Malcolm 'Paddy' King "the kind of mentality that posits that a migrant’s worth can be measured by what they achieve solely in economic terms. Base and repulsive."

Isn't that what the pro-immigration lobby do all the time?

So what is of value from immigration *other than* economic impact?

More takeaway restaurants seems to be the only impact, and that is also "economic".

Anything we want from other cultures we can already access, without psychically transporting millions of people from one side of the planet to the other.

You want recipes, music, films, books, art prints, information of any kind?
All available from online stores and other websites.

Local dressmakers/tailors can make clothes to any specifications you desire or again you can order them online.

This is the Information Age. The whole world is at your fingertips.

Andras Smith "will need to apply for a resident return visa."

What nonsense!
As if CITIZENS would have to "apply" to enter their own country.
They are not "leaving" Australia, they are on vacation.

"as Australia withdraws from visa and international treaties, many Australians would be forced to return home, thus increasing population"

Even if this were true, it would be a temporary stage.

This debate is not about tourism.

There are a million Australians now living abroad.
That's the equivalent of about 8 years of current intake.
Which would itself stop.

You propose *never* stopping immigration.

Which is more ludicrous?
The return of 1 million Australians or the intake of an *infinite* number of others?

More BS from the flat earth society, who is whom?

You're very good at telling us what you don't want, but you cannot tell us what your actual working policies would be and how would you implement them? Very coy, and very courageous hiding behind monikers.....

Which one of you behind these monikers is Mark O'Connor, William Bourke or any one of the SPP/SPA cult of how to sustain the status quo, demonise non Europeans and further the interests of the wealthy 'skipocracy'?

You show your true colours as SPP/SPA cannot produce any empirical evidence and rely upon distortion of data, presentation of misconstrued conclusions or findings, and deflect attention from this fact by attacking good research, and demonising those with whom you disagree, or have the gall to make up their own minds.

It's all neo con tactics, but even many neo cons now run a mile from the John Tanton's opaque network (which is directly linked to Birrell, Betts, Bob Carr's SPA and SPP, plus Kelvin Thomson's friends at Progressives for Immigration Reform PFIR in the US) whose other front FAIR has been blocking immigration reform in the USA, irrespective of whether Democrat or GOP initiatives.

Why is the GOP keeping well away from these types, apart from the obvious committed 'beliefs and attitudes' about non European 'immigrants' (not unlike those on the hard right whom John McCain describe as 'lemmings in suicide vests')?

Because your game is already lost, as the GOP realised, 'hang on, we're being encouraged to attack our own future constituency?!'

What is this constitency? Well it's neither WASPish nor Irish ..... and ditto in Oz, monocultural politicians (and business etc.) who ignore NESBs, immigrants etc. do so at their own peril..... i.e. become unelectable.

Lets play a little game together. Lets call it 'Get the Migrant'. Lets suggest that Divergence and the SPA/SPP (same thing) are right and migrants only contribute a small positive gain to the economy. We won't argue the toss about the data fed in to these models or the hypothesis behind them, which can produce wildly varying results.

If that's the case, then the four million migrants (lets not disseminate between skilled and unskilled or their families, who according to the SPA/SPP posters here, a re a 'shocking drain' on an economy producing $1.7 trillion GDP pa) from 1945-2005 (approx), have also been a yoke around the necks of the economy.

Lets just have a look at that: the Ord River scheme, the Snowy Mts Hydro, Kimberly mines, Darwin to Adelaide rail, the Australian car industry (as it was then), the rise of migrant small businesses and trade as well as a large section of our national agriculture and construction industry, was and is comprised by migrants from that cohort.

Yet according to the SPA/SPP, all of that has been a zero sum game. Why? Because those migrants consumed what they saved and bought (food, houses, etc). So their consumption destroyed the public utility of their labour and skills. So according to Divergence, Goldie, Bourke, Smith and Turner, the measure of a person's worth is how little they consume - not what they create. Which was trillions of dollars in labour/infrastructure.

Continued.

Does the curse of 'migrant consumership' also pass to their second and third generations; their well educated children? Of course. Because once you shackle being human with consumption, there's no escape is there? It's a deterministic chain of cause and effect which condemns migrants the moment they step foot on Australia.

But if that's true, how do 'we' escape the same cruel fate because we're all immigrants? You do it by starting a political party that jabbers on about the importance of the environment - without having an environmental record - and which privileges white Australia. Of course you have half a dozen name changes until you hit on the term 'sustainable' and voila!

Now in a week or so's time Dick Smith and Graeme Turner, the money behind the SPP, are going to front the National Press Club without any stand alone research. They'll wave the 2006 PC and show some graphs and call for Fortress Australia. How is this likely to go down with the press? Half will smile benignly as you would an idiot child and the other half will tear Smith and Turner's throats out.

Malcom King,

I’d like to know what you think would be a satisfactory number for Australia’s population.

I thinks there are two things the public can never afford to happen.

1/ The workforce can never afford an oversupply of labour. If this happens, workers will lose their value, their wages and working conditions are 100% likely to drop, the middle class is eliminated, and it can easily produce the “working poor”, with only the 1% making much money.

2/ There should not be an undersupply of housing. It this happens, housing costs go up, and someone will have to work most of their lives to pay for a roof over their heads, and often the standard of housing becomes poor quality housing in suburban jungles.

But, OH NO.

Australia now has an oversupply of labour with 740,000 looking for work (not to mention the underemployed), and an undersupply of houses, (and house prices are some of the highest in the world).

So it definitely looks like Australia is well and truely overpopulated, with about 60% of population growth now coming from immigration.

If the present system continues, immigrants will have no future in Australia, much like everyone else.

Andras Smith, I have nothing to do with SPP and Shockadelic is not a "moniker".
It's my real name.

"as the GOP realised, 'hang on, we're being encouraged to attack our own future constituency?!'"

You said it!
That's why they're "keeping well away from these types".

It has nothing to do with who's right, honest or the best interests of America.

It is pure self-interest by the party, who must maintain their power no matter what.
They care about votes, not voters.

"monocultural politicians who ignore NESBs, immigrants etc."

You're presuming ALL these people are pro-immigration, just because they're immigrants themselves.

Politicians who ignore no-hyphen-required-Australians do so at their own peril.

One Nation got a million votes.
The next incarnation will get more.
And the one after more still.

Because the more extreme this multi nonsense becomes, the more Australians will be *sick to death* of it.

The furthering of your "cause" will actually destroy it.

Malcolm 'Paddy' King "the Australian car industry (as it was then)"

Yes, that was then and this is now.

We have a labour surplus (700,000 unemployed).
We barely survived the GFC.
We have almost no manufacturing (a traditional foot in the door for immigrants) left.

"we're all immigrants"

No, a quarter of the population are.
In the 1940s it was only 10%.

Of the quarter that are foreign, about half are easily-absorbable Europeans (our ethnic kin).

So the ignore-at-our-peril crowd is about 13% of the population?

Oooh, I'm scared!