Westerners currently utilise around 86 percent of the world's resources. That's about 1 billion people taking the lion's share - and rest exist on 14 percent.

We are the ones that disregard the transience of our favoured status. We are the ones that ignore the fragility of our environment .
We are the ones doing the damage.

I get the gratitude and lest we forget.
We are having approx 320,000 babies each year and about 160,000 deaths, and I am happy to accept that those babies were born in a lucky country, with its wealths in its people, its land and its future.

We could make NOM neutral and then the real issue is how do we pay for our aging nation as pensions and health costs begin to climb.
GST to at least 15% will tax all people. Increase the tax free threshold to $20K and increasse welfare accordingly.
Bring in a mining and super profit tax and a death tax with a tax free threshold of $750k etc. Let Treasury do the numbers...

The short answer is we could change our economy and plan to stay around 22 million or less. Should we? I am not sure there is a short answer to that. I am leaning towards yes. Could we? An even longer answer....

*We are the ones doing the damage.*

Poirot, your guilt trip is very sweet and I am sure well meant,
but hardly accurate.

I suggest that you google "Bushmeat", to see what is going on in
Africa. Rather then farm animals, its easier to shoot anything
that moves in the forests. Huge forests have been decimated of
any wildlife, bonobos, chimps and gorillas are on the verge of
extinction, as more and more of them are put in the pot.

People have 5-8 children in many parts, all having more children.
Where Jane Goodall established her chimp sanctuary, is now surrounded
by ever more people, all wanting meat and land.

Personally I have this moral thinggy, where I believe that other
species have a right to a bit of this planet too, not just wall to
wall humans, at the expense of every other species.

Silly me.

"Westerners currently utilise around 86 percent of the world's resources. That's about 1 billion people taking the lion's share - and rest exist on 14 percent."

Well then that is an excellent argument for Australia and America etc slashing their current populations and severly restricting immigration so that those still in the third world can have a fighting chance.

Thus far the owners of capital have succesfully hoodwinked the masses into believing that population growth will make them more wealthy despite the fact that it should be obvious to them that this is simply not the case.

Countless cases of crass exploitation of 457 visa holders fails to alert Australians as to what the real agenda of 'big Australia' advocates really is.

But with Dick Smith in particular this will slowly change and the majority Australians will wake up and put their votes where there opinions are, i.e. not with either major party or the greens.

Pericles wrote:

"We have after all, as individuals, done absolutely nothing to deserve that privilege, except our choice of birthplace.

Perhaps in the long run it will be smarter to share that good fortune a little more than we do."

And Cheryl wrote:

"the anti-population movement has a very nasty social engineering aspect which most Australians would abhor."

The truth, as demonstrated by the above comments, is that the pop growth zealots are very much into the abhorrent social engineering that some of them are so critical of. Critics of Australian Government policy pursuing high population growth are essentially laissez-faire. Now how much more free market and capitalist can you be than that?

dempografix,
An ageing population will not necessarily create extra costs overall.

The young can cost just as much as the old, as they have to be educated and then housing found.

So the costs of an aging population will be offset by reduced costs if less children are born.

What is alarming is the deteriorating health of children, which means increased costs for the young and old.

A smaller population also means that more young people have to be highly educated.

This is not likely in the future with poor health in the younger generation, an expected increase (and not decrease) in the numbers of disadvantaged children, and the general decline of education systems.

The population has to reduce in numbers for sustainable living, but there are a range of other social problems to also overcome, that are unfortunately not being properly addressed, often because of political reasons.