Actually I do have something to add. We who are concerned about overpopulation do repeat some of the material from the 1960s simply because it is still valid. It all comes down to, as Ethelwyn notes, a balance between resources and population, particularly natural resources such as water. Sure, you can fit more people in if the standard of living falls i.e. consumption is reduced, or if technology changes for the better (for instance, we all shifted to renewable energy)but in the end it's a matter of how many people can be fed without destroying the habitats of other species. Can we feed the 9.6 billion that the UN estimates we'll have in 2050? Possibly, but not if climate change is unmitigated and we're heading for four degrees C warming. Ross Garnaut warned we'd lose 92% of irrigated crops from the Murray-Darling Basin by the end of the century with no mitigation. There's no way we'll feed the projected 70-80 million domestic population. We won't even feed the current 23 million. And let's not forget oil that will be largely gone - shale oil notwithstanding - by mid-century. So much industrial agriculture depends on oil, it will affect food production profoundly.

I never cease to be amazed that people like the author of this essay still don`t know that Australia is already overpopulated.
Infinite growth, be it population or otherwise, is not possible and certainly not sustainable on a finite, overcrowded, and overstressed, planet.
Perhaps he should be on the first spaceship out.
Go the Sustainable Population Party!! !
The only party with some sense.

One small issue in a follow up to Popnperish. The real news story has nothing to do with population which is a furphy in Australia. Go to Africa. They'll love you there with your sterilisation track record from the 1950s and 60s.

The real story is why Sustainable Population Australia - which receives money as a charity - allowed the Stable Population Party to call itself the Sustainable Population Party.

SPA = a not for profit, advocating allegedly environmental change and anti-immigration and also accepting public tax deductable donations.

SPA = a political party funded by Dick Smith and Flight Centre CEO, whose aim is to reduce immigration.

Can you tell the difference? Probity my bum.

Yuyutsu you are of course right.

I stand corrected.

Of course population growth is a furphy in Australia, Malcolm. That is why the Australian Conservation Foundation nominated human population growth in Australia as a Key Threatening Process under the Environmental Protection Act.

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

If you read the nomination, you will see that the harm isn't just due to the direct impact of the domestic population, but also due to the damage done to produce the exports that are needed to pay for the all the imports for the domestic population. But, of course, a PR man knows far more about such things than a bunch of biologists. The people in our cities who are putting up with more crowding and congestion, inflated housing costs, skyrocketing utility bills, and other diseconomies of scale might also disagree with you, even though you try to blame it all on stupid politicians.

So far as the temporary migrants are concerned, what we talk about is net immigration (immigration - emigration), usually according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). If the temporary migrants go home, the ABS counts them as emigrants, and it doesn't count them at all if they don't stay for 12 months. Even if the temporary migrants don't stay permanently, and the vast majority want to, the impact remains if they are just replaced by other temporary migrants. Our population growth rate for the year ended June 2013 was 1.8%, enough to double our numbers in 38 and a half years.

How exactly do you expect Sustainable Population Australia to stop the Stable Population Party from changing its name to Sustainable Population Party? Liberals vs. Liberal Democrats, anyone?

As for Rhrosty, he is happy to enjoy the benefits of living in Australia, while telling the people who want to secure those same benefits for their children, grandchildren, and fellow citizens to go kill themselves. (Some of these evil people even believe that other species have a right to live too.) Wee bit hypocritical, eh, Rhrosty? I sure that there is a nice family in Somalia or Bangladesh that would love to trade places with you.

The thing we need to do, is build an inland shipping canal right though the dead centre, and end it at Lake Eyre, which would reward us by always staying full, and a then practical, transport hub.
The canal, could be a two way system, which would then be able to utilize, huge northern tides, to continually flush the system.
We should build bund walls along those parts below sea level, most of it! Then use gravity, to feed millions of miles of buried ag pipes, wrapped in high tech membrane filters, which would in turn, allow us to grow all manner of new crops, where previously none were possible, due to the fact, many plants have greater water pulling power than many pumps!
Windmills could be utilized to return the leftover highly salinated solutions? After some of it, had been used in new, cheaper than coal, thorium reactors, or geothermal heat saving heatsinks? Or light metals smelting etc?
Choosing the right crops, and utilizing the new waterway, and very rapid turn around roll on roll off transport options, would ensure exponentially expanding, returns/profit margins, and allow us to contemplate a population base as large as a sustainable 100 million.
This size of population, would enable many new industries, which need a much larger homeland population base to make them practical!
Moreover, a larger population as envisaged, would make us much more defendable.
We are not overpopulated, just under developed!
Rhrosty.