Ham, you wrote:

<< The entire population of Australia has had it with the constant increase in growth-strangling green & red tape… >>

Really??

It would appear that you desperately wish we had open-slather growth, and that anything that stands in the way of it must be entirely bad and damn stupid government intervention! You are wont to assert gross untruths in order to convince yourself of it, and perhaps show your real-estate buddies that you are a no-nonsense (read; no-sense) advocate of ever more of everything at a very rapid rate forever regardless of the consequences!

<< Yes, governments will have to furnish roads, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure; but on balance it's easier to do so with growth than without it. >>

Now how on earth do you figure that?

Our economy has been growing like the clappers for decades. We would be battling to have had a higher economic growth rate over the last say twenty years … and we STILL can’t keep up a reasonable standard of basic infrastructure and services, let alone steadily improve them!!

It would be a WHOLE lot easier to do it without population growth or with a much lower rate of pop growth.

<< Look at Tasmania…>>

Yes, look at it! Looks pretty good to me. The average quality of life there is not any worse than for the rest of the country. Doesn’t have the population pressure problems that SEQ or Sydney or Perth have!

BTW, what happened to you on the recent ‘An Olympic Dream’ thread? We were just getting into a meaningful debate when you bombed out. It seems that you couldn’t explain your way out of your very confused comments about sustainability: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13447#232892

...I go with you on that Z and R;

what amazes me is the insistence of people to persecute themselves by congregating in areas of the slum base such as the Gold Coast. If people were to act on instinct, allowing the deeper desires for peace to dominate their superficial desires for wealth and stature, the more would have the courage to act in accord, such as you did.

Is growth making a comeback? Not necessarily, as a commodity exporter, our growth is tied to other economies like China. We saw some of this hubris, when we experienced the first mining boom and a Howard Govt crowing about unprecedented economic growth.
However, I don't believe Howard was in any way responsible for the growth in the emerging economies. While the author makes some interesting points; there's already billions in approved development on the book!
I can't see can do Campbell taking very much credit for the very positive economic climate he inherited.
Bligh was rejected by former true believers because she privatised; and or, defied the will of the people. She was also rejected because she came across, except at election time, as an extremely arrogant recalcitrant autocrat.
Anybody else except a virtual tyrant, would have taken her medicine, and stayed on helping to rebuild the party and its prospects, the way LNP founder Lawrence Springborg did. The real problem for Labour is, they're chock full with former staffers, union officials and uni grads, few of who have any relevant business experience, and are far too dependant on empire building bureaucrats? Hence the back-flips and about-faces, which always seem to cost the taxpayer additional billions? Rhrosty.

Only the growth of ignorance is on the rise again. Talk about progressive regress.
Thanks to Education & PC.

As a coalition/LNP voter growth is not one of my reasons for voting for them nor do I think that the coalitions more likely to be promoting growth than Labor.

I support the coalition/LNP because on balance they seem a little less addicted to some of my pet hates
- opposite day, when pretty much everything you say means the opposite
- constantly assuming that workers can afford to pay even more to support some cause that the party wants more money for
- large government
- gender discrimination
- large government debt with little of value to show for it

Subjective calls but no part of my voting intentions is around a love of even more development. If can-do starts to show to much of a passion for excessive development it may become a factor in my next vote but that won't be a positive for them.

R0bert

Quite a few of our now east flowing rivers used to flow west? When they last flowed west, Australia was a very different place, with a lot less desertification and coast to coat verdant forest. With every new record breaking flood event, billions of tons of suspended solids flow seaward to damage/destroy the natural marine habitat and all those that depend on it.
Can do Campbell could do worse than redirect some of these river flows, back into their original water courses. Many of these rivers have cut mile deep gorges! Those very gorges could be dammed, without increased evaporation outcomes or drowning productive land.
The fact that these same gorges are almost always sandstone; means, increasing fertility as vast areas absorb much of this water and then gradually release it back into the water course as future droughts bite, virtually drought and flood proofing much of Queensland.
Water is wealth and keeping it where it will do far less harm to the marine environment, but enhancing rural land/environment west of the great divide, will promote regional and rural development; and or, create a brand new import replacing export focused food bowl, much of which will support an increasingly hungry world?
Some of the New water can turn a few turbines, when diverted westward as controlled flows; and or, be injected into the great artesian basin; a finite resource, which stretches from northern Q'ld and into northern SA; and, could do with some topping up? Rhrosty