Hear, hear and well said, ttbn.
Alan B.

Hard to disagree, particularly if from Sydney or Melbourne, where housing prices have hit the roof. Also, lower immigration would help put less pressure on the welfare budget. But the challenge is to get the science and economics illiterate politicians to understand and accept the arguments. Besides, our PM is not renown for his strategic political skills.

Debt farming. That's why the herd numbers are being increased. More interest payers.
Can't see the beneficiaries wanting this gravy train to stop, ever.
They'll ride it till it derails. Can't imagine there's even a care about derailment. There's just the ride while it lasts.

Another article on population growth where the environment hardly gets a mention. Of course to be fair, the article is titled The Coalitions Immigration challenge and voters don't link population growth with degradation to the environment, so the author is right on track not including environmental problems. Maybe a mention of not meeting greenhouse targets related to population growth, but then again, I suppose nobody cares.

As an appendix then, the world's resources at a population of 7.6 billion can't provide health care, education and fair justice systems to 2-3 billion of us and we are headed toward 10-11 billion. It would be a lot easier to provide a good life to everybody if we had slower population growth. Wouldn't it be great if Australian policy was part of making the world better.

Mention population stabilisation and people immediately think of forced abortions and sterilisations. Or at least they have been guided that way by people who want a higher population. In Australia all we need to do is have net zero immigration (70,000 in 70,000 out) and no tax or welfare benefits past 2 kids. Yes you can have as many children as you like but the government won't reward you for it, like now.

High immigration is a dud policy for the average Australian. The Productivity commission points this out in every study they do and they don't even consider the environment. High immigration only benefits the rich. The average Australian's voice is starting to be heard a little. Maybe the coalition will pay attention. Trump won on immigration despite his myriad of faults. Brexit was largely about immigration. Maybe the coalition will defy their big business masters and dump this dud policy.

I have been banging on about this for years. 320,000 new immigrants is far too high not to expect it to create real tensions in our society.

At 20,000 pa our refugee intake is pitifully small but is being used by right wing politics to deflect from the disquiet being generated high immigrant numbers.

Any party which promises to halve immigration and double our refugee intake gets my vote with no other questions being asked.

Since our manufacturing sector has been diminished through government policies and the high job numbers entailed in bringing mining projects onstream have waned it is high migration numbers which is keeping the housing and retail sectors afloat.

I recognise that halving immigration numbers would have a real impact on growth and employment but there is a 'Brexit' sentiment starting to gather here and it will only grow.

Big business are also wedded to high immigration numbers and they have deep pockets to feed our politicians. They are probably the biggest obstacle for checking these high numbers. We need to start ramping the pressure up in such a way that it isn't coopted by the hard right in this country.