@ Divergence,

You’ll have to excuse James, he is too busy telling us how experienced and well connected he is to address your arguments.

And as for: <<Let's test your claim that "Very little is actually amenable to effective direct government intervention.”>>
It’s funny that James appears to believe that it is beyond the ken of a govt to control population growth (which in the Australian context comes down to immigration).Yet James fervently believes a govt was able to orchestrate the 9/11 twin towers attack and its subsequent cover up: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14343#247316
( I’ll bet his years of training as a demographer came in handy in ferreting that one out!)

Perhaps it's just the Australian govt that is unable to organize complex things?

So that is the end of our ‘tit for tat’ twaddlydoo for the time-being is it Pericles. Good move to wind it up.

See you on the next thread that you have a go at me on… and off we’ll go again on yet another round of the Ludwig – Pericles roadshow. You know, this stuff has rolled on between us for quite a few years now. Fun isn’t it. But yes, it is time to end this session. Pity we can’t end it altogether and indulge only in meaningful debate. But of course that would be asking toooo much!

.

James, you wrote:

<< Having re-read your posts I am most discouraged by the fact that the argument is never really advanced >>

Yes, I appreciate that. Trouble is; when someone asserts that you hold a view that you don’t or that it is not accurately portrayed, you’ve got to respond or else others will think that it is true. And so it goes on and around and up and down…. without advancing the debate... and boring everyone else to tears!

Yes, FPTP certainly does favour the big parties, as does CPV. OPV is definitely the best in this regard.

Proportional representation sounds good, but I’m not sure it is the right way to go. I’ve battled with it for a long time. One of the problems could be that the two big parties almost always have a pretty similar vote and that the balance of power would therefore be held by a small party or rabble and/or an assortment of independents. I don’t know if that would make for effective governance.

What we really need is one party which has the right agenda being strongly in control. This does create a paradox, because the worst scenario is a party with the wrong agenda being strongly in control. So I am inclined to think that the best system is OPV, in which the true wishes of the voter are best represented.

However, I am open to modifying my views if you can convince me otherwise. Cheers.

@spqr. There you are at it again. What I said in the post you kindly linked to was that blowing away the official fairy tale about 9/11 was not the same as saying one knew what really happened. What was needed was a proper investigation. I even gave several references where one could read why I take that view. Some however, apparently including you, are impervious to the evidenc, including but not limited to the laws of physics.

@ludwig. The tail wagging the dog is of course a possibility under pr, although the electoral consequences for the dog could be dire if they fail to reflect public wishes. One reason for suggesting a 5pc threshold is to avoid that lunatic fringe getting into parliament in the first place.

I had the great good fortune in my career to spend a significant chunk of it living in Europe where, in most cases, pr works perfectly well. The New Zealand experience also shows that it helps develop a different electoral mindset that is missing under the triennial dictatorships that most other systems create.

In my view the present system is profoundly undemocratic and unfair and serious thought needs to be given to an alternative. I am unpersuaded that opv is the best alternative.

Thanks, SPQR

James O'Neill, the skilled migration program, some of the family program (relating to more distant relatives), and the agreement on open migration with New Zealand are all amenable to direct government control. These are the main categories (unless you know of other secret ones), and bringing the numbers down in them would definitely stabilise the population in the long run. Our fertility rate is slightly below replacement level and has been since 1976. Demographic momentum is predicted to play out completely at some time in the 2030s and is getting smaller all the time. You were arguing about the possibility of stabilising the population, not whether it would be wise.

Even if I believed that mass migration was in the immediate economic interests of the majority of Australians or even all of them (and I don't), I still wouldn't believe that the economy trumps the environment. I am a natural scientist, not a demographer, and used to thinking in terms of deep time. I have children and am worried about their future and that of my friends and their children, as well as feeling a sense of responsibility for my fellow citizens and for our environment and the other species that live in it. The Australian Conservation Foundation has applied to have population growth declared a key threatening process under the Environmental Protection Act. Note what they say about the secondary effects of population growth.

http://www.acfonline.org.au/sites/default/files/resources/EPBC_nomination_22-3-10.pdf

Finally, if I were the bigot that you claim, it ought to be easy to find at least one post of mine with racist abuse. You find one, and I will give $50 to the charity of your choice. Concerns about our refugee program following in the footsteps of Europe (huge numbers, lots of unfounded claims, and extreme difficulty in removing failed asylum seekers) don't count. If I have misrepresented a study, it ought to be easy enough to call me on it. Pericles does it with Arjay's statements on the financial system (with amazing patience). "Because I said so" isn't good enough.

@Divergence. the fact that you ally yourself with SPQR is a telling fact in itself. One doesn't have to make explicit statements on anything to reveal the agenda underneath. The Liberals are masters at it. It is called dog whistle politics.

Raising the spectre of mass uncontrolled immigration fits that image very well. The unspoken agenda is that we don't want people here who are "not like us", i.e. brown/black/yellow skinned, Muslim etc etc. To put the kindest construction on it, you may not intend that but that is surely what it reads like.

I am sorry, but you still do not appear to understand the complexity of controlling migration flows to achieve a desired result. Reducing skilled migration intakes which is one of your suggestions, will have economic consequences affecting job opportunities in this country. Experience shows that one result will be an exodus of skilled Australians because the economy cannot support them here.

Another example you cite, that of New Zealanders, is again not as simple as you suggest. There is an agreement between the two countries going back to the 1960s which includes, inter alia, a free labor market between the two with mutual recognition of qualifications etc. While in theory the Australian government could renounce its obligations under those agreements (plural) in practice the world doesn't work that way.

I don't doubt your environmental commitment, which I share. But that is not a reason for formulating half-baked arguments in quest of an illusory goal of any given population size. After more than 40 years of looking at the policy issues, and giving advice on them, I know how difficult it is to formulate a policy that meets all the appropriate criteria. It may even be impossible, although that should not be taken as an excuse for doing nothing. As always, the trick is what one actually does.

James O'Neill,

You are obviously right that there would be disruption if government immediately slammed on the brakes and made a drastic reduction in skilled migration. It would need to be gradually reduced over a number of years, with business given plenty of warning to institute training programs and the like. Temporary visas could be used to fill unavoidable gaps, but not leading to permanent residency, so that the lure of sponsorship could not be used to cut wages or working conditions. In the long run, I am not worried. There is no correlation among the developed countries between population size, density, or growth rate and economic performance. There is a correlation between population growth rate and economic performance among the poorer countries, but it is negative. Anyone who doubts this should look at the country rankings on the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index and the statistics on the individual countries on the CIA World Factbook.

The New Zealand government is taking Australians for a ride, and our own politicians really ought to renounce the open borders agreements. The NZ government has instituted a mass migration program of their own, and one of the attractions is that after living in New Zealand for a few years and taking out citizenship, you will be able to move on to Australia. The agreements also let NZ offload its responsibilities for some of its more disadvantaged home-grown citizens, although our government did block welfare for them in Australia.