One can’t help reaching the conclusion that the maintenance of very high immigration by successive governments of both persuasions has everything to do with the pressure applied on government by vested-interest profit-motive-driven big-business…. because after even an initial bit of analysis, it obviously has scant little to do with basic common sense!

I would have thought that if one of the major parties were to declare a policy of much-reduced immigration, it would immediately be on a huge winner with the votership.

The fact that neither big party has ever done this, even when they are facing the almost certain prospect of defeat at a forthcoming election, says everything about how utterly beholden to big business interests and how terribly undemocratic our governmental system is!

I mean, what unbiased government wouldn’t see population stabilisation, an end to massive expansionism and a balance between the demand for everything and the ongoing supply capabilities as being the most fundamentally important foundations of a healthy national future?

So it begs the question: how on earth do we get our government to do this? How do we get Gillard’s ‘sustainable Australia’ to prevail? What do we have to do to get us off this continuous growth spiral into oblivion??

Excellent article Jenny.

To obtain zero net migration, which is laughable, the Australian Government would need to:

1. Set the skilled permanent entry to zero because the loss of Australian citizens is very small. No movement would be permitted onshore to a permanent skilled visa.

2. Stop the 457 visa or limit the stay to under 12 months in which case the visa holder would not be counted into the population. 457 visa holders include a lot of people who operate in an international labour market (multi-national companies moving their staff around the world, academics, persons holding highly specialised skills not available in Australia). This would be like imposing a trade sanction on one’s own country – but if zero economic growth is part of the agenda, then this is a great idea.

3. An international student would be permitted to enter Australia only when another international student had left. Present policy is to encourage international students because this improves the economies of scale in Australian educational institutions and promotes diversity of course offerings in universities. A restrictive policy would see the closure of many Australian universities or at least considerable curtailment of course offerings and staff redundancies.

4. End the Trans-Tasman Travel agreement between Australia and New Zealand or modify it so that a New Zealander could come to Australia only when an Australian went to New Zealand.

Change the Migration Act to make it illegal for Australians to bring their non-Australian spouses to Australia, or to allow this only when someone leaves Australia. Australian citizens would need to be warned not to marry a non-resident of Australia or be prepared to live outside Australia if they do so. Humanitarian immigrants would not be permitted to obtain their spouses from their country of origin. This would mean that potential spouses from those countries would have to join the boat movement.

That's just a handful of some of the absurd problems re the SPP. Don't get me started on those numbers. The real force behind the Australian anti-population push is NumbersUSA and John Tanton in the States

To stabilize our population, immigration needs to equal emigration and there needs to be equitable and reciprocal agreements on immigration levels between nations. There is a large imbalance in Australia's present high levels of net immigration. It's unsustainable environmentally, politically and socially.
It doesn't mean closing down the Immigration Department for family affairs and family reunions such as foreign spouses. That's only a small amount of our intake. Our political parties can't continue to ignore our world-leading population growth rates. "Economic growth" through immigration is poor policy as the costs of growth, downstream, always outweigh the benefits in the long term. Rising population, on the background of increasing poverty, homelessness, unaffordable housing, increasing unemployment and debt for infrastructure is madness. Already our planet's resources are dwindling. Left to "natural" growth, our population would continue to grow, but stabilize and gently decline towards mid-century. This corresponds to natural constraints and the most sensible option.

Thanks Cheryl. I think we all know your distraction game, and who you are!

Jenny Goldie rightly says, "Only those parties and candidates who are aware of these constraints on population growth and have policies to match are worthy of our vote."

That clearly rules out not just the two major parties, but the Greens, for the reasons set out by Michael Lardelli in his excellent Online Opinion article "Can we trust the Greens on Population" at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10873

Thanks heavens we have the newly formed Stable Population Party, whose website slices through the nonsense talked by the major parties. See http://www.populationparty.org.au/ I understand it will be contesting for the Senate in all states, and voters can vote for it either above the line or below.

Dear Jenny,

<< With one or two notable exceptions, our political parties are not acknowledging that population lies at the heart of most issues. >>

That is because the Australian public also disagrees with you. No 1, the economy, No 2 Boat People.

The Population issue is just another facet of the “Peak Everything” debate with its foundations in the Club of Rome and Agenda 21, or as we have come to know it, Socialism by stealth.

It warms my heart to recognize that after 60 years it remains a failed dogma. Since the CAGW debate is founded upon the political interpretation of “sustainability”, it too is failing.

The MO for progressive activism globally remains the same, take the most horrendously complex socio-scientific-economic issues on the planet, oversimplify them and then offer oversimplified populist solutions.

The Peak everything and CAGW are classic examples. The climate change and sustainable population issues are so complex that modeling, assumptions and predictions have become the norm.

The number of entities that any meaningful analysis would need to map runs into the tens of thousands. These would be different for every national, regional, economic, socio-political, scientific and religious variables on the planet.

But just like Jenny, this can all be pushed on one side to make room for a much more simplistic political ideology.

The mere fact that this is still being thrown around like the proverbial dead cat is testimony to three things, one that you don’t really have a clue where to start, two that this is just a political agenda and three, that there are still gullible people in society today, who are prepared to sacrifice the last vestiges of reality for political populism.

It may be appropriate at some stage to recognize that for 60 years “political sustainability” has prevented real human ingenuity from flourishing and making real progress on global equity and social justice.

It is your ideology and political naïveté that is negatively impacting those who need the shackles of poverty removed, but you can’t see it through your political mantra. What you seek to avoid, you create.

Jenny, we can't live in splendid isolation from the rest of the world.
The good old days of Australia being a sleepy island that just gets on with its own affairs are well and truly over.

Australia is part of the wider world community, and as such needs to take ownership of immigrants on the move from conflict and overcrowding in other countries.

If Australia decided to close the borders and not let anyone in unless someone leaves, how would the rest of the world react? They would be annoyed, to say the least.
Trade and goodwill with our neighbours would go out the door, and conflict may well reach our own borders as a result.

What makes Australia so special that we do not have to participate in sharing the population problems of the world?
It's not as though we haven't got any room.
Why not deal with the problem of immigration to our advantage?

We should take more immigrants in, but try to settle more of them in towns that desperately need more people. Maybe we could even save some towns from losing services like schools, banks and shops, and ending up as ghost towns.

Like most other contributions to this debate has no solutions even remotely achievable for the problems the author imagines is occurring.. As other posters have pointed out, to stop population growth would require a major reset of the immigration act and international treaties which just isn't happening..

The boat people issue refers only to the method by which people come to Australia. Through all of it, no-one has suggested cutting immigration quotas and they haven't been. They still remain at about 190,000 a year, with an increase in the refugee quota (now around 20,000? - I've lost track).

The only realistic solution is to plan our infrastructure for the increase.

it is the people of a nation that are its truest treasure, but by being so beastly toward some refugees, Australia is sending the worst kind of signal about who and what we really are - or pretend to be.

Australian taxpayers are paying billions of dollars to support an infrastructure of concentration camps and jailers to 'process' people who haven't come here the 'correct' way, but the new PNG Pacific solution is even much worse, in that it saddles us with a third world country on the edge of failed nation status to upgrade its infrastructure as long as it takes those unwanted refugees.

This is a solution only a blackmailer would love.

All this at a time when the economy is contracting and the dollar is coming down to its true value.

And the electorate expects a balanced budget from either of the political parties?

Don't hold your breath!

Hi Livio,

You say;

<< Jenny Goldie rightly says, "Only those parties and candidates who are aware of these constraints on population growth and have policies to match are worthy of our vote." >>

Excellent statement Livio.

So just to help you validate who is aware of the constraints on population growth and who deserves your vote, you are welcome to use the following to assist you.

Classical Single Species Sustainability Modeling

Na.t=Na-1,t-1exp(-Ma-1,t-1 –Fa-1,t-1)

See also;

Classical sustainability
Neoclassical sustainability
Modern sustainability
Post-modern sustainability

Analysis entities;

Yield, use, harvest, population, resources, ecosystem, species, habitat, development, economy, community, education, energy, resources, poetry and future. Associated with sustainability are the concepts of precaution, risk aversion, resilience, persistence, rebuilding, maintenance, health, robustness, adaptive management, diversity, tradition, uncertainty and conservation.

Of course if this is to be an objective analysis of the human population you would have to factor in “all other species” and “all other biological life forms” globally as well. (Just the other 4.2 million variants though)

If you take all these factors on board when you discuss population sustainability you are talking science, if you exclude them, you are talking oversimplified populist politics. (Self grandiose rubbish) Just like the way the IPCC does things.

Start with the Malthusian Growth Model of 1798 and work forward into reality. If you can’t understand it or can’t be bothered, that’s OK, just become a Peak Everything Activist or a Politician or both.

Don’t forget to post for us the results of your assessment.

Thanks Jenny for your excellent column, clearly outlining the basic scientific facts on population and the views expressed by several experts in the field, which other posters have endorsed as a global issue.

Thankfully on September 7th for the first time, there will be a clear choice on the matter of Australia's population level with voters having an option to cast a vote for the Stable Population Party. The Stable Population Party recognises the global nature of this issue with its generous aid and humanitarian resettlement policies, which are the equal of any other country. We are all passengers on spaceship earth, so our fate is linked.

Over the past 12 years, Australia ran Peter Costello's crazy 3 child policy. The end result of this pro-natalist folly was to lift fertility from around 1.7 to 1.9 children per women while placing a larger percentage of children in poverty. Clearly paying women a bribe to breed is as obnoxious as any other form of coercion. What we see in other nations where women have free choice, such as Singapore (1.4) and most European nations (Italy about 1.5), is that women choose to have fewer than 2 children if they have that option. Australia is no different.

Moving people around the planet now is a bit like moving the chairs on the Titanic. The smart solution is to educate and empower women wherever they are.

The natural environment does not care about our individual ecological footprints, it only sees the total impact of humanity. Sure we need to tread more lightly but collectively so.

Thanks for this timely reminder Jenny

Spot on Jenny. The critics who go on about being part of the world should recall that Europe, Japan, Russia and China all have population growth around zero. The nations going with big growth include most of South Asia and Africa. I know which group I would rather be in.

Syd.

Suseonline,

There are other rich countries, such as Japan, that have very little or no net immigration. Why is there no international outrage against them?

Spindoc,

You are trying to make this issue unnecessarily complicated. There is a distinction between human cultural factors, such as the economy, and natural limits due to resource shortages or how much abuse the environment can tolerate. These issues are not on the same level. The latter are like constraint equations in an optimization problem. The human social constructs also matter, but in a different way, because they can affect how a society adapts to the constraints (or doesn't and collapses). Sometimes new technologies expand the limits, but they can't be whistled up to order. (Where is my electric power that was going to be too cheap to meter? Why are people still dying of cancer?)

Cheryl (Malcolm King),

According to the ABS, net emigration from Australia for 2011/2012 was 87,993. This is hardly a tiny number of people, as you are trying to pretend. Plenty of room for spouses and children. According to Tim Colebatch, the Economics Editor of the Melbourne Age, we are now acquiring 5 new people for every new full-time job, and three quarters of those jobs are going to people born overseas, even though they are only 31% of the population, leading to the suspicion that this is really about cheap, exploitable labour and avoiding training costs, rather than a desperate shortage of skills.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/skilled-newcomers-flood-fulltime-jobs-market-20130614-2o9vm.html#ixzz2WGauEboK

As for international students, it depends on whether the universities and colleges are selling education or immigration. If the former, there is no problem. As one batch of international students leaves, another can be admitted.

Immigration from New Zealand is highly disproportionate, and about a quarter of it is from people who using New Zealand as a stepping stone to get to Australia. Why should we put up with it if it is not in our interests?

You still haven't revealed if your PR business is being paid to rubbish population stabilization.

Jenny Goldie’s article has touched on the biggest issue facing humanity. The world’s ballooning population and insatiable demand for resources is creating a looted and desecrated planet which can only end in disaster. Australia is in no way insulated from this process.
Australia already has more people than it can support without the profligate use of fossil fuels and we should take immediate steps to remedy this situation. The cessation of all immigration from any source should be implemented.
Australian politics is in a state of almost Spenglerian dysfunction (as is most of the world), acting in the interests of those other than the people who vote for them. It is good to see the emergence of political parties who can address this issue.
Imperial

Good morning Divergence,

what no reference to the Productivity Report and GDP? Neither of which the SSP believe in. I'll give just one example which gives the lie to most of their statements. This is William Bourke, the head of the SPP, commenting recently on the Party Facebook page.

"We completely support foreign students coming to Australia to study, and vice versa. Economic migrants posing as students is a different matter and this issue requires an urgent review."

Yet the SPP - and I quote for the SPP policy website will:"... reduce annual permanent immigration from around 250,000 (including NZ) to around 80,000, and include flexible skilled, family reunion and humanitarian (refugee) components."

We take about 200,000 international students a year. There will be no international student market if your mob of sociobiologists get in. I have also noticed you change the SPP website at a whim to suit the prevailing winds.

Your party is up there with the Bubblers - in fact, the Bubblers have some runs on the board for honest disclosure, unlike the anti-pops whose main existence appears to be to split the Green vote.

the critical issue is a credible party to lead the country
i have lost faith in Labor
kevin showed me he can be undermined by nameless men using an incompetent woman
he revealed his true self in attending church and then mocking God by blatantly disobeying God's commandments on homosexual practices

i am watching the liberal and nationals
so far they are the lesser of 2 evils

here are my views on population

1. australia must have a reasonable population increase to sustain economic growth
2. the fertility rate of 1.8 has to be increased substantially
3. we should have policies to encourage working parents to have more children. NOT provide handouts to non-working parents who abuses the system by reproducing like rabbits for the dole. They will not bring up responsible children anyway, given the wrong value systems they have in the first place
4. we need to have more migrants but this should be done sensibly and in controlled numbers
5. we must say NO to boat migrants.... they must join the Q like everyone else. We cannot afford to have the world's economic refugees flooding our shores. For those who preaches compassion and gracious society, I would like you to give up your job to them and I will salute you. The argument that women and children are drowning in the open sea is just not valid. A nation should not be held ransom to such threats and bullying and blackmail. It is liken to a poor homeless family staging a hunger strike outside a rich man's house for rights to occupy a room in the huge 20 room mansion. How ludicrous.
6. migrants should recognise that this is a white christian society. all races and creed and religions are welcomed but they will have to integrate, not demand for the social landscape to be changed. No...we will eat and serve any food in any place we like. We will not have faceless women in public areas and planes and trains as that pose as a security threat to all. We will not have public roads closed for prayers. Public roads are not worship places.
7. serious thoughts should be given to policies for migration to specific state and specific cities for say the first 10 years

Cheryl,

The idea is to balance immigration and emigration. When international students go home, they add to emigration numbers, provided that they have been in Australia for more than 12 months. You can then take in more new international students. It only becomes an issue if the university is really selling immigration and just giving the "student" a few hoops to jump through before he or she gets that PR visa. There are also the issues of why a rich country like Australia can't fund its own universities, as is done in other rich countries, and of the corrupting influence of treating a university like a profit-making business. If you spent any time talking to academics at a university, you would have some understanding of the pressures to admit students with inadequate English or to pass students who deserve to fail. The customer is always right.

Jennie always forgets to mention her 6 children doesn't she? WE cannot be like Canute and hold back the humans, that is just deranged and selfish thinking.

We already grow enough food here to feed 70 million people and if we get smart can grow a whole lot more.

To pretend that we can sit here on our golden soil and not share it is fairy tale stuff.

Marilyn, RED CARD for playing the man (or in this case the woman) and not the ball! Off the playing field for you. If you have nothing to contribute to the topic other than personal attacks, you should not disturb the quiet discussion here.
That's like saying David Suzuki should shut up about sustainability because he has 6 children.

Jenny has adopted half her children in any case so I think you need to check your slush file!

Well done Divergence. Your post of 12.25 pm penetrated "Cheryl"'s cover and smoked out Malcolm King, whose reply concedes that he is Cheryl.

King is a publicist who writes and places articles for clients. As I have pointed out previously, his page on LinkedIn includes the claim that he wrote and placed "$17K" of articles for one client. He is also very active in electronic media.

Marilyn

Jenny read The Population Bomb after her only biological child was born and thereafter adopted three children (from Korea, Vietnam and an Aboriginal) and long-term fostered an African-American child. They're all adults now. She has six grandchildren of varying hues, only two of which are biological so she's ahead of the game in terms of population reduction.

According to the July figures from the ABS, more than one third of the Australian workforce is employed part time. That is a massive level of underemployment - well over 3 million people - many of whom want to work full time. Add to that older people who are keen to work but don't show up on the statistics and there are an awful lot of people who could be contributing to the economy without recourse to immigration.

It is known that the birthrate in educated societies drops, so why are politicians so intent on siding with vested interests against the common wisdom of the Australian community by forcing up our population? We don't have to increase our population become more productive (the booming coal industry employs tens of thousands of people fewer than it used to), and we don't have to bring people into the country to feed them with our produce. In fact we don't even feed out own population as it stands, as Coles and Woolies are forcing our producers to the wall and importing much of the stuff we used to grow ourselves.

A Vote for Kelvin Thompson Labour and the Stable Population Party is a "no brainer" !

No more lies or wishful thinking .

Ralph

What does SPP and SPA plan to do, if in their idea of nativist nirvana, Australia's population declines?

This was the question put to Jill Quirk by Bernard Salt on the ABC's "Big Ideas" http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2013/07/29/3810642.htm (NB it was quite clear what the "panel" thought of SPA, from the looks of sheer contempt and at times anger)

Both population and unemployment would rise in the short term if desired population and immigration restriction measures were in place.

It would require breaking of Working Holiday Visa agreements or capping, capping of international students, 457s, NZs and returning Australian citizens, break international treaties etc. and consequent quid pro quo measures would force Australian citizens to return home causing a massive spike in NOM, thus population.

Salt cited Eastern Germany, however he probably meant eastern Europe e.g. Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia etc.. that have declining populations.

According to SPP/SPA etc. this should be a good thing with many positives for a nation and its environment?

Definitely not, economic basket cases, tax base is disappearing fast with higher demands upon the state with ageing population, brain drain, emigration, environmental management and infrastructure issues, i.e. although less use, unable to maintain, and accordingly infrastructure is crumbling..... (once well into the EU accession pathways inafrastructure is something the EU funds),

EU does have some solutions for ageing and declining populations, labour mobility and more external immigration. Note they do not describe the free movement of EU citizens as "immigration", but labour mobility, except the UK govt. of course who have counterparts of SPA/SPP, Population Matters pushing their John Tanton white nativist philosophy.

This advocacy of lower or restricted immigration and population growth policies, and fighting to stop new immigration bills in the US, fits with the strategy of stopping non European types diluting our race, and meanwhile we can worship at the altar of "blood and soil"...... sounds more like Nazi Germany no? Or if you want some sci fi type religion or belief join the Scientologists....

From where does the zero population growth theory get its scientific credibility? It has none.

The author quotes Ian Dunlop who himself made a large fortune from being an Oil company executive and is now a peak oil nutter. I am loathed to listen to these "born again virgins" who make money at both ends of the spectrum.

Diversity and fear of loss of species? There have been 5 major extinctions on earth and new species flourished as a result every time. Humans being one of them. If a species is lost (which they aren't very often actually) it is quickly replaced by another in its habitat. Species loss is a natural process and always has been. Its no big deal. The idea that there would be a collapse of an ecosystem because of loss of species is a pervasive myth.

The Population Bomb made numerous false predictions which have been often documented. It beggars belief that this easily falsified Malthusian approach is still swallowed by the gullible.

People now have far better nutrition that 50 yrs ago when there were far fewer people. There is no evidence that we have too many people - none at all. We have less starvation, better nutrition, better standard of living, better medical care even though we have more people. Ehrlich and his fellow Malthusians have been wrong so many times it is difficult to count. Why do people still swallow this stuff?

Russia a basket case, Andras? It just passed Italy as the world's ninth largest economy. And even war ravaged Serbia and post communist Bulgaria are well ahead of nations with high population growth rates, and are hardly in the state of decline that you suggest. Further, how do you determine that the circumstances of these nations is all due to population decline?

Were you to look at the stats you might observe the correlation of high population growth rates with poor education and infrastructure and government corruption. Hardly the road to Nirvana.

It's an issue in Central Eastern Europe, like the laboratory or Petri dish, that is realised by many, inafrastructure, tax/benefit systems, decreasing tax base, declining and ageing populations, what do we do, nothing (that's what many neo cons want)?

Compare headline stat for Russia with Italy does not change undelrying fact, same as Italy has, ageing declining populations...

Serbia and Bulgaria, so they have no probem because there are probably high population growth countries worse? Can you share your comparison here?

Accordingly, Serbia has about 2 million + dependent upon pensions or welfare and increasing, while there are only 1.5 million taxpayers and decreasing, Bulgaria similar.

Hungary too is similar, and like the above remittances and expertise are important from working elsewhere in the EU (or immigrants), as the country slowly evolves, more labour mobility and no borders due to Schengen agreement, may dig itself out of a fiscal hole, but very severe medicine (of it's own making and appealing to nationalist socialist tendencies....).

Unemployed in Hungary are eligible for only 3 months unemployment benefits, then it's rely on family and friends, or choose a "work camp", Serbia etc. much the same or worse....

It's why the anti population and anti immigration advocates use strawman arguments, distort headline statistics and attack others (personally) because there is no evidence for their beliefs and claims, population growth/immigration bad, restriction/closed economy good, it's simply a religion for bigots ...... This should not surprise anyone who knows John Tanton and his network who provide the writers' workshops and propaganda material in the US (and internationally), distorting statistics, presenting opinion as fact and flirting with white supremacists, eugenics, debunked Malthusian philosophy etc.

SPLC in US explains best re. John Tanton's Network and which parts are deemed to be 'hate groups' http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2002/summer/the-puppeteer/john-tantons-network

Sure the writer of this article recognises some of the groups especially FAIR and NumbersUSA.

It's simply bigotry wrapped up in a fancy green wrapper.

Jenny Goldie "Whether natural increase or immigration makes up the bulk of the growth is not really relevant"

That answer is incorrect.

It makes a bloody big difference.
Language is the foundation of human society and even wires our brains for life.
Growing up in Australia, children learn our dialect, accents, slang, euphemisms, figures of speech, many of which differ even from other English-speaking nations.

This will inevitably influence their success in school and work.
They know our customs, habits, folklore.
They will make no significant demographic change, reflecting the genes and memes of their ancestors.

Foreigners will always be a mile behind.
Their brains were wired for another language (even other Englishes) and they learnt social "reality" through it.

Having human DNA means little.
We don't exist or live as a species.
We live as ethnicities, as Peoples.

Research also indicates birth order is a significant developmental influence.
The last thing we want is to discourage multiple births/large families.
Do you really want a society of "only child" types? Yikes!

If we need to limit population, the first, easiest and most sensible choice should be to limit immigration, an artificial process *totally* under government control.

If our political leaders refuse to bite the bullet, the people will inevitably take matters into their own hands.
There will be population reduction through civil war.

Let's hope it doesn't have to come to that.
Let's do it the "nice" way, while we still can.

Jenny, I for one agree that the best times have come and gone.

It is my view that most of our answers for the future lie in a better, fairer and simpler tax system, a transaction tax for example, one that taxes money movements, not income earners.

The other problem with population growth is the lack of jobs WE ARE going to experience, especially once the mines become less and less dependent on people, through automation, and that's already happening.

So in short, we are screwed, perhaps not in the near future, but the end of our way of life is coming, and this who think that is laughable, as some on this site do, are simply kidding themselves.

Hi Divergence,

So by posting some of the complexities, issues for consideration and algorithms commonly used for the analysis of just a single species, let alone human population sustainability, it is somehow me that is being too complex and taking the debate beyond your comprehension?

I guess it is much simpler to reduce thousands of issues down to the four you can cope with? What was it I said about oversimplifying problems so that you could offer oversimplified solutions?

Oversimplified solutions for oversimplified people I guess. Aren’t you due back at primary school, lunch break is over.

I used to work with Jennie, I know about the adoptions, but it doesn't take away her hypocrisy does it? She contributes 6 other humans to our population then wants to limit others while one presumes all 6 of the extra people she has added have added more people to the population.

I'll give you a simple example, Spindoc, the Irish Potato Famine. The Spanish conquistadors brought the potato back from the Andes in the 16th century, but it took time to develop suitable varieties for Northern Europe due to day length issues. By the 18th century, though, potatoes were being hailed as a wonderful new superfood, able to feed 3 times as many people to the hectare as grain under Irish conditions.

The Irish responded by increasing their population from perhaps 1.2 million in 1600 to 8.5 million by the 1840s. Then the late blight arrived from Mexico and completely wiped out all the potato crops, season after season. Normally, peasant farmers survive crop failures by using their savings from the good years or borrowed money to buy in food until the next harvest.

In Ireland, though, there was no hope that the situation would improve and borrowed money could be repaid. The Irish didn't have any resistant varieties, and large numbers of people were living on plots of land that were too small to feed a family on anything but potatoes. The situation was made even worse because the British, who ruled Ireland at the time, had commandeered large areas of the best land to grow export crops. 1 - 1.5 million people starved, and another 1.5 - 2 million were forced to emigrate. The food exports continued under military guard while people starved. Several hundred thousand people starved in the rest of Europe as well, and this was a factor in the Revolutions of 1848, but the other countries were less totally dependent on the potato.

There were various cultural factors involved that led to the disaster being particularly bad in Ireland, such as inheritance customs, unlike those in much of the rest of Europe, that required land to be divided among all the sons, so that all could marry and have children. You could analyse all this with your matrices no doubt. Nevertheless, the sustainability issue can be summed up as inadequate safety margins, with people totally dependent on a single crop.

Hi Divergence,

What a load of old rubbish.

The Irish potato famine was about agricultural storage techniques. When much of Europe moved to transport produce rather than “bury it” through the winter months, the Irish didn’t adopt either transportation of produce or new storage techniques.

They ended up creating “potato blight” in their stored produce and they starved.

Just where you get your ideological, reverse engineered clap trap from beats me. You need to read History and leave the bl**dy blogs alone.

Divergence

... utter bollocks. Much countryside was owned by an English and Anglo-Irish hereditary ruling class. No mention of absentee landlords who in the main were Protestant and who owned hugh tracts of land confiscated from Irish Catholics by Oliver Cromwell?

the anti-pops have turned political problems into biological problems and human history was recast as natural history. Is this some Diamond rats and steel thing?

Spindoc,

You really should check your facts before you make a fool of yourself. Even the Wikipedia article (look for Great Famine) will set you straight, although estimates of the toll vary with the sources. This is from Larry Zuckerman's book "Potato" (p.88)

"By mid-September the Irish Nation published a chilling account of what farmers all over the country had seen or soon would. The blight was striking with apparent caprice, despoiling one corner of a field while sparing another, or destroying all. It announced itself through livid patches covering the whole plant--roots, tubers, foliage--'until the haulms [stems] become a putrid mass...'"

The late blight was clearly attacking potatoes in the field.

Zuckerman points out that the attack of 1985 only destroyed about 40% of the harvest, with as yet relatively few deaths, partly because people sacrificed their pigs, which normally ate a third of the crop. The blight came back in 1846 and destroyed 90% of the harvest. The blight receded in 1847, but was as bad in 1848 as in 1846. Zuckerman goes on for a whole chapter.

There are also accounts in Noel Kingsbury's "Hybrid: the History and Science of Plant Breeding" and Julian Cribb's "The Coming Famine", and no doubt many other books that I don't have or can't find.

Here is a link to a paper on the late blight pathogen.

http://elife.elifesciences.org/content/2/e00731

Andras Smith,

It is you who are being selective with your facts. You don't mention successful countries with little or no population growth. The World Bank has figures for growth in GDP per capita (in real terms) for most countries over many years. I averaged the figures for Australia, Germany, Finland, and the US over the past 15 years: Australia 1.9%, Germany (declining population) 1.4%, Finland (miniscule population growth and immigration) 1.8%, and the US (high population growth, high immigration) 1.2%. Note that Germany and Finland didn't have a mining boom.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG

Has it occurred to you that those extremely low fertility rates in Southern and Eastern Europe might be do to economic insecurity and high unemployment, that you have your causality reversed?

You also don't consider the income distribution effects of your chosen path, that it redistributes income from labour to owners of land and capital. This graph shows trends in male wages in the US for different income groups

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4c-change-real-hourly-wages/

CEO to worker compensation ratio since 1965

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4-ceo-worker-compensation/

The average American male worker has been getting worse off since the 1970s in terms of wages. There is a lot more to the story than just mass migration of course, but it makes a significant difference to the groups that compete with immigrants. See the following chart and linked article by Prof. George Borjas (Economics, Harvard).

http://www.cis.org/north/borjas-charted-who-benefits-financially-immigration

If you have a special financial interest in the outcome of a debate and don't declare it, then you are astroturfing and deserve to be called on it. You haven't denied that you are a migration agent. Perhaps you would like to estimate your loss of income if immigration were cut to zero net? No wonder your panelists hate SPA. There are big bucks at stake.

Correction: Where I wrote 1985 in my post addressed to Spindoc, I meant 1845.

Hi Andras.

Serbia and Bulgaria have their own sets of problems. Your claim that they are economic basket cases because of population decline doesn't get much mention in the economic commentary I have read, and is certainly not considered to be of much significance.

I still cannot fathom your description of Russia. Its per capita GDP seems to have quadrupled since 1999.

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=rs&v=67

Do you really think Russia a basket case?

You also mention Hungary as a basket case, yet its per capita GDP seems to have almost tripled in the same time period. How do you conclude that the economy is being destroyed by a declining population when the population is apparently becoming much more productive? As a comparison, you might note that the per capita GDP of Bangladesh is almost unchanged over the same time frame. Would you conclude from this that high population growth is not improving things in this instance?

What is important is an educated population with infrastructure and working capital. When you dont have those things you have problems, which compound themselves as these factors guarantee poor governance. Throw in a single food cultivar as you did in Ireland and you can have a great tragedy.

spindoc, you just committed your own crime: oversimplification.
You reduce the Irish famine to one factor: storage.

The fact is no political party could develop policies based on *all* possible co-factors relevant to an issue.
They must simplify and prioritise.

Politicians need to make decisions and get results, not languish in consultant-hell for eternity.

Divergence,

No one is challenging the fact that potato blight had devastating effects on agriculture, not just in Ireland but in other parts of the world.

The issue is why it had a much bigger effect on Ireland and the complex reasons behind it.

“Paddy” is right, the agricultural ownership and harsh treatment of tenants also played its part and that historical issues are largely ignored by those who seek to apply post-modernist deconstruction to either ignore or rewrite history.

The ancient Egyptians, like every other agricultural society since, created stores of perishables to protect them from drought, pestilence and plague.

Britain and much of Europe had already started to shift perishables to the consumer via carts and markets to trade for other goods. Storage became decentralized or traded for other staple items and reserves better protected.

In Ireland their reserves were not there when they needed them because of outdated storage techniques, they were much more dependent upon potatoes because they failed to diversify and this is one of the key reasons the potato famine hit them harder than other nations. (See “Tribes of Britain”)

Even your own link points this out but I don’t suppose you read beyond the bits you liked?

You were correct in pointing the impact the English the absentee landlords had, but this just introduces yet more political, social and economic complexity.

Remember you started off your response to my assertion that these issues are very complex with, << I'll give you a simple example, Spindoc, the Irish Potato Famine >>

Then your response started to draw on dozens of issues that contributed to the famine. Every one of your subsequent links then adds to this complexity?

You offered simplicity then drifted off into more and more of the very complexity you seek to deny.

Isn’t this precisely what I said in the first place? The more you investigate, the more issues you identify as having an impact and the more you are forced away from an oversimplified solution?

Well done, you’ve just gone full circle

Hi S,

While the potato famine was a complex event, its victims were poor and uneducated, and so had little with which to buffer themselves from adversity. But at least many were able to migrate and so survive, as one of my ancestors did. What is known today is that family planning programs tend to correlate with improvement the education and economic circumstances, so making those populations better able to withstand adversity.

Spindoc,

From the point of view of an individual peasant farmer in the Potato Famine, the issue was quite simple: "peak land". He suddenly needed a lot more land to be able to grow enough grain to feed his family. The land was not to be had, because he was competing with a great many other peasant farmers who also needed more land, as well as landlords who wanted to profit from export crops. If he and his friends had gotten together to use the same tactics that the Hutus used to get more land in the Rwandan genocide, the British army would have marched in and hanged them.

Would the Irish have been better off without the landlords? Certainly. Would there have been enough land to feed 8.5 million people on grain with 1840s technology? I don't know, and neither does Malcolm King. Even if it were theoretically possible, local elites can be grasping too, and the money was likely to be in the export crops. There might have also been a much larger population, because better nutrition would have led to better child survival and probably higher fertility rates.

It is simple to identify the sustainability problem, and the concept of a peak is quite legitimate. Where the complexity comes in, is with identifying the cultural and other causes, and knowing these things may help in finding a solution before Nature does it for you, as in 1840s Ireland. It doesn't mean that we throw up our hands and say that it is all too complex or that we can't talk about peak anything.

It is true that potatoes are harder to store than grain, although they freeze-dry them in the Andes. It is also true that the late blight could attack potatoes in storage as well as in the field, but this hardly matters if the crop has already been wiped out in the field and you haven't had a decent crop in years in any case.

Divergence,

mate, maaaate. Peak land? What in the fruit loop are you talking about? Peak land re the first Irish Famine? Hutus? Rwanda? You've been reading Diamond again. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, read widely. Your sociological interpretation of history is embarrassing. But I will, if I may, use that. Peak land. Pure gold.

Are you making some sort of Dada type statement?

Case closed that Malcolm King aka Cheryl is a troll. Waste no time debating with him.

Hi Livio,

Might I suggest that Malcolm posts as he does because he sees no argument, let alone people engaging in one. While I remain skeptical of the benefit of a high immigration rate, I think that radical policy changes are a mark of reckless governance. Sudden change can have undesirable effects which may prejudice opinion against a good idea.

The Australian unemployment figure is approx 800,000 and rising. Why are the 457 visas even being considered to continue?
They and the massive migration numbers are only in existence because of the obeisance to big business from the lib/labs .
First scrap all political donations above a small amount. This of course to stop purchase of party favours.
Then gradually over a period of a year or so reduce migration and then scrap 567 visas altogether.
We will still have unemployment but it will be considerably reduced.
I might add that add that voting for the Sustainable Population party would be a big step in the right direction.
All of our problems stem from one source overpopulation.

Fester,

I don't speak for the Stable Population Party, but I believe it would be recognized that we couldn't immediately slam on the brakes. It would have to be made clear to the business lobby, though, that the party is nearly over, that they will have to start hiring locals and training again. Immigration would be progressively reduced down to zero net, as they essentially had in the US between 1921 and 1965. Some industries would need to be redeployed. For example, the construction industry could start attacking our $770 billion infrastructure backlog (according to Infrastructure Australia). The economist Richard Denniss has some good things to say about the infrastructure issue.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/solution-to-asylum-seekers-find-the-real-problem-20130426-2ik3t.html

An excellent article Jenny
As an engineer, I can testify that unless you address the underlying cause, in this case over population and over consumption, one can never solve the problems. Is truly staggering how many of our social and environmental problems are exacerbated by a growing population. 4 degrees as a limit is madness too. The ice is melting now and will only accelerate as temperature rises. This is schoolyard physics. We are past the tipping point but not the Point of No Return (PNR). However the if the population does not stabilise very soon we will pass the PNR and we and most species are doomed. What will our struggling grandchildren say about our excess and our failure to act in the face of so much quality scientific evidence?
Graham Wood

Thanks, D.

I understand that immigration policy should consider the whole cost, and should weigh this cost against say sourcing or training locally. But it is not simple, and I can understand the concerns of posters like S, who see the potential for harm. It would be nice to see some more robust economic analysis like that of the Productivity Commission. Were this to demonstrate advantage over existing policy, it would be silly to ignore it.

Fester,

This is from the 2010/2011 Productivity Commission Annual Report (p. 6):

"An understanding of the economic impacts of immigration is sometimes clouded by misperception. Two benefits that are sometimes attributed to immigration, despite mixed or poor evidence to support them, are that:
*immigration is an important driver of per capita economic growth
*immigration could alleviate the problem of population ageing."

http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/113407/annual-report-2010-11.pdf

From the 2005 Productivity Commission Report on Immigration (p. 154)

"Most of the economic benefits associated with an increase in skilled migration accrues to the immigrants themselves. For existing residents, capital owners receive additional income, with owners of capital in those sectors experiencing the largest output gains enjoying the largest gains in capital income. On the other hand, the real average annual incomes of existing resident workers grows more slowly than in the base-case, as additional immigrants place downward pressure on real wages. The economic impact of skilled migration is small when compared with other drivers of productivity and income per capita."

http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/9438/migrationandpopulation.pdf

Of course, there are educational and cultural benefits to having some immigration, and sometimes we really do need someone with particular skills from overseas to fill a niche. Our argument is with the huge numbers.

There are rich and powerful groups in the community, though, that really do benefit from mass migration at the expense of the majority of other existing residents, and they donate heavily to the major political parties. They get bigger domestic markets, high profits from real estate speculation, and a cheap, compliant work force that they don't have to train. The costs of the additional infrastructure are shared with everyone else in the community, as are the welfare and social costs when local people are passed over, denied training, or relegated to precarious casualised work alternating with unemployment. Our official statistics are ridiculously restrictive. Roy Morgan Research says we currently have 10.1% unemployment and 9.0% underemployment. Here is a backgrounder from the Center for Immigration Studies in the US on the motivation for hiring foreign workers

http://www.cis.org/labor-shortage-not-reason-employers-want-alien-workers

Most of the comments on this article are parochial and xenophobic.
It isn't immigration that is the problem. Overpopulation is a key factor in the limits to "economic growth". There isn't a politician who would voice this. Abbott is planning to reward people for having children, much like the Taiwanese (Guardian, 23.1.12).
What we need is another Supervolcano or two. Toba is estimated to have wiped out 60% of the human population. That would still only reduce us to the 1974 figures of around 4.2 billion.
Perhaps Nature's ability to regulate excessive populations will come to the rescue of the Human species (if, indeed, that is a "good thing").

Hi D.

Yes, Costello commissioned the PC Report, but lost interest when it didn't give the answer he wanted. We still need more analysis: An estimate of per capita public infrastructure cost would be an essential first step, as it would be important in comparing sourcing labour locally or from os. Leaving aside the benefit of a more skilled population, I suspect that even on a cost basis it would be far cheaper to source locally. It would also alert the public to growth in public debt as a result of population growth. But without the analysis, it is only speculation.

Hi dmisso,

<What we need is another Supervolcano or two.>

Why not a few more genetically engineered super-crop cultivars and a WHO drive to give the world's women access to contraception? There is strong evidence suggesting that the World's population would stabilise and the economic circumstances of the poor would improve substantially if women had access to family planning services. Why would you rather them die in a calamity?

Yes Fester, I agree with the WHO initiative, though not with the GM solution.
Unfortunately, Religion and self importance get in the way of a meaningful reduction in the birth rate. Humans seem to believe that they are the peak of evolution or, worse, that they have been "chosen" to be important.
Countries with a high infant mortality rate might have some excuse to celebrate a new addition to their number, but Western cultures? I fail to see why we make such a big thing of what is essentially an instinctive and biologically driven process. Surely, with the intellect in todays world, we should be celebrating the self restraint of non-breeding people.
Perhaps we need an education initiative that stresses that we are only one form of organism on this planet and that, other than our proficiency in destroying our own nest, we are not that special.
Population reduction will only occur through the intervention of natural disasters. In the meantime we applaud every discovery that cures some disease and delays the inevitable. We save lives for what? The next famine, the wheelchair, the curiosity (and vanity) of doctors?
Fortunately, many of todays smarter youngsters are opting out of the breeding race.

dmisso,

Australia's fertility rate has been slightly below replacement level since 1976. It is not a problem. There is still some natural increase in the local population, but it is entirely due to demographic momentum from pre-1976 population growth (large young adult generation relative to the elderly generation, so there are more births than deaths). Natural increase is getting smaller all the time and expected to end entirely some time in the 2030s.

From ABS figures, we are growing at 1.8% annually, enough to double the population in 38 and half years and keep doubling it at the same rate indefinitely. 60% of the growth is due to immigration and 40% from natural increase, about a third of which is from births to mothers born overseas.

Back in 1994, the Australian Academy of Science recommended 23 million as a safe upper limit for Australia's population due to pressures on the environment, and resource and quality of life issues. We are there now. If we want to stop growing, talking about immigration isn't xenophobic, it is facing facts.

Fester,

I agree with you about a proper economic analysis - and about what it is likely to find.

The organised anti population and anti immigration advocates such as Sustainable Populaton Australia and Stable Population Party neither offer empirical evidence for their claims nor explain how they will implement thier "philosophy"?

In fact, their arguments for population are simply an "academic veneer" to mask their deep white nativist beliefs.

Divergence, thanks for the heads up, CIS who you link to, like Dr. Bob Birrell (Australia's best demographer according to FM Senator Bob Carr and patron of Sustainable Population Australia) of CPUR at Monash University, have something in common, John Tanton.

'Hobnobbing with extremists: CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian posed in 2007 with Kyle Bristow, then a student leader at Michigan State University who ranted publicly about "Judeo-Bolshevism." ........ Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) to suggest a link between Washington Mutual's commitment to opening its ranks to Latinos and its demise spoke volumes about the nature of CIS and its prolific research.

Although the think tank bills itself as an "independent" organization with a "pro-immigrant" if "low-immigration" vision, the reality is that CIS has never found any aspect of immigration that it liked.' (much like CPUR)' http://www.splcenter.org/publications/the-nativist-lobby-three-faces-of-intolerance/cis-the-independent-think-tank

The fulcrum is John Tanton's journal The Social Contract Press TSCP to whom Dr. Bob Birrell has contributed over many years: http://www.thesocialcontract.com as has aspiring SPA Senator candidate Mark O'Connor.

If you read through some of the articles in TSCP it's hilarious, right on par with Thetan theory from Scientology.

I also have a question for Jenny Goldie, what was the 'semi bawdy' song that Labor MP Kelvin Thompson was singing with Phil Cafaro of Progressives for Immigration Reform (also part of the Tanton network) at the 2011 population meeting in Washington? I'm not insinuating it was sexual in nature, possibly something else?

Word of warning to Australian political parties and policy makers, although your own parties maybe the last resort of ageing white people in Australia preferring a 1950s vision, you make the GOP Republicans look very moderate indeed:

http://www.cafeconlecherepublicans.com/is-immigration-reform-suicide-for-republicans/

Andras Smith "ageing white people in Australia preferring a 1950s vision"

White Australia didn't end in the 1950s.

Most Australians alive today grew up in White Australia, whether in country towns or those parts of our cities the NSW premier lamented were still "monocultural" *today*.

I bet you support those Tibetans nostalgic for a Tibetan-dominated Tibet.
And Palestinians who remember the good old days of an Arab-dominated Palestine.

But White people? Dominating a nation they themselves created? How dare they!

The kinship instinct runs deep (that's why there are ethnic ghettos).
Your utopian fantasy is brittle and weak and based on nothing truly meaningful.
Your persistence with it will only result in more people harmed when it all falls apart.

And the only 1950s I'm interested in has a rockabilly/exotica soundtrack, striptease and beefcake, loud heavy motorcycles and skintight leopard print slacks.
Dig it, daddy-o!

<Population reduction will only occur through the intervention of natural disasters.>

Hi dmisso.

I've read research from the Rand Organisation which would suggest that human motivation is more economic than cultural. Family planning programs are successful wherever they are properly implemented. The problem lies with the logistics of providing them, not their public acceptance. For me, population is more human rights than problem humans.

Hi Andras,

My motivation is to see Australia prosper, as I am sure your's is. But tell me why you think population growth is so good for us? I find Mark O'Connor's concerns about infrastructure costs quite compelling, and they seem to be supported by the national infrastructure backlog and recent increases in public sector debt.

I am interested to hear your own views and what real examples have formed your opinions.

I can help with the infrastructure figs Fester.

Dr Jane O'Sullivan, a Queensland SPP Senate Candidate, wrote that Australia's infrastructure spend is currently 25 per cent of GDP or about $200K spend per person. She said this was due to high population growth.

She based her statement on Lester Thurow's 1986 article 'Why the Ultimate Size of the World's Population Doesn't Matter' in MIT's Technology Review. You won't find the title of the article publicized much by the SPP for obvious reasons. Thurow estimated that it required 12.5 per cent of GDP to expand capacity at 1 per cent per year.

Dr Sullivan said, "Australian estimates would suggest that figure is right in our ball-park too… So, if we're currently growing at two per cent per year, then 25 per cent of our GDP is currently being used to expand capacity to accommodate the people who are not yet here (or will have to be spent eventually to catch up). This means that the GDP available per capita to serve current residents is 25 per cent less than the advertised per capita GDP."

What Lester actually said was:

"If the United States had a four percent population growth rate, one half of its entire GDP would have to be devoted to investing in those new Americans."

For the record, the United States recently registered its lowest population growth rate since the Great Depression at 0.73 percent. Population growth has slowed dramatically across the developed world just as demographers predicted it would.

Dr Sullivan's quote of four percent population growth is based on a Thurow hypothetical and has no relevance in the States or here. It is not, nor ever will be $200K per person, which is ridiculous.

Australia's spend on infrastructure, as a percentage of GDP, was 10.5 per cent in 2012 as per:
http://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/2012/files/stats_002.pdf

Thanks Malcolm,

From your info, and assuming a 50 year life for infrastructure, Australia would have a per capita public infrastructure value of a bit under $100k. This is far more encouraging than the $250k+ figure that I have heard. It would also suggest that the failure of government to control debt during a time of increasing revenue may be more a matter of incompetence.

Question for the SPP - re your Senate prefs in NSW (I'll look at the other states later).

Why why have you preferences Pauline Hanson and One Nation above The Greens?

You've also preferences The Australian Motor Enthusiasts Party before The Greens?

Please explain.

This is from an article on the drum by William Bourke on onfrastructure:

"The best information I currently have is a recent report by Curtin University which found that state development costs including infrastructure for new suburbs are $684,000 per dwelling. At the national average of around 2.6 people per household that’s approximately $263,000 per person.

"What is the full cost to Australian taxpayers once you include all state and federal costs? $500,000 per person? Hopefully more detailed information will soon come to light and we’ll all know.

"Infrastructure Partnerships Australia reports that we have a national infrastructure backlog of $770 billion. It’s becoming clear why we have impoverished government budgets at every level.

"Putting aside the enormous and often ignored environmental and social costs for a moment, does this evidence help demonstrate that population growth on our thin green coastal strip has reached the stage where diminishing returns have become negative? That is, uneconomic. Or are our politicians too frightened to tell us?"

If Malcolm King is right, why is there such a large infrastructure backlog, which we can see for ourselves with traffic congestion, long hospital waiting lists, skyrocketing utility bills, etc.? Why won't the government put out the figures? As William Bourke says in the above article

"It’s a real challenge to find information on the per capita cost of infrastructure for some reason. Growthist governments and business groups don’t normally leave that sort of information lying around."

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/39930.html

Interesting, Divergence. It would be nice to know the actual value. But if Malcolm's figure is accurate, I can understand his stance. You might also note that the idea of an infrastructure backlog is contentious.

I've never heard of the Curtin study. Looks like CBD and fringe development.

This is the methodology. WA? Future Perth, 22 studies? I'll have a look later.

"For determining the infrastructure costs of inner city and fringe developments, the main source of data was drawn from a paper prepared for the Western Australia Planning Commission in 2001. The report, titled Future Perth, was compiled by Environmental Resource Management Pty Ltd (ERM) with the intent to identify the economic cost differences between developments in inner, middle and fringe areas. It reviewed the information produced by 22 studies across Australia, America, and Canada and sorted the cost findings into three different measures of urban form: inner, middle, and outer. The Future Perth report drew on studies that ranged between the years of 1972 to 2000 but adjusted the reported costs to 1999 prices. "

It is always possible to argue about exactly how much infrastructure is needed and how much we should pay for it, but that doesn't affect the general line of reasoning. Just think about how much public and private infrastructure is needed to support your family's lifestyle: roads, bridges, sewers, water mains and water treatment plants, power plants and power lines, schools, hospitals, etc. This is all very expensive. A new migrant needs all the infrastructure right away, but he isn't required to (and usually couldn't) pay up front. If immigration is modest, this isn't a major concern. People emigrate as well as immigrating, and there is some slack in the system.

At present though, with our 1.8% population growth rate, overwhelmingly from immigration, we are adding 1.3 milliion people every three years, almost exactly the population of Adelaide. The infrastructure costs of adding the equivalent of a new Adelaide every three years would have to be enormous. If the new migrant is skilled and on a decent salary, he will eventually contribute enough to pay for his family's share, but it may take decades. In the meantime, our government is piling on still more people. The only alternatives are (1) borrow the money (but how would it be paid back if growth continues?), (2) raise taxes on existing residents, and (3) let the infrastructure become overstretched and deteriorate. The economist Richard Denniss explains this well

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/solution-to-asylum-seekers-find-the-real-problem-20130426-2ik3t.html

Nothing to do with your instrumental migration analysis. It's not a tax per head measure as Gov gets monies from corp tax, bonds, sale of assets, offshore and onshore investments, loans, etc. The SPP are ridiculous reductionists hell bent on an anti-immigration agenda as I have written elsewhere and most recently here.

Your preferences tell all.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54774

Hi Divergence,

< The infrastructure costs of adding the equivalent of a new Adelaide every three years would have to be enormous. >

That is precisely what we dont know.

Hi Malcolm,

Family planning has had terrible failures, but such services have been available and successful in developed countries, and many developing countries also. My interest is in seeing people have a choice.