The Communist Chinese government “condemns” anything and anyone who doesn't pander to it. It's good to see that a publisher had the guts to handle Clive Hamilton's book, which is available on Google Books for a mere $13 dollars. China is doing its level best to force Australia into breaking away from America, and snuggling up to them; the Turnbull government is too naïve to see that. America has an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea (or it did recently) with flights of F14s regularly patrolling the area to reinforce the right to free passage in international (not Chinese) waters. Toe-rage Turnbull has neither the gumption nor the guts to make a similar representation, despite polite requests from America to do our bit to protect ourselves and our region. Why on earth would Trump make concessions to Australia on the matter of trade tariffs? Particularly after China's 99 year lease of a strategic port like Darwin.

I was amazed to read that the US navy wants to “turn Darwin into a security hub', given that the place is virtually owned by a hostile (and the Chinese are hostile) Communist power. Our drop kick government ignored the protest from the Obama (yes Obama!) government about the stupidity of the cowboy NT government. However, I see that the federal government will enable the US to step up operations in Darwin and that might go some way to putting the Chinese on notice. You might control the port, but we have muscle there. And US muscle is needed, because Australia is too weak to protect itself.

And what about the universities? How much are those greedy institutions gobbling up from China? What are they doing to curb the bullying of planted Chinese students? Nothing, would be close to the mark. The Chinese think that they can buy anything if bullying doesn't work. Here again, our numb-nuts government just sits back and takes the money.

We should not be dealing with such an 'evil empire'. Read the book.

A lot of truth in this balanced thoughtful and respectful article Peter.

We Aussies have rarely been afraid to call a spade and spade and being upfront with friends!

Because your real friends need to know what you really think or want! Not the forked tongue of the brown nosing Sycophant, out for all he can get from anybody.

There's a lot wrong with our present relationship with an expansionist China and its new Leader, who somehow reminds me of Stalin, when he Stalin still needed the west, Peter!

I could say more on this, but I think it would be as pointless as expecting a frog to jump from slowly warmed/brought to the boil, water while there was still time!

And sort of reminisant of our current crop of she'll be right, sycophantic pollyanna pollies?
Alan B.

FREE TIBET!

Imagine how much tolerance there will be for gays, lesbians, women rights, Aborigines and multiculturalism when the Chinese take charge

Dear Waverley,

«Imagine how much tolerance there will be for gays, lesbians, women rights, Aborigines and multiculturalism when the Chinese take charge»

But they won't, because when push comes to shove we will fight the good fight, together with all the above.

However, we cannot trust or rely on America either, they are no good, so we must speedily develop our own nukes and of course make sure that we produce our own food and all other basics so we can do it alone.

You are joking aren't you Yuyutsu?

If there is any fighting, or even heavy lifting to do, it will be the normal white males & a few of the girls doing it.

The rest will be sitting on their butts, avoiding anything hard, & demanding they are taken care of as usual.

Dear Hasbeen,

You will be surprised...

What you seem to have overlooked, is that if, God forbid, the Chinese make it, then those people would be made to WORK!

Also, at that time you would be thankful for every Muslim Jihadist in Australia: they would eagerly blow themselves up together with the infidel Chinese invaders - China has not been to kind to Muslims either.
(the irony is, what will they then do with 72 Chinese virgins)

Well it looks like we are all being penetrated (polite word) by the Chinese.

They are using us for suckers.

Sucked in, Aussies! In 30 years time the country will be speaking Mandarin

Isn't China tolerant of Christians and Muslims? What's this all about, mate? Communists are supposed to support the workers.

*...And we have a clever sharp-witted leader pitted against an erratic and dimwitted one...*

And alarmingly, the alternative leaders are clones of the above!

If the allegedly erratic and dimwitted Leader gets the DPRK to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and end the current armistice, in place since the fifties Dan. With a bonafide treaty, we, China and Russia can all live with!?

And a better option than the armageddon that was in play! You can eat your words, Dan!

In any event, a real wake up call to get our own self defense house in order and build or buy a credible nuclear retaliation response! That both Russia and China respect.

Moreover, our economy and the planet's crazy climate, won't be harmed if we transition away from fossil fuels to a nuclear powered and electrified one.

Imagine a B double, with a laser activated, miniaturized thorium power plant supplying all the motive power, on around 100 grams of thorium, about ten bucks worth? And able to truck anywhere without stopping to refuel for 100 years!

And rubbished by all those with a patent vested interest in the status quo!

And part of a potential future not just put a stake by a nuclear conflagration, but the real dimwits we elect to run the joint, Dan,
Cheers, Alan B.

I suppose in China they have subsidies for indigenous people; a Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras; tolerance for transgender people; sympathy for misunderstood Muslims; lots of people explaining how feminism is good for men: free and easy tolerance of Bahais, Buddhists, Christians and evangelicals.......

A few words from Clive Hamilton: "Australia (along with New Zealand) is seen as the 'weak link in the Western camp' ...... Australia's open-ended ... large number of Chinese immigrants....and multiculturalism have weakened our capacity to recognise and defend against this threat (China). In short, we have opened ourselves up to it."

Four Corners on Monday night is featuring a debate on a Big Australia.

The China-huggers are happy to see more and more students, more foreign money, and prices keeping on going up. Great for developers and politicians owning many properties.

But ordinary people lose out.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/

The excuse that mass immigration is good for the economy is certainly not working now - even if it ever did. Stagnating wages actually because of high immigration and cheaper labour. GDP goes up, sure; but GDP PER CAPITA, goes down. That's why the plebs are getting poorer, and the elites backing a Big Australia are getting richer. Of course they are going to tell lies about immigration! It's why the Treasure and the Finance Minister poo-pooed Abbott's correct call to cut immigration. What our treacherous government is doing is dissolving us, the Australian people, and replacing us with a more malleable and cheaper bunch newcomers.

The Communist Chinese government “condemns” anything and anyone who doesn't pander to it. It's good to see that a publisher had the guts to handle Clive Hamilton's book, which is available on Google Books for a mere $13 dollars. China is doing its level best to force Australia into breaking away from America, and snuggling up to them; the Turnbull government is too naïve to see that. America has an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea (or it did recently) with flights of F14s doing regular flights in the area to reinforce the right to free passage in international (not Chinese) waters. Toe-rag Turnbull has neither the gumption nor the guts to make a similar representation, despite polite requests from America to do out bit to protect ourselves and our region.

I was amazed to read that the US navy wants to “turn Darwin into a security hub', given that the place is virtually owned by a hostile (and the Chinese are hostile) Communist power. Our drop kick government ignored the protest from the Obama (yes Obama!) government about the stupidity of the cowboy NT government. However, I see that the federal government will enable the US to step up operations in Darwin and that might go some way to putting the Chinese on notice. You might control the port, but we have muscle there. And US muscle is needed, because Australia is too weak to protect itself.

And what about the universities? How much are those greedy institutions gobbling up from China? What are they doing to curb the bullying of planted Chinese students? Nothing, would be close to the mark. The Chinese think that they can buy anything if bullying doesn't work. Here again, our numb-nuts government just sits back and takes the money.

We should not be dealing with such an 'evil empire'. Read the book.

I agree completely that we have to cut migration, preferably to population maintenance only. The first thing to cut is the ridiculous refugee intake of unemployables, followed by family reunion funny business.

However we would have a huge unemployment problem if we do. The housing industry, the development industry, & the materials manufacturers that supply them are the largest employers in the country by a country mile.

At the same time, building is one industry you can't move offshore to any extent. Cut migration & we immediately have a major structural problem. Most of the tradies are not going to be happy with retraining as waiters & barmen for the tourist industries, & I can't see the university sector lining up to employ them either.

To avoid a crunch it would take people a damn sight wiser than the fool Turnbull & his wets, or Shorten & his girls. We are approaching the tipping point, [that thing so loved by the global warming scammers], but a real one, where the country will be too far gone to ever make it back to the great place it was, & too far gone to avoid becoming a hell hole similar to the source of these migrants.

I can't understand how anyone can not see what is developing, it is so obvious. Nor can I see anyone with any answer to the problem.

Hasbeen

*…. building is one industry you can't move offshore to any extent…*

You “seem” to have missed the point, (but I'm sure you haven't ). High immigration levels are entirely about propping up the building industry, and for all the reasons you mentioned.

Controls on immigration and all the decision making on immigration numbers, are entirely confined to the upper end of society, for the purposes of market manipulation and profits.
It would be hard to prove otherwise.

When immigrants themselves indicate to government, their comfort levels are being impacted on, we may see change to immigration levels. Till then, it's all about them and the money they make certain influential members of society.

I don't see how we can keep on building and growing. It has to stop at some point, and, naturally, we will have fewer builders, just as we have fewer people in manufacturing. I have a grandson who runs his own little tiling business. But, that's the way of things. We have had to accept the massive loss of jobs in manufacturing; building will by have to take a cut sooner or later, too.

Of course we could do a Trump, & reintroduce some tariffs. That should resurrect some manufacturing jobs. Making governments & large miners source all their equipment here, as they did before shipping became so cheap would go a long way in doing this.

I had a neighbour who used to build mainline diesel/electric locomotives at a plant in Maryborough. Now we import all rolling stock from Korea. As this is ordered by bureaucrats, the damn stuff won't fit our system when it arrives.

Still what can you expect when you have arts graduates running anything. We used to have heavy industry spread throughout the country. Now these fools sit in high rise offices in capitals ordering stuff from overseas, without even understanding what will fit or work.

They have a bit of paper from some university that doesn't let any one fail, & that is supposed to make them smart. It's our academia we have to worry about, not the Chinese.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43193146

The BBC sums up the arguments pro and con.

Apparently the Chioese government is very annoyed at Australians and their ingratitude. Because our prosperity depends on the Chinese and their money propping up our country full of people descended from Brit convicts..........

The current immigration policy is supposed to be propping up the building industry and the economy? So, if we didn't have all these demands on our housing by chinese students and foreign investors, plus the current unsustainable migrant intake?

House prices would come down as would rents. And the homeless would get a look in again. Developers would see the writing on the wall and start pushing decentralization and whole, new from the ground up, cities!

The excuse that we don't have this or that skill, could be better addressed by importing the skill and insisting he or she, also train 2-4 apprentices/cadets. And those apprenticeship or cadetship terms, being the upper time limit for their visa?

With particularly outstanding, temporary migrants, being offered/earning something more permanent or enduring?

As for the economy in general, the chinese proved beyond question, you can massively grow your economy while reducing population numbers, as proof of the pudding!

And with an essentially western style free market and unleashed entrepreneurial enterprise, coupled or cobbled to cooperative capitalism, doing most of the heavy lifting! Anything else serves stubborn enduring ineptitude and an obtuse lack of vision.

For in reality, the very best way to grow an economy is to thoroughly automate it and just lift those mired in poverty out of it!

And treat all such activities as an investment in our own robust and prosperous future, given these folk will be the ones adding new levels of absolutely essential discretionary spending to the domestic economy.

Real tax reform would assist as would cooperative capitalism and nuclear power as MSR thorium and the 2-3 cents per KwH that'd usher in as the new norm!.

We can run the country as now, to basically serve a privileged few or the whole bleeding lot of us!

The latter being the much smarter option, that lifts everyone's prospects, even the currently privileged few!

It's a no brainer and too easy!
Alan B.

The immigration and expansion issue is/ are being discussed in Four Corners, Monday 12th.

Do we need to have bigger cities, clogged roads, difficult parking, higher apartment complexes, and so on?

How many people are coming into Australia on 457 visas and similar and manage to stay?

'How many people are coming into Australia on 457 visas and similar and manage to stay?'.....and who are the dummies that devise reasons to let them come in the first place.
Half the aged care facilities employ them, and I don't see you telling the aged they have to suck it up.
If I get used to steak I'm not about to revert to rice....and neither is anyone else

The 457 and similar visas bring cheap labour to Australia, so these poor sods can work in 711, Caltex, restaurants everywhere, Dept of Education cleaners...
What kind of people want more advantages for companies like this....?