Ahh Pericles, you accuse me of black and white polarised thinking, which you know is a totally spurious accusation, and yet you repeatedly demonstrate strongly polarised thinking.

Latest example:

<< Equally bizarre is Matt Moran's koala defence. Putting the survival of animal species ahead of the well-being of humans, verges on self-hatred in my book. >>

This is a mind-blowingly silly comment. Obviously the desire is for a balance between human habitation and healthy koalas living in a secure healthy habitat. Anyone could see this, except you apparently!

<< And it seems that we are still operating in imagination-land, Ludwig. >>

And this statement comes from someone who insists that all the big issues concerned with quality of life and environment that are in any way related to population growth exist only in Ludwig’s head!!( :>/

Talk about operating in imaginary loopy la la land!!

Pericles, you’ve gone right off the rails here.

And still, after repeated requests, you haven’t offered ANYTHING by way of possible advantages to us continuing with very high immigration.

This makes up 50% of the whole discussion, or should do. And yet you just won’t go there. You're about knocking the stuffing out of those who desire population stabilisation in the near future, and just completely not about justifying the other point of view.

You would have jumped at the opportunity to list a bunch of advantages to your beloved high population growth if you could have. It is now patently obvious that you simply can’t.

<< As an advocate of expanding government control over our lives (for our own good, of course), you should take that calculation to heart. >>

You’ve got it arse about face again!

Stable population with a healthy resource base and environment = low level of government control.

Large and continuously growing population = ever more government intervention.

That is very clear.

So this actually makes you an advocate for expanding government control over our lives. And very strongly so. You really should take that to heart and have a good hard think about it.

Game over I reckon.

It is clear that we live on entirely different planets, Ludwig. Also, you make a point of misinterpreting everything, which makes discussion doubly difficult.

>>Obviously the desire is for a balance between human habitation and healthy koalas living in a secure healthy habitat.<<

My observation concerned choice, not desire. Go read it again.

>>And still, after repeated requests, you haven’t offered ANYTHING by way of possible advantages to us continuing with very high immigration.<<

How many times do I have to explain, that the term "very high immigration" is yours alone. If we did have "very high immigration", it is quite possible that I would be assessing the situation differently. As it is, there is no need for me to justify anything at all - I'm not the one advocating immediate population control.

>>Stable population with a healthy resource base and environment = low level of government control.<<

That absolutely does not follow, outside your imagination.

Which brings me to Divergence's offering:

>>Here is a link to the 2011 State of the Environment Report for Australia<<

I couldn't see a great deal in that report to worry about, from a population point of view. Since it was written entirely by and for the Public Service, that in itself is quite remarkable.

And this is purely laughable.

>>If a stable population is so bad economically, then why have countries such as Switzerland, Finland, and Japan, with very little or no population growth been performing so well?<<

Switzerland has the same population as NSW, and a highly similar GDP. NSW however was not the repository for Nazi war lootings, does not have a skilled manufacturing sector. Furthermore, Switzerland exports five times as much as we do. In the face of such differences, population growth is an irrelevancy.

Finland has the same population as Victoria, but only two-thirds its per-capita GDP. Maybe if they had more people...?

Japan has public debt 230% of GDP. Substituting debt for a lack of workers is not a sustainable strategy, I suspect.

The main problem we have is poor resource management, not over-population.

Pericles writes:
"The main problem we have is poor resource management, not over-population."

And this is undoubtedly going to improve as our net immigration increases to over 232,000 per year by 2016 - there's so much incentive to do so.

Re: Koalas, it's not just Koalas - but it is symbolic that we are excluding them from all but public zoos, there are many other species which we are increasingly endangering.

If our concerns are humanitarian, then the notion of using ever increasing levels of immigration to address long-term humanitarian concerns is fruitless. But further, our immigration program is not really helping the most needy so you're not really going to win any ground on that one. Instead, we would be better off working in partnership with the source countries which improves conditions in these countries.

But perhaps you have an escape route planned, so aren't particularly concerned when Australia becomes 3rd world.

Pericles,

It is true that no other country is exactly comparable to ours or completely free from problems, but the fact remains that there are countries that have very low population growth and stable age structures, but are still performing well economically (according to the World Economic Forum) and providing very good standards of living to their people (according to the UN Human Development Index (HDI)). So population growth isn't a necessary condition for human well-being.

On the other hand, the US has had high population growth, but also massive social inequality, a severe poverty problem, and stagnant real wages for the bulk of the population, while nearly all the gains from economic growth are siphoned up to the top. Just look at those graphs from the State of Working America report.

As in the US, the 2006 Productivity Report found that most of the Australian population loses out economically from high immigration because it depresses wages and the (very small) per capita benefits mostly go to the owners of capital and the migrants themselves. This is in agreement with studies from around the world, and you haven't refuted it.

It is also true that there are environmental problems that are not related to population - it only took one idiot to introduce the rabbit, but more people make most environmental problems worse. See the Long-Term Physical Implications of Immigration report that I linked to earlier. More people increase the demand for water, for example, both directly and, more importantly, for the agriculture and industry that support them, leading to conflict between people and conflict over water for people and water for the environment. We now have permanent water restrictions in our cities. During the last drought, there was a fleet of white government cars cruising the neighbourhoods and trying to catch out some poor devil washing his car or some confused old lady watering her garden on the wrong day. The costs have been enormous. See

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-04-14/water-restrictions-cost-1b-per-year-report/2617846

You criticise Arjay for pontificating on finance, which he doesn't understand, but you are doing the exact same thing on environmental issues.

There is not a person here who has made application to build housing, let alone affordable homes for others, so who cares here, for these posts only reflect their owner values.

Dallas wrote: "There is not a person here who has made application to build housing, let alone affordable homes for others, so who cares here, for these posts only reflect their owner values."

Dallas, why do you believe that's the case? The purpose of population stabilisation is to reduce misery. You cannot solve the problems caused by rapid population growth with the wave of a wand - you certainly can't solve them with even quicker population growth. Do you understand that Liberal/Labor set population growth targets in order to achieve GDP growth? It has nothing to do with looking after the homeless, the unemployed etc it's purely to serve the short-term profit goals of foreign-owned multinationals.

As it stands some 220 million women globally who would like access to family planning, contraception and education have no access and as such, 100s of thousands will have children at very young ages, 100s of thousands will die preventable deaths - the list goes on. Wouldn't it be better to spend more on this than the selfish ideology that just wants to boost population growth so they can make more money?