Divergence
1. Not sure where I said the population would decrease with our NOM.
2. Agree with all your points. It amazes me that the majority of people do not know about our, and the worlds demographic momentum.

The main issue I see is that as our nation ages, anti-immigration will take hold and the likelyhood of doubling our NOM, to counter effect the declining natural growth is going to be a major political hurdle.

Still our peaking emigration is mostly ignored.

Dempografix,

For point 1, see your first comment on this thread.

If we are reasonably clever at picking the right time to turn things around, stabilising the population won't require big numbers. Just make it a bit easier for people to have the babies that they say they want. We certainly don't need to double NOM.

If emigration goes up, then you increase (zero net) immigration to match. I doubt if anyone would object if the migrants are selected to fit in easily and the goal is to maintain an optimum population for the benefit of ordinary people, not just to make the 1% richer at the expense of everyone else. See the links in my second comment here. In any case, why would there be a stampede for the exits by our own people if we keep Australia a good place to live and bring up children?

All of this means that we need to worry about such things as oversupply of the labour market, urban crowding and congestion, skyrocketing housing costs, overstretched infrastructure and public services, etc. We also must squelch the impulse of our urban planners to force people into high density housing. According to demographer Joel Kotkin, this is a more effective method of reducing fertility rates than China's one child policy.

http://www.news.com.au/money/property/sydneys-dense-housing-a-threat-to-fertility-rates-warns-joel-kotkin/story-e6frfmd0-1226135327168#ixzz1ZVHq6pDO

Divergence
I think you and I are on the same page.
I am not for population growth for growths sake, however as the agequake rolls on, more people will see that our fiscal challenges are going to require many solutions.
1. Death tax of 25% for amnounts over $1m. ($2m estate would have a $250k tax)
2. CGT on the PPOR if sold under 10 years. (Exemptions for health, work, babies etc)
3. 0.5% land tax.
4. 88,000 (half Australian born) left permanently last year. This is a disaster as it costs our society approx $250k to get someone to the age of 25.

<The main issue I see is that as our nation ages, anti-immigration will take hold and the likelihood of doubling our NOM, to counter effect the declining natural growth is going to be a major political hurdle.>

And what thread on population growth would be complete without someone mentioning the aging catastrophe? What aging catastrophe? Oh yes, the doom that awaits Australia in two to three decades, as foretold by that infallible oracle, the "LONG RANGE ECONOMIC FORECAST", replete with wonderful assumptions such as no medical advances and dramatically increasing health costs. Yep, Australia will be infested with demented old fools as apposed to wonderful wealthy and stable nations of young folk like Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia and the Gaza Strip. Instead, we are doomed to suffer the demented old fogeydom of horrible places Like Monaco,Japan, Italy and Germany. Yuk!

But I can help things with a two question test for detecting dementia in the early stages:

Early dementia detection test (circle the correct answer)

Q1 Are economic forecasts generally accurate?

Yes No

(hint: the answer isn't "Yes")

Q2 Are long range economic forecasts generally accurate?

Yes No

(hint: see above)

http://www.smh.com.au/national/breakthrough-closer-for-alzheimers-treatment-after-vaccine-success-20111209-1om3c.html

Oh, and if you are in a bit of doubt you can throw in a third question:

Q3 Is immigration an effective means of maintaining an age profile?

Yes No

(hint: see previous post)

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefingPaper/document/179

<to maintain any substantial and enduring effect on the age-structure requires a constant increase in the number of immigrants, leading to a huge growth in population. The reason is that immigrants themselves age and then require still more immigrants to compensate for the larger number of older people. Keeping the Potential Support Ratio (PSR) to present levels would require a growing but variable number of immigrants peaking at 1.2 million per year before 2051 and up to 5 million per year later in the century. That would increase UK population to 119 million by 2051 and 303 million by the end of the century and so on to the stratosphere. A wide range of expert studies has come to a similar conclusion.>

Bottom line is that it certainly is not the time to be trying to cut our current below replacement fertility rate. We actually are trying to raise it to at least replacment levels.

Over the next 25 years our death rate approx doubles and our natural growth may drop to zero or negative.

I think we should consider a plan to get our population to stablise over this 25 year time frame and yes, only match immigrants against emigrants along that path.

Does this require a rethink on how to grow our GDP? Yes and it should be easy to achieve. 25 million sounds about right to me, but hey I am just a simple bot.