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.