I’m not sure that there are any overseas successes that would work really well in the Australian situation and lead to large-scale improvements.

If there are and if they are they do get implemented, they will in all probability be compromised somewhat, or cancelled out or completely overwhelmed by continuous rapid population growth, before too long!

In other words; they won’t lead to significant improvements at all.

If we are to effectively address city congestion, we have simply got to deal with the ever-increasing pressure on our roads and other transport mechanisms at the same time that we improve public transport and all the other alternatives to driving to and from work in the city every day.

<< You will not stop the pressure of increasing population, Ludwig, no matter how you might want to. >>

There is no reason why we couldn’t have a stable population if the political will was there. And we wouldn’t need to tamper with our birthrate at all, other than to get rid of the despicable baby bonus.

And we could very easily greatly reduce the growth rate.

Now, if only Gillard would stick to her convictions to achieve sustainable Australia, and listen to her colleagues Bob Carr and Kelvin Thomson in this regard, we’d be on the right track to achieving a stable population… and effectively dealing with city congestion, as well as a host of other huge issues.

Scribbler, you should not resign yourself to never-ending population growth.

Scribbler,

Population growth, apart from a few hundred thousand total due to demographic momentum, is not inevitable, even if the population boosters would like you to believe that it is. A number of European and East Asian countries either have extremely low population growth (0.065% annually for Finland) or actually have declining populations, such as Japan and Germany. These countries are performing very well economically (according to the World Economic Forum) and rank high on the UN Human Development Index. They also have far fewer problems than we do with overstretched and crumbling infrastructure and public services. The real basket case countries are the ones with very high population growth.

According to the ABS, 57% of our population growth is due to net overseas migration, entirely a matter of government policy. 43% is due to natural increase, but the immigration adds mightily to that as well because migrants have children just like everyone else. Half the population of New South Wales has at least one parent born overseas. With zero net immigration (perhaps 80,000 migrants a year), we would most likely get a few hundred thousand more people due to demographic momentum, but the Australian fertility rate has been slightly below replacement level since 1976, so it wouldn't amount to much more than that.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3101.0.

Any of the changes you advocate would simply be swamped by more and more people, if we can't rein in our politicians. It is like Julia Gillard's silly carbon tax, the benefits of which have been more than cancelled out by expanded coal exports and population growth. According to the Australia Institute, the average migrant doubles his or her greenhouse gas emissions by coming to Australia. More consumption is precisely why most people emigrate.

Ludwig,

Oh dear, I am obviously not making myself clear, my apologies. I am not resigned to ever increasing population growth.

Let's tackle this from another perspective: suppose, for sake of argument, our population remained stable at current levels for the next ten years. As our current infrastructure is already inadequate and cannot cope with current levels, what improvements or changes or plans would you suggest or like to see implemented?

Obviously, from your POV this is purely hypothetical, but I would be interested to see if you have anything to offer to improve our transportation crisis across the country other than calling for a stop to immigration.

That was my original point. I hope this time I have managed to make it more clear. :)

“Divergence”, primitive civilisations had their own problems that we do not; so do, even today, cultures and political systems that are inimical to progress. Matt Ridley, “The Rational Optimist” says that the greatest threat to humanity today is political self-fulfilling prophecies. Economically illiterate “Green” governments would ruin civilisation with unintended consequences just as economically illiterate Communist ones promised to OUT-PRODUCE capitalism, as well as make everyone equal – and failed miserably. “Green” government would similarly have exactly the opposite effect on environmental outcomes as it claims to want. The Kyoto Protocol has already resulted in a reversal of the centuries-long natural trend to de-carbonisation in the world economy. Refer “The Wrong Trousers: Radically rethinking Climate Policy” by Gwyn Prins and John Rayner.
Herman Daly, in his so-called “rebuttal” of Julian Simon, completely misses the distinction between “finite” and “vast”. This is why Julian Simon has always been proved right. Matt Ridley says that the resource doomsayers are like people going yachting off the coast of Ireland and worrying they might run aground on Newfoundland, because after all, the Atlantic Ocean is “finite”.
Daly actually attempts to elide the point that pollution decreases as economies develop. I can recommend many sources of information on this, but try the annual “Index of Leading Environmental Indicators” by Steven Hayward.
The very subject we are discussing on this thread, congestion, is riddled with “unintended consequences” of economically illiterate “Green” ideology. Trip-to-work times have steadily risen everywhere in the world that planning has aimed at urban intensification and diverting road spending to public transport.
The US cities where employment has decentralised the most rapidly, are the ones where trip-to-work times have remained the most stable. These cities generally are the ones with the least regulatory interference in urban land markets, and they happen to have very affordable housing along with low urban density and large average space per household. (Cont......)

Whilst aware that I'm setting myself up for howls of derision, I'll jump on in anyway (you'd think I'd have better sense).

Decentralisation! It really is so stupid for the greater majority of Australians to live in densely populated urban sprawls. I left it behind six years ago and I don't anticipate going back, except for visits and occassional business.

So how could this move out be inspired to become a trend?

Simple. Governments tax corporations/companies in cities for congestion and high infrastructure and at the same time handout incentives for company developments in regional areas. I believe some sort of sentiment like this is has actually been sprouted by Gillard & Co just recently. But this of course will create vote distribution problems and is politically dangerous. I don't expect them to do anything serious about it.

So, I guess city Aussies will just stay in their rat-holes and continue to think they live in Brussels, Stockholm or Paris. Nobody really wants to change. People must be happy living in congestion otherwise they'd make the move out like I did.

Cheers.

(Cont…..) In contrast, the cities with prescriptive growth-containment planning suffer from the worst of all worlds; unaffordable housing in spite of much higher average density in new developments; and they have worsening trip-to-work times and worsening local air pollution. The effects Ross Elliott describes, and what I added in my earlier comments, are the reason for this.
Trying to centralise employment just to make mass public transport work, is the ultimate “tail wags dog” fallacy. It is physical determinism gone mad. It is cargo cultism. Urban economies exist in most cases, most of the time, for wealth creation, not the zero-sum transfers and “consumption” that marks high density CBD’s. There are perfectly rational reasons that urban wealth producers who need more space per worker than Goldman Sachs head office, long since got out of Manhattan. It would be only slightly more absurd to expect dairy farming and agriculture to centralise into tall-building CBD’s so their workers, too, can catch trains to work.
I read your Herman Daly recommendation: I recommend to you, “Environmentalism Refuted” by George Reisman.
http://mises.org/daily/661
Why is it more moral to forcibly sterilise women or forcibly abort their foetuses against their will, than to just let people breed if they want to, let progress happen, and let the system balance itself? It worked that way for centuries, before (PART OF) humanity had “the enlightenment” and a technological revolution. Birth rates plummet everywhere that survival rates skyrocket. The increase in population is due to rates of survival, not to increased fecundity.
http://overpopulationisamyth.com
Millions of women over centuries have borne large numbers of children knowing that most of them would probably die before twenty. This has always been an incentive to have more of them, not less. It is absurd for Malthusians to be devoting their propaganda efforts to the modern world where demographics are undergoing a collapse anyway. As if Australia cannot feed several times its current population level……
Hypocritical “secularists” with their cultural relativism, insist on “respect” of non-progressive cultures, then insist on forced population control to ameliorate the lack of progress…..!