelic] Don't forget most of East Asia- people in these countries are very much most of these things (though democracy isn't quite in their control, despite popular protests in most of these countries for the contrary)."

Even if you could find all these things in East Asia, that doesn't explain *why* we would choose those people over Canadians, Dutch, Germans, French, etc.

If you can get XYZ from people of related cultures and also get XYZ from people of unrelated cultures, which of the two options will prove *least* problematic?

Local Australians need to adapt to the additional people, and the immigrants need to adapt to their new society.

If the people you choose *already* come from similar cultural backgrounds, you're already half-way there.

This was the real reason for the "White Australia" policy.
It wasn't about how much melanin your skin had.
It was about all these myriad factors and their impact on social stability.

We aren't even getting a proportional number of "suitable" East Asians anyway.

I did an analysis (on my website) comparing GDP per capita (a good indication of skills and general modern social development) with immigration levels.

Advanced countries like South Korea and especially Japan were *underrepresented*, while countries like Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand were grossly in excess.

http://www.shockadelic.com/immigration.html

Funny, I would think that the views of extreme pro-growth people, such as Ross Elliott here, were the 'tiny thought bubbles'...

And Jon J, you're a bit out of your depth there mate.
There's a huge and growing amount of people who don't give a toss about the colour or ethnic composition of Australia's population.
Its just that 7 billion people on a planet of finite size (and 23 million in a desert) ain't gonna work.