There is little doubt that Australia can accommodate many, many more people and will need to. The problem is that any growth needs to be managed and managed well. Too often we have seen extraordinary growth in many areas of SE Queensland without any thought from local or state governments about servicing these areas. Already dilapidated roads worsen from increased usage. Police, medical and paramedical services struggle to keep up. There is little or no public transport and many services are still only available in Brisbane forcing the population onto already overcrowded roads. And I am sure that many other areas of Australia are suffering similarly.

Likewise immigration must be managed. There is little point in allowing immigration for the sake of it. Those wishing to live here must do so in harmony and be able to contribute to the nation in a productive way.

Until there is a genuine move from our governments to plan for, and manage, population increases Australians will always be fearful of ever increasing numbers in our country.

Ross, you are very good at putting up incredibly one-sided articles and then terribly bad at coming back and debating them and defending your views. You seem to just have a closed mind on the issue: promote growth at all costs and just ignore any questions asked about the veracity of such a position, as per your last article on OLO on 04/05/12.

Could you please spell out in simple terms what you think is the great advantage to a population of 50+ million for Australia. How could it be of such an enormous advantage to us as to render the huge downsides (some of which you amazingly do actually mention) insignificant or worth enduring?

All you’ve said by way of reasons is one brief statement; < ….in the interests of economic security and (according to some) military security also >

It is quite extraordinary that you don’t seem to have a well-developed reason or any reason really for advocating this growth….. which leads one to think that the real reason is vested-interest profit-generation for your beloved real-estate industry!

< Whether we aim to become a nation of 35 million or 50 million or if we ultimately agree that despite the consequences that are clearly understood we would collectively prefer to remain a small nation of less than 30 million, it’s a discussion we need to be having. >

Yes, it is a discussion of great importance. So please come back and discuss it!!

Simple arguments about space are meaningless. Yes, Australia has a lot of space - most of it arid. Contrary to what Ross asserts there are serious resource issues for Australians. It is true that we could support a much larger populaton but only at much lower standards of living (such as in Jakarta or Mexico City etc.) on a vegetarian diet and is that the future we want. Ludwig is correct - there is no good justification for moving to a larger population. Even the bogeyman of the aging demographic ignores the longer term history of Australia. We are currently at an all time low of dependency (ie. many people in workforce relative to non-working dependents) but we have seen much higher rates of dependency in the past and we are simply moving back towards the middle ground.

However, Ross' essay is useful in the sense that it will provide a template that can be used in an essay dissecting his arguments and showing them to be largely unfounded. In the meantime, read "Can we Feed a Big Australia?" (for some real data):

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10405

You have made a number of comments in your article which are misleading to say the least. Los Angeles does have the numbers you describe but you don’t say that it is able to survive only at the expense of much of the dry country around it whose few waterways have been dammed and diverted to LA.
Mexico City obtains its drinking water from its own ground water caused continuing subsidence. Djakarta has a standard of living at an unacceptable low level compared to Australia.

There are some figures you have not included. Every day every Australian produces 2-3 litres of urine and 500 – 1000 grams of faeces. We have not yet accepted the potability of tertiary or quaternary processed sewage and in many cases we export it to the ocean.

The average Australian needs to drink 2 – 4 litres of water per day and uses much more water in the daily process of living. This water has to come from somewhere. Dams are an ecological nightmare as well as suffering from the dilemma that the best places for an engineer to build a dam are not the best places to fill a dam: take Warragamba as an example.

We cannot forget that we live on the driest continent on Earth, other than Antarctica. Nor can we forget that there is a mountain range changing climates and rainfall patterns close to the eastern coast of the country. Desalination is both an economic and ecological nightmare for the narrow coastal fringe which is most liveable.

I would say that Australia is already full: please don’t advocate trying to squeeze more in.

“Whether we aim to become a nation of 35 million or 50 million or if we ultimately agree that despite the consequences that are clearly understood we would collectively prefer to remain a small nation of less than 30 million, it’s a discussion we need to be having. Pretending the issue isn’t there won’t do anyone any good.” - according to Ross Elliott.
He occupies one or the other of just two possible positions: deliberately disingenuous; or unconscionably ignorant on the issue he is writing about.
In 1992 The then Bureau of Immigration Research published (but quiet and discreetly) Immigration and State Budgets (by Russell Mathews, professor of accounting and economics among the many titles he acquired), on the costs of immigration to federal and state budgets.
In 1994 the Federal Government held the very public ”Jones Inquiry” into Australia’s population and carrying capacity. The scientist assisting the inquiry (Doug Cocks) produced a seminal book, People Policy, in 1996. It was independent of the inquiry, and remains as relevant today as it was then.
October 2002, and the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs very reluctantly released to the public Future Dilemmas - Options to 2050 for Australia’s population, technology, resources and environment.
In 2008 the CSIRO published an examination of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth scenarios, and compared them to humanity’s progress since then.
None of the above gave any indication of progress from a continuing expansion of population, but many probabilities of serious consequences from it. Ross Elliott, having superior expertise, wants them to do it again - and keep doing it until they get it right.

Golly Ross, another ‘Straw man’ argument.

The entire rational behind your comments has the breaking strain of a warm Mars bar.

You state:
“The clock is ticking for Australia’s ageing population and even the Federal Government’s own ‘Tax Reform Roadmap’ released with the May budget warned that: “The proportion of working age people is projected to fall markedly over the coming decades. Today there are about 4.8 people of traditional working age for every person aged 65 and over. This is expected to fall to around 4 people within the next 10 years and to around 2.7 people by 2050.”

“We know that our ageing population will struggle to be supported by a diminished workforce in that time. We know we already lack sufficient critical mass to sustain a variety of industries which are too regularly yielding to the weight of global competition, much of which is based on numerical strength. Yet we consistently refuse to confront the question of a larger population and what it would take to get there, along with the consequences of failing to do so.”

Sorry but the 9% super we currently receive and the recent increases proposed will negate any argument for a bigger Australia based on your rational, young people currently working and those entering the work-force will support their own retirement under this super scheme, that is of course, until you continue to ignore the fact that our so-call ‘growth economy’ is based on a fractional reserve banking system, limited only by our finite planet.

Perhaps you should consider the limits to population in Australia given our lands finite ecological function and the false assumption that we can have continued growth without degrading our children and their children’s futures.

Like all ponzi scheme’s your growth mantra, growing population myth will not see the light of day, per capita income is dropping globally, do some serious research and stop spruiking your biased solutions to predicaments that are unsolvable in your ‘business as usual’ model.

Upton Sinclair is purported to have said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Ludwig
No one ever said the population growth was required, or necessary. All Ross' articles does is use a few, simple examples to show that Aus can still sustain a vast increase in population, which it can. And we will get those extra numbers, whether we like it or not, so we should start planning now.

michael_in_adelaide
Again I am cast in the role of bursting your green resources-are-limited bubble. Standards of living are at best only weakly related to local resource constraints, population density or environment. Consider Finland, for example, the Fins are snowed-in and in darkness almost all day for six months a year but their standard of living is the highest in europe. Now contrast that with the economic issues in resource-rich African countries. Leave it with you. If I exasparate you with reality that cannot be helped.

Brian of Buderim
Waste treatment and drinking water would certainly be an issue, so that means we need to plan and perhaps we would have a need for those now unnecessary desalinsation plants which misleading forecasts pushed most states into building. Its not enough to complain the task will be difficult. Its going to happen, so that means we have to plan to avoid would could be unpleasent consequences. Incidentally, where did you get the idea that a lot of waste water is piped out to the ocean? Aren't you confusing bathroom waste with storm water which is just dumped in the ocean.

colinsett/geoff-of-perth - sorry, can't get to you guys, but most of your complaints are answered above..

There have been some good comments on the environment and resource issues. It is worth pointing out that in 1994, the Australian Academy of Sciences recommended a population of 23 million as the safe upper limit, and they haven't revised this since.

http://www.science.org.au/events/sats/sats1994/Population2040-section8.pdf

If population growth is so essential for our economy, Ross Elliott needs to explain why countries with much smaller populations than ours and countries with miniscule population growth or even declining populations can outperform us in terms of economic competitiveness, as well as ranking high on the UN Human Development Index (a measure of living standards and quality of life).

Germany (population growth -0.2%) and Japan (-0.077%) are in the top 10 on the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index. This list also includes other low population growth countries: Switzerland (number 1, 0.20%), Sweden (0.17%), Finland (0.065%), and Denmark (0.24%). All of these countries also rank high on the UN Human Development Index, where Germany and Sweden are 9 and 10, Switzerland is 11, and Japan is 12. Norway (population growth 0.33%) is number 1.

These countries would also already have stable age structures and are somehow managing to cope. As others have pointed out, trying to use immigration to deal with population aging is a Ponzi scheme. Migrants grow old too, just like everyone else, and they cannot be deported when they have outlived their value to the economy. The only solution when they also need pensions and health care would be more and more migrants, world without end.

Curmudgeon,

You are trying to paint this vast increase in numbers as inevitable, but it would be quite possible to stabilise the population with perhaps one to two additional million people (from demographic momentum, as the fertility rate is slighly below replacement level and has been since 1976). Big increases would be entirely due to government imposed mass migration. Last I heard, we can vote out politicians in Australia.

While we could certainly support more people at a lower standard of living, at least in the medium term, there is no upside to population growth for ordinary people and therefore no reason to refrain from opposing it. This excerpt is from p. 154 of the 2006 Productivity Commission Report, where they modelled the effects of doubling skilled migration. This would be the best possible case for population growth, as the migrants have already been raised, educated, and trained at someone else's expense.

"Most of the economic benefits associated with an increase in skilled migration accrues to the immigrants themselves. For existing residents, capital owners receive additional income, with owners of capital in those sectors experiencing the largest output gains enjoying the largest gains in capital income. On the other hand, the real average annual incomes of existing resident workers grows more slowly than in the base-case, as additional immigrants place downward pressure on real wages."

This is consistent with the findings of other reports around the world, such as the 1997 Academy of Sciences report in the US and the 2008 House of Lords report in the UK. Prof Robert Rowthorn (Economics, Cambridge) writes in the (London) Telegraph 5/7/06:

"As an academic economist, I have examined many serious studies that have analysed the economic effects of immigration. There is no evidence from any of them that large-scale immigration generates large-scale economic benefits for the existing population as a whole. On the contrary, all the research suggests that the benefits are either close to zero, or negative."

This is a good discussion to have, and given the inevitability of future growth it is important to identify limiting factors/consequences.

However one of my pet peeves is the "finite planet/resources" argument. The reason this gives me the sh/ts is that people that argue this must be totally ignorant that almost all the resources we use are derived from outside the earth (the sun), as well as seem unaware of our ability to travel outside of earth. Please just get over it!

If you want to worry about sun running out of fuel the go ahead. Let see how much fear mongering you can cause with that one! You would then need to prove that the number of suns is limited. Good luck.

Lack of food production is a complete furphy. Just the old Beaudesert shire has enough unused high value farmland to feed South East Queensland, if it was seriously exploited, in the way Asian framing would use it.

For all of you, including me, who want the boat people, & other so called refugees, stopped, you'd better hang on tight. The ride is about to get wild. We may be damned sorry we let John Howard take our guns off us.

The stuff is about to hit the fan in Europe, big time. The flood of refugees coming out of Mediterranean Europe is going to make anything we've seen recently, or post WW11 look tame. This time, with so many of them being kin to the "new Australians" we got in the 40s to 60s, there will be massive pressure to take these in.

Can we afford it, of course not, unless we go back to the inexpensive model of the 50/60s. Public funded housing for all will be impossible, as it really is now. Those migrant hostels will have to be used as they were then. It will have to be, come on in folks, but you'll have to make your own way.

Will we do it, of course we will. When we do, we had better get a few hundred thousand agrarian Asians, to make our land as productive as only they, & their hard work can.

That old curse, "may you live in interesting times", is about to be the motto of the 21St century.

The poor bloke who wrote this article probably wonders what the heck is going on when the anti-people lobby start throwing around population figures of 50 or 60 or 80 million for OZ. He has made the mistake of being a business man simply expressing an idea.

The anti-people lobby adopt the odd position that 34 million in 2050 is too many - but it was always goign to be 34 million as far back as the late 90s if we include international students as part of the pop.

They should have a look at the National Farmers Fed website and checkout just how much food we produce. Heaps - because we have farmers who know what their doing, rather than bearded gnomes, stroking their beards and pontificating on the end of the world.

Divergence
You may even have a point when you say that population can be controlled by reducing immigration numbers (I am mostly indifferent to whether we have a large population or not), but the trouble is I cannot see how it will happen. Immigration quotas (now around 180,000 a year) seem to increase no matter who is in power, and even when immigration is a sensitive topic in marginal electorates. Better to plan for the worst and then change those plans when, and if, quotas change. But its not a defence to say that its too difficult to have these extra people, or that there is some sort of innate limit. there isn't.

As for the reduced standards of living quote in the PC report, just in case you weren't aware the commission was probaly not talking about reductions on present standards of living, but reductions in future increases.. that is we'll still be richer on average, but not as rich as we otherwise would have been. I would quibble with that reasoning but I suppose there must be some effect from having new people come in all the time.. it would reduce the per-capita rate of growth, perhaps slightly (which could add up to a large difference over decades).. However, I should look at the report..

Cheryl
the ratio of food exported to food imported in dollar values is something like 6 to 1 (without looking at the figures), but I recall reading a DFAT report that points that we export mainly unprocessed, unpackaged foods and import stuff that is processed and packaged.. Most of the dollar value of the imports is in the packaging, so the actual food value of the import/export ratio is much, much higher..

Shouldn't that read Populate & perish ? For those who think Australia can easily cope with such huge numbers may I suggest you do a trial run of about ten years living in some overpopulated country before advocating such growth here.
By some of these countries' standards Australia could handle probably 100 million. If that's what you want.
I wonder why these so-called assylum seekers don't try to settle in new Guinea which is a far more fertile country.
What no hand outs there ? Naw, better go to Aussie.

That article is a load of hogwash. Hypothetically, emissions would increse with an increase in population cancelling out any effect the carbon tax might have.

As for immigration, by increasing the population in this way you are bringing the third worlds problems to Australia.

The government likes to create (perceived) problems which it can then solve (with taxes) and create another problem for them to "solve" in the process (more taxes).

Government should stop giving out handouts to have babies which in turn would lower emissions negating the need for a carbon tax (what problem?), saving us all a lot of money and simplifying the system, but they like more revenue,complexity and to be seen to be doing something.

I find the comments on these forums are more rational than the articles.

The thing that infuriates me about pro immigration and pro refugee bleeding hearts is that they will NEVER let the immigrants live next to THEM. They consider themselves the elites of the AUstralian populace who are the boss of US. The deem us too stupid to realise that all their cherished immigrants effectively OWE Australian communities $300,000 for every man woman and child in infrastructure overheads as soon as they arrive. They laugh as they pass these overhead costs onto poorer communities and live along with their beloved Malcolm Fraser in total isolation from the immigrant induced gridlock and melee whilst being the sole beneficiaries of any positives that the immigrants bring to Australia.

This entire immigration/big population con job will end up in revolution and civil strife because the injustice, this approaching new FEUDALISM, is so INTENSE.

Apart from the nasty infrastructure pinch, the other killer from immigration is that politicians no longer depend on delivering promises to voters. All they have to do is please a few imams or the greek or italian familias and their whole communities vote in unison. Say goodbye to DEMOCRACY and hello to FEUDAL GOVERNMENT and Feudal Budgets.

This is why, despite all the serious problems with islamic and other anti democratic communities, Western goverments are so devoted to them because their gerrymandering capacity in critical suburbs in elections is a BIG winner.

In summary, immigration and big Australia are fraud concepts and WE who consider ourselves a free people must be be vigilant against the likes of this author, bleeding heart young Liberal smartarses and people like Malcolm Fraser who are entirely too selfish and too big for their breeches in telling US 'children' that we have to pay for their 'parental wisdom'and guidance.

In a phrase -Check the bastards!

Justifying "big Australia" on economic grounds is futile and shallow. People are not static economic units, to be accumulated and lured here for a promise of prosperity when our State economies are crumbling under the infrastructure costs. We are facing global challenges of peak oil, and just about "peak" everything. It's imagined the the planet is a infinite source for human convenience, and Nature will simply comply. Australia is about 96% desert, with limited water and arable land. Our politicians are hell bent on adding millions more people to Australia. Unless our food, water, environment, sustainable energy sources, and intact ecosystems are sustainable, any economic arguments are shallow and fatalistic. The economy is a system to support our lifestyles, a means to an end, not an end in itself - and even an end to us! An economic-growth capitalistic system will eventually clash with natural constraints to growth.

KAEP
Your post verges on incoherence, but what I think you're saying, in part, is that the incoming immigrant groups will vote in blocs; that Islamic groups will vote as directed by Imans and so on.. I don't know of any evidence that this has happened at all to date, but I'd be interested if you had any..

As for objecting to immigrants living next door, there is also no evidence of this, nor is anything an individual householder could do about it in our existing housing market. Bear in mind that refugees are a tiny part of the immigrant intake.. the bulk are skilled immigrants..

VivKay
No one is justifying a big Australia. What the article says is that its possible.. Whether its what the community wants or needs is another question.. As for your arguments about resource limits, the peak oil people have just been abusing me for claiming that I said there was a foreseeable limit to oil reserves. There isn't.

The Sahara Desert has a lot of room but it only supports two million people. Why? Lack of critical natural resources like water. The same can be said for much of Australia - it is too arid to support a large population. Just drive from Port Augusta to Perth and you get the picture.

Curmudgeon, on the oil question, you're quite right to a point - there's a lot of unconventional oil globally that we could exploit now that we have passed the peak of conventional oil. But the cost will be devastation of the planet. The atmosphere cannot absorb the emissions from burning another five trillion barrels of oil nor can we run the risk of more Deepwater Horizon-type disasters. Natural gas might smoothe the way for us here as we move to a renewable energy society, but it can only be temporary.

We are indeed reaching "peak everything" with the exception of solar energy. There's no way we can feed 10 billion people sustainably so we had better start thinking of stabilising and reducing our numbers and that includes Australia. By all means, let us take in the people from the Pacific inundated by rising seas, but there's no way we accommodate all the people that will be displaced by a sea-level rise of 1.1 metres by century's end. We're in for a rough ride everywhere because of climate change and energy constraints. The last thing we need are millions more people here merely to satisfy the vested interests of the real estate and other business communities.

"The thing that infuriates me about pro immigration and pro refugee bleeding hearts is that they will NEVER let the immigrants live next to THEM."

Not so sure about that KAEP. In Mt Barker the burghers of this leafy green enclave in the Adelaide Hills blamed the fact that the town was under resources (shops mainly) on new arrivals. They thought that magically, new boutiques and cafe latte stores would suddenly spring up out of the ground. When they didn't, they blamed the problems on alleged rising population.

A classic NIMBY response. In the detention camp in Inverbrackie, just down the road, some of the locals were worried the weird Muslim families would eat all of their food and lower the property prices. Neither happened. The Muslim women now shop at the local supermarket.

Neither happened.
Cheryl,
don't get too impatient, it won't happen overnight but it will happen.

ITS EASY!

We all have up to 8 proximal neighbours, 2 at the sides and 3 back and front.

Unless 4 of those neighbours are ethnicities who don't speak english in the home other than your own then as far as having a say on more immigration and a BIG Australia you MUST by law, not have a say!

IOW people who do not speak english at home, with few or no neighbours other than their own ethnicity obviously have a vested interest in further immigration and in law that contstitutes a conflict of interest that could be proven in a court to render such votes, whether they be formal or informal , unconstitutional.

Such a law would put an end to the elitist minority highjacking of the immigration debate that is destroying the social fabric of this nation for minority vested interests above the common good of communities where most of the immigrants and infrastructure shortages accumulate.

I am english speaking, I have 2 greeks, 3 chinese, 1 croation, 1 macedonian and 1 serbian all of whom don't speak english at home.

Thus I have no vested interest other than the GOOD of this nation in voting for an end to immigration unless each migrant pays their $300,000 infrastructure levy up front before migrating.

Most of the people posting here are rotten to the core in terms of constitutional law.

That's it KAEP, isn't it, the more people (be they immigrants or native-born); the greater the amount of infrastructure required. There's no such thing as a free lunch, as Malcolm Fraser used to say. Large immigration quotas mean we have capital widening (lots of houses that aren't productive in their own right) rather than capital deepening (technology etc) which might actually help the economy. But those of us fighting for population stabilisation/reduction are primarily concerned about the environment and the loss of habitat, pollutants etc that come with bigger populations. We're also concerned about women being coerced into having too many babies,too early, which is a function of the inequality of women in many societies. Population activists want to help women achieve equality and control over their own bodies through universal access to reproductive health services, including contraception, and through equality in education. But I suspect that Cheryl is not interested in any of that - too busy making libellous comments and false assumptions that contribute nothing to this particular debate.

Australia 2012, population ~23 million, median age ~37.5 yrs.

Oh woe be upon us! Our ageing population!

Median ages: Germany 43.7, Finland 41.6, Sweden, 41.7, Netherlands 40.8, Denmark 40.8 etc.

Uganda 15, Ethiopia 16.8, Somalia 17.6 etc.

Have a look at GDP per capita for these countries. An ageing population correlates with wealth not poverty.

Question for growthers; how many immigrants in the 20-30 yr age group will we need per annum to reduce our median age to 37 yrs by 2020 and how will you prevent them from growing old?

A pro-immigration stance is almost invariably an indicator of a spiv with some sort of vested interest in the immigration Ponzi scheme.

Sometimes they try to dress up their interest as humanitarian but that quickly falls away when you suggest replacing economic immigration with humanitarian immigration.

Their economic arguments for immigration also fizzle out with a cursory examination.

Another author writing on population that does not understand that
population is set by the availability of cheap energy.

Energy is getting more expensive so population will fall.
That is all there is to it.

Ross you are conveniently ignoring the fact that Indonesia is a tropical country and if you were remotely scientifically literate you would undertstand that the tropical zone has far higher reliable rainfall and ecological productivity than the souther and nortner laitudes.

This means that tropical countries can, on average, produce more food and sustain larger populations.

Complicating this is Australias highly variable cyclic climatic patterns, impoverished soil, periodic droughts and periodic floods.

All this limits our ability to produce food over the long term. So we might be able to sustain a much larger population in the good years but then when the bad years come many of those hypothetical Australians would be in trouble when it comes to access to good cheap food.

No thanks Ross!

If you admire Indonesia so much then why don't you renounce your Australian citizenship and go an become an Indonesian citizen.

And good ridance to you are your opinions!

Jeeesus Ross you must be thick!

How the hell else do you think it is possible to pack the population of Australia into an area the size of Jakarta, other than through the formation of islands of wealth in a sea of slums!

If you pack that many people together and it is unavoidable that the number who suffer as a resxult exceeds the number who benefit.

It is the very nature of capitalism!

Now Boysley is not listening;
Population is set by energy, whether it be the size of your muscles,
the strength of your oxen or draught horse, or indeed the power of
your steam engine or your tractor.

The cost and availability of energy will determine what appliances you use to produce food.
Rainfall increases or decreases the end result by a small amount but
ultimately it does not have the final say on how much food you produce.

In Australia with a fixed and later decreasing supply of energy we
will have a falling population.
This is the way it is and there is no escaping it, all else is waffle.
Bringing more people into the country will just force us into a crunch
sooner that it would otherwise occur.

The only escape from this regime will be unlimited energy from hot
rocks, cold fusion or some such magic bullet or magic pudding.

Bazz I am painfully aware of all that your are saying. In fact I currently reading "The Coming Famine" which is all about this oil/energy/food issue.

But in reference to this:

"Bringing more people into the country will just force us into a crunch sooner that it would otherwise occur."

I would rather run the likes Ross out of this country than have them force the above on us prematurely and to a worse degree than would otherwise be the case.

Those like Ross who can't see or wont see the bleeding obvious, due to a combination of ecological/scientific illiteracy and economic ideology, are rapidly becoming a preeminent danger to western civilisation.

We allow them to continue having major influence on our government and society in general at our peril.

However I am heartened that the tables have well and truly turned on them. A few years ago opinion pieces like Ross's were virtually unchallenged if anything was even written explicitly about this in the first place.

But now it seems every time one of his kind posts an opinion piece like this they are pumelled with varying degrees of redicule with only very occasional supportive comments.

And they don't like it one bit! Hence they resort to the usual hysterical slurs of racism, anti-people, facists, selfish, blah blah blah.

It is rather amusing watching them squirm with their slurs actually.

population.org.au/petition

All those concerned please sign this petition.

“We the undersigned are concerned at the rate of population growth in Australia. In this, we join the 72% of the Australians surveyed in the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, who agreed that Australia does not need more people. We request that the Federal Government take all necessary steps to stabilise the population at close to the current level.”

Boylesy
You and otherscan find that petition at http://www.population.org.au/petition

Just signed it.