< …population dynamics play an important role in our overall security. >

Of course!

And as it affects Australia, surely the achievement of a stable population that is not too much higher than the current level is surely totally in line with the best defence strategy.

The fundamental reasons are:

1. If we don’t achieve a stable population, where the demand for everything can stop forever increasing and can be within our means to supply it all, then we will have a greater degree of financial capability to properly develop our defence systems. Whereas if we keep going on as currently are, we will be forever financially nobbled by the enormous demand for basic infrastructure and services to cater for the ever-rapidly-increasing number of new residents.

2. If we keep going on as we are, all manner of stresses will manifest themselves to an ever-greater extent. Dealing with internal conflicts will largely consume the energies and financial capabilities that should have been put into developing our national defence systems.

3. Even if we were amazingly successful in growing our population and developing the north, we would still have a TINY population compared to that of Indonesia and China… and we would probably only succeed in making ourselves look like a more attractive target for invasion.

Well yes, but not as even greater expansion of our already over populated overpriced capital cities!
We need to decentralize, and nothing would assist that more than the roll out of rapid rail, which would pay for itself, when some of the resumed and rezoned land, were later sold as urban housing development.
And then only to individual home builders, with all their fiances fully secured; if only to deal the usual medley of price gouging, profit demanding, do nothing middle men,(robber broker barons?) out of the deal, thereby restoring affordability!
The successfully tendering builders could double as project managers, and only receive partial payments, for material; [around one third of the total,] until the building was complete and satisfactorily delivered.
After that, a significant increase in our population requires the still missing vision and with it, the development of our arid inland!
And only by building a multi-purpose shipping canal, which would carry all the product out/raw materials in, and double as an endlessly reliable source of usable water!
All powered by solar thermal or cheaper than coal thorium.
That said, it's just not population that is the final arbiter of genuine security, but manufacturing capacity as well!
And we seem to be shoveling that out the door as fast as we can, and in most cases, for the traditional forty pieces of Judas's Quisling silver!?
Rhrosty.

Yes, population is a security issue although perhaps the author doesn't stress enough the critical issue of rapid population growth and how it impedes 'development' (at least the climbing out of poverty aspect). Poverty, especially hunger, is a catalyst for civil unrest. Ten million young Ugandans will be in search of jobs before long and goodness knows where they'll find them - it's another recipe for civil unrest. Why so many? Because Uganda has a youth bulge, the result of excessive population growth a decade and more ago.

It's time the UN Security Council treated population growth (AND climate change) as security issues.

Peter, this is a good article outlining the myriad issues surrounding population growth. You and many other authors seem to assume that world and Australian population will continue to grow with no end in sight.
Perhaps you should explore ways in which population can be contained? The world and Australia are full up, we don’t need any more people.
Australia could set an example and cease all immigration from any sources.

Excellent comment, Ludwig. Among the main reasons that our state and federal governments are scrabbling for money, cutting back on services, and privatising everything in sight are the enormous costs of the extra infrastructure and public services needed for a rapidly expanding population. See

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2014/05/kohler-soaring-population-killing-budgets/

and Jane O'Sullivan's article in Economic Affairs

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0270.2011.02125.x/pdf

Rhrosty, of course Australia could support a much bigger population if the interior desert could be made green and fertile, but it is really silly to just go on boosting our population in the hope that something will turn up. Technologies can't be whistled up to order and often have deal-breaking side effects. What seems simple and obvious to people outside a field may not appear so to those with greater knowledge.

Not hoping for something to turn up Divergence, just already existing and already tried and not found wanting technology, which you seem unaware of?
Moreover, because you personally are unaware of these simple but extremely successful technologies, doesn't mean,we don't have them; just that you personally, just don't know about them. [Which probably explains the lack of this alternative growth system, the length and breath of the country?]
Like the system of burying membrane covered agpipes that then allows various crops to directly drink osmosis created fresh water, from an endlessly circulating salt water supply.
Some plants have better suction/water extraction systems, than the most powerful pumps! Follow?
And given wind and or sunlight is generally plentiful in our arid interior, plenty of power to pump the newly introduced salt water supply; or treated effluent, to suitably high storage, so as to allow continual day and night circulation/supply.
Initially I would only envisage intense under glass production, to maximize actual (out of season?) production numbers, and provide maximized income streams, to further widen and broaden this salt/waste water reliant crop production; and expand it or regional population numbers, using collected pristine evaporate.
And here I hear you say, if it's that good why aren't we already doing it? Simply put, we are!
The latter we do already, just by placing endlessly topped up/recharged trays of salt sea water, around the floor, in glass houses, where the evaporate dependent crops are sown/grow out in suitable trays.
Already done in SA!
Can't died in a corn crop over a century ago!
Rhrosty.

Peter,

For the obvious reasons that we are going broke ( selling assets, borrowing and still going backwards ), massive habitat loss growing real unemployment, education and research decline.......we must move to balanced migration.

That is, outflow equals inflow. Around 80,000 people a year.

The property development and banking industries have taken over Labour and Liberal parties.

Australians are asleep at the wheel. Google " Sustainable Population Party".

Best,

Ralph

What the pro population growth brigade needs to understand is that the more people we have the less a quality of life we'll have.
Which do you prefer ?

Rhrosty,

Trickle-drip irrigation has its advantages and has been around for a long time. You can even set up such a system in your home garden. You blithely talk about osmosis, but it takes lots of energy to force sea water through a membrane and leave the salt behind. Desalinated water is 4 to 6 times as expensive as dam water, OK for coastal cities, but much too expensive for agriculture, except maybe for growing vegetables in greenhouses near the city. There are also enormous costs if the water has to be pumped for any distance -- water is heavy. Most of the interior has ferocious evaporation rates and poor soil quality, as well as lack of rainfall. See these maps from Dr Chris Dixon of the CSIRO:

http://www.australianpoet.com/boundless.html

Then there are the rising real costs of agricultural inputs as we run out of cheap oil and phosphate.

http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/crude-oil/all/

http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/phosphate-rock/all/

http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/

What is wrong with the precautionary principle? Your technologies haven't been proven until they are found to work cost-effectively on a wide scale. This needs to be done before there is any talk of a bigger population. Otherwise, you are likely to just make Australia as poor, populous, and environmentally degraded as the places that people are currently risking their lives to escape. Not to mention the defence issues as people start turning on each other, especially seeing that our politicians have put in so many ethnic and sectarian fracture lines.

But right now, today as you read, the most pressing & urgent issue consuming all sapient beings in Caaanbra is ISIS, yes the ISIS Crisis ! PS: Don't mention the War ...ssshh !

Let's share our abundant plains with all who sail to our shores, and what a great set of words for an anthem for those desiring to live here, either as compliant assimilating future Aussies or those who wish to decapitate, rape and have us submit to their way of life !

In any event, if we don't say NO to the proposed changes to the common law rights (already seriously eroded under Fuhrer Howard) by acceptance of Herr Brandis's proposed laws, then we have lost to ISIS already.

The creeping fascism I feared 10 years ago, is about to visit us all.

Rhosty said;
roll out of rapid rail, which would pay for itself, when some of the
resumed and rezoned land, were later sold as urban housing development.

So who would want to live next to a fast rail line ?
Then have the all night diesels thundering through.

In other words it is the biological imperatives, or lack of--{land
and resources etc, and overpopulation) also recognised as economic hardship or poverty.
that drive war,genicide,starvation,and disease.

Not intolerance as is taught in our universities.

On this planet nature still rules in the final analysis.

I wouldn’t class GDP as a particularly good measure of quality of life, but a look at these charts shows the capital cities in Australia are performing badly when it comes to increasing GDP.

Most increases in GDP in Australia come from regional WA and regional QLD (probably from iron ore and coal exports).

http://www.sgsep.com.au/insights/urbecon/gdp-growth-how-are-australias-major-cities-performing/

Increases in GDP in Sydney are the highest of the capital cities, but this is probably linked to increasing the population of Sydney (mainly through immigration), which can superficially increase GDP.

So it means that the capital cities have minimal effect on increasing wealth, and are quite possibly acting as a drag on increasing GDP per capita, which is now constant in Australia and not increasing.

Meanwhile the capital cities consume much of the natural resources of the country, to often produce a low quality of life for city inhabitants, as well as contributing little to the wealth of the country.

Totally agree Incomuicardo

Cities only provide goods and services to other people in
cities. Cities actually produce little wealth.

The real wealth of the country is mined,grown,leeched
chopped, harnessed as in water hydro, and taken to the cities
where it provides goods and services.

Most city jobs are services jobs.

Population growth is not infinite, nor is the earth or humanity finite in a static state system, it is predicted that population growth will stabilise by 2050 except for sub Saharan Africa.

How ever, unless you are nationalist, this is part of the solution, not the problem, according to Prof. Ian Goldin of the Oxford Martin School, and his book 'Exceptional People' where he predicts that sub Saharan Africa will be an important source of immigrants for work, etc.. http://www.economist.com/node/18741382

Further, immigration is the best form of international development and relations via remittances, knowledge, expertise etc., and not unlike EU mobility, it is about 'turnstile' or 'temporary' migration i.e. 'churn over', with youth taking it for granted that like the rich world, one can travel.

We see this manifested in Australia with most population growth (according to the NOM 12/16 month rule) being amongst temporaries who pay study fees, or pay taxes when working, yet have no access to benefits etc. (nor skilled immigration except under the cap). This means that they are subsidising the permanent population, and in terms of national debt, they decrease the per capita figure.

Nation states and nationalists may still sabre rattle and assert themselves, but in many respects they are not in control, even if they would like to be .... the world and nations have changed.

PS ironic title, sounds like 'Population Matters', the John Tanton network arm in the UK, of whom Jane O'Sullivan is on Advisory Council, and Bob Carr's mate Paul Ehrlich, and old Tanton mucker, as Patron, small world :)