An 'innovative' thought would be to completely dismantle ALL national borders and just let 'citizens of our joint world' move around as they can afford it . . . . after all the fact that some nations are fortunate to have mountains of iron ore to flog and/or uranium or oil or whatever . . . is not because they actually grew the stuff . . . . in a true Sociologist socialist framework does not it belong to everybody? including the Chinese who have a mantra of espousing when it suits them of 'Socialism with Chinese characteristics'. . . but what about their record of Human rights and the fact that freedom of speech and religion is only correctly interpreted by The Party? "Now don't you worry about that!" [aka a deceased but 'innovative' Qld Premier] just flog them more iron ore/uranium when the prices hopefully pick up a bit. . . "Workers of the world unite - We alone know what is right!" [or should that be Left?]

Hi Alice,

Actually Bahasa Indonesia is a beautiful language, and not too hard to learn, for at least its basics. Beautiful language, beautiful people - you know it makes sense.

G'day Ateday,

Australia's birth-rate is well below replacement level - in fact, our birth-rate is held up by the family generation of new arrivals. Our potential workforce is on the verge of declining, while our over-65s are about to increase rapidly: i.e. the ratio of workers to dependents is about to rise significantly. We need young people to keep the economy to even at its present levels. So where do we get them ?

But jobs in the near and more distant future will be predicated on skills. We certainly don't need any more unskilled people, we need skilled people - frankly, hungry, innovative, bright young highly skilled people. The problem is that they will probably have to come from overseas and thereby deplete their own countries of skilled people UNLESS the education systems (and human rights systems) there in those countries can be improved.

I suppose that's when it gets complicated.

Cheers,

Joe

Divergence,
If governments didn't have an irrational fear of debt, that would not be a problem at all.

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CIA,
Your waffle doesn't make much sense.

Come on Syd, open your eyes a bit.

Turnbull is a catastrophe. Running around the world blowing his fool mouth off, & handing out our cash to try to buy some approval. Give the fool half a chance & he'll give our birth right to the UN, just to receive the pat on the head his ego is desperate for.

Did you notice the swing in the by-election? A catastrophe as expected by thinking people, & this is even before most of the population have woken up to the peanut.

If he is still Liberal leader at the next election, expect a bloodbath, worse than Gillard deserved & received. She was nowhere near as bad as Turnbull. Gillard was just a fool, Turnbull is a bloody minded fool.

Even I could vote Labor. If we are going to have an idiot giving us bad government, we might as well have the experts in bad government, rather than this waffling clown.

Oh dear me, look at all the good ol' boys still crying into their hankies about the loss of their great right PM. It almost moves me to tears of laughter reading it all.
Turnbull is doing well boys...get over it and vote for labour if you don't like that fact.

As for any little group of millionaires scraping together an anti-immigration party making any bit of difference to the political landscape, forget it. One only needs to look at the train wrecks caused by Palmer, and that similar American idiot Trump, to see that money can't produce successful politicians or political parties.

Dick should just stick with electronics, and leave politics well alone...

Not sure what Dick Smith (former sceptic) et al are on but they do not seem to understand basic science and evidence, but more about expressing strong biases and prejudices, at best 'pseudoscience'.

From Salon, featuring New Scientist writer Fred Pearce's book:

'In his latest book, “The Coming Population Crash: And Our Planet’s Surprising Future,” Pearce argues that the world’s population is peaking. In the next century, we’re heading not for exponential growth, but a slow, steady decline. This, he claims, has the potential to massively change both our society and our planet: Children will become a rare sight, patriarchal thinking will fall by the wayside, and middle-aged culture will replace our predominant youth culture. Furthermore, Pearce explains, the population bust could be the end of our environmental woes. Fewer people making better choices about consumption could lead to a greener, healthier planet.'

http://www.salon.com/2010/04/19/population_crash_ext2010/

Not only does he write based on empirical evidence, i.e. facts and reality, in the book Pearce also cites one of Australia's most famous demographic researchers Jack Caldwell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Caldwell_(demographer)

What he learnt aboout Bob Malthus through to the 'population bombers' and Club of Rome with their 'sustainable environment' and 'steady state' ideas or untested theory is really about, and it's not quantitative, but 'qualitative' :)

Or as Monbiot says, they ignore any correlation between ageing white wealthy types' (massive footprint) with environment issues, but focus on a supposed correlation between non-Europeans and environment issues wink wink... but they are not bigots, ust very concerned environmentalists.