<"how far are you prepared to let your government rule your life, and make laws about what you can and cannot do?">

Um, remember these words, do you Pericles?

"We will decide who comes to this country..."

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2001/s422692.htm

So how is letting people determine their own population an act of government control, and conducting a mass immigration program an act of government non-involvement? A greater distortion I have not heard.

Um, what, Fester?

>>...how is letting people determine their own population an act of government control, and conducting a mass immigration program an act of government non-involvement?<<

They both involve government decisions, surely?

"Letting people determine their own population" - I presume you mean numerically, in the first instance - can become an act of government policy only when the country votes to be represented in that way. As I pointed out in my response to Ludwig, in order to institute population control...

>>...a bunch of electable politicians need to present themselves to the Australian people, and declare their "Ludwig" policies: limits to procreation, and limits to immigration<<

Similarly, if and when we give a government a mandate to allow "mass immigration", that is what will happen.

However, I suspect that we will continue our "dribs and drabs" approach to immigration on the one hand, and refrain from mandating mass sterilization on the other.

<They both involve government decisions, surely?>

Since when does the decision to have a child involve consulting a polly? That's nuts. But even as government policy, one decision entails huge infrastructure and administration costs, and the other decision merely entails inaction. You have similar situations with other policy, notably conscription.

Qld provides a clear example of the folly of using high population growth as an economic driver. Yes, it gave a big boost for a few years, but then all the costs began to mount. Services declined, taxes rose, infrastructure crumbled and debts soared. Ultimately these effects curtail the population growth, which in turn hits the industry predicated on population growth. It is a set of circumstances common to any place pursuing such policy.

Alternatively, you have places like Thailand and Kerala, which have seen dramatic improvements in circumstances by offering their people the option of family planning. Where is the coercion and calamity in those places?

<< You keep asking the same question, Ludwig. >>

Ay?? Pericles, for starters, we have scant little dialogue these days compared to what we used to have a few years back on this forum. I’ve hardly asked you anything in the last couple of years. Secondly, if I’d asked you before and you’d given me a straight answer, I wouldn’t need to ask you again!

And erm…. you’ve completely avoided giving straight answers this time (?again). So no doubt I’ll need to ask them again somewhere down the line.

So this is your bottom line:

<< how far are you prepared to let your government rule your life, and make laws about what you can and cannot do?" >>

Well, that IS very telling.

Surely our future as a nation and the quality of life of us all therein and the quality of our environment, are a WHOLE lot more important than the extent to which governments might impinge upon our personal freedoms.

Obviously, as we become further out of whack with our life-support systems, the more strongly governments are going to have to intervene to get us onto the right track towards an ongoing demand and supply-capability balance.

Crikey, if you are that concerned about increasing government intervention, then you should be on our side!! You should be lobbying for the constantly increasing demand on our resource base and pressure on our environment to cease forthwith!

When we have a balance between demand and ongoing renewable supply capability with big safety margins to get us through tough times, then we’ll have a whole lot of personal freedom with minimised government intervention, compared to what we would have if we overload our resource base and degrade our environment and FORCE governments to take a much stronger regulatory approach to all sorts of things.

Surely you can see this Pericles. So how about it? Just admit that Popnperish and John Coulter and old Ludwig are RIGHT….. and come join us in the fight for a healthy future!!

Get real, Ludwig

>>And erm…. you’ve completely avoided giving straight answers this time (?again).<<

As ever, your question was a rework of "when did you stop beating the wife"

>>...what do you want to see – continuous growth of the scale we have now in Australia for ever more, for the next 20 years and then stabilisation, a slower growth rate ongoingly, or what??<<

Since you did tack "or what" on the end, I guess you kinda sorta earned a fuller response.

But not really. Because unlike you, I have no specific ambitions for population growth in Australia. I do believe we have plenty of room to grow, but there is also a "limits to natural growth" equation that needs to be observed. That means, we can continue growing, so long as that growth stays within our capability as a country to absorb it, and maintain an overall satisfactory standard of living. The evidence of the last fifty years or so says that we are pretty good at this, since we a) support more people and b) are wealthier.

As I said, I think you are asking the wrong question, because you frame it in the light of your own campaign to control the population numbers. I don't see the problem that you see, so I don't consider population control to be an appropriate government task.

You pose another wife-beater. (You're good at this, I grant you).

>>Surely our future as a nation and the quality of life of us all therein and the quality of our environment, are a WHOLE lot more important than the extent to which governments might impinge upon our personal freedoms<<

The problem with this is of course that you pose the two sides as being mutually exclusive. According to you, either we have quality of life, OR we have personal freedom.

From my perspective, personal freedom is a major component of quality of life. And the only possible implementation of your policies is through a command-and-control structure that subjugates individual will to your particular interpretation of "the common good".

Ugly.

And unworkable.

Pericles, THANKYOU!

You’ve directly addressed my question! Wonderful!

Mind you, it started in paragraph 6! Really coulda done without the first 5 paras!

<< As ever, your question was a rework of "when did you stop beating the wife" >>

What's with this ugly wife-beating analogy stuff?? Please!

You wrote:

<< …there is also a "limits to natural growth" equation that needs to be observed. That means, we can continue growing, so long as that growth stays within our capability as a country to absorb it, and maintain an overall satisfactory standard of living. >>

OK. Now I can see that there is actually some common ground between us.

<< The evidence of the last fifty years or so says that we are pretty good at this, since we a) support more people and b) are wealthier. >>

Yeah but what about the copious evidence that it cannot continue? What about the sensibility of erring on the side of caution if we are not sure whether this country can support a growing population?

continued