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.