Kevin Rudd's "big Australia" push was political suicide, despite the media's downplay of it! Julia Gillard is ignoring her first promise to not "hurtle" towards a "big Australia" but it's still happening. Tony Burke, Minister of "sustainable" Australia, remains silent. There's no one topic that's more at the core of many of today's environmental, social, climate change and economic issues - and problems. Nothing can be "filled" eternally, and in a finite world, there's no precedent for perpetual growth. The world's resources are shrinking, while the planet will have 2 billion more people by 2050. The majority of nations do not have immigration. Why is it assumed that Australia can sustain millions more people at a time of multiple threats? We live in the driest continent and our geography is more like that of North Africa than Europe or South East Asia. Living standards are declining, housing is increasingly unaffordable, jobs are harder to get, costs of living are escalating. There's nothing to be gained from "big Australia" and a lot to lose. It's time to stop being blind to our population growth, and vote accordingly - against the elite who will be the only "winners".

The components making up NOM include offshore arrivals under the Permanent Migration and Humanitarian Programs, temporary long-stay migrants such as students and subclass 457 skilled workers.

Be mindful - temporary residents such as international students, temporary skilled workers (457 visa holders), working holiday makers make up about 55-60 per cent of NOM.

The Unstable Pop Party does not know this nor does its mortal enemy in SA the Sustainable Population Australia. What does this say about the quality of candidates if they don't understand the 12/16 rule (how long people - especially students stay) before they are counted as 'residents'?

This is fear mongering of the worst kind and plays to the basest racist elements in the electorate. While these spoon benders and fear-wallahs talk about levelling the elites as if they were some throwback to Mao or Lenin, they really evince a far right wing set of ideals which can be summed as Asians Out.

The reason why both major parties and the Greens will have nothing to do with these social engineering cranks is that the SPA or SPP or what ever they call themselves actually know nothing about social policy and can't even disaggregate a simple population breakdown.

Cheryl- it's irrelevant to what categories the new arrivals are. They are all invited access Australian residency under our liberal immigration policies. There are few nations that reciprocate the immigration policies that we have here. Why must Australia have permeable borders when the contrary, if Australians were to choose to live somewhere else, don't apply? It's virtually impossible for a non-Chinese to gain residency in China. Just look at how hard it is to be permanent residents in our neighbouring countries? We are being victims of "white" or "Western" guilt, assuming that people must come one way only. Immigration is increasing at a time of multiple "shortages", "peaks" and climate change. We should be gently allowing our population to slowly and naturally decline to sustainable levels, in the face of the hardships future generations will have to face. Greed and ignorance in this generation will deprive future generations of what used to be taken for granted. Population growth now is inter-generational theft.

Why would anyone bother responding to the grossly misinformed rants of pseudonym 'Cheryl'? It's unfortunate that such puerile and fact-free opinion is promoted here, or anywhere for that matter. It would be nice to engage in a rational and mature debate on population and sustainability without spurious injections of irrelevant issues such as race or religion by pseudonyms.
Fortunately 'Cheryl' was outed here this year after he wrote a typically warped piece under his real name with all the trademark whacky assertions, exposing his vested interests in the process.

No Viv and PP, the NOM breakdown is a fact not an opinion.

The article is including a proportion of international students and others who return to their home nations. PP simply can't respond because he is apoplectic with rage. How dare someone come up with a fact?

This is far from a singular instance of these university-style clubs glossing over detail. I note it has not been corrected by those who allegedly support reducing the Asian migrant intake on environmental grounds. And these people want to be a political party?

They are an embarrassment.

Viv, would like to give some more detail on your claim re population growth equals intergenerational theft?

I also note that Sandra Kanck sought to roll the remaining Democrat members (is there any?) to try get the numbers for the SPA to be a political party in SA. Desperate or what?

<< Kevin Rudd's "big Australia" push was political suicide >>

TonyB, I think he had committed hari kari well before he made this stupid utterance.

In fact, he was obviously in favour of a big Australia very early on. He boosted the already record-high immigration rate as soon as he won office.

He got away with that scot-free, despite not even mentioning it in the months leading up the election.

In fact I would have thought that a big Australia would be more politically tenable than a stable-population sustainable Australia, because the all-powerful vested-interest business lobby wants rapid population growth, and the general community is not strongly enough concerned to counter this.

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Rather than responding to Cheryl’s claptrap, we should be concentrating on this thread on how to politically achieve a stable population.

The vast majority of respondents on OLO agree that we should be doing this, so attempting to debate the few detractors is not of a lot of use.

In theory, it is an extremely easy issue to deal with. All we need to do is to reduce immigration to net zero or something of that magnitude. That's it in a nutshell! I’d be happy if this happened over a period of several years, perhaps a decade, just as long as the momentum is started and the desire to achieve a stable population and a sustainable Australia is clearly elucidated.

But the big intractability in the process is the extremely cosy and highly rortiferous relationship between government and big business.

How we overcome this and make government a whole lot more independent should I think be the main focus of all us poppos and sustainabilityists.

I reckon that if we had an independent government, they would be highly inclined to lead us down the path to sustainability without us having to prod and poke them too much. Well.. Labor hopefully would if they have the likes of Gillard, Carr and Thomson in their ranks.

Let’s start off by lobbying for an end to ALL political donations.