“In fact, both major parties are out of step with public opinion”.

They certainly are; but will the electorate tell them that at next election? Probably not. Australians have their heads up their backsides, totally deserving the rotten governments they continue putting into office. Even if they did remove their heads from where they are, what could they do about it? The only two packs of self-serving bozos who can form a government are both Big Australia fanatics. So, perhaps they should keep their heads up the their arses, bringing them out only to booze, watch other people play football and mind-numbing ‘reality’ TV. and wait for the Chinese or Muslims to make them minorities in their own country.

Thanks for this article. We need to push population policy up the political agenda. Over-population is driving people crazy, at least in Sydney.

I would like to remind readers that the better approach to setting an immigration rate is the We Will Decide policy at www.wewilldecide.info. It would allow people to set population limits in their local area, which would be enforced through the control of residential development (and in no other way). Add up the local limits and we can then calculate how many people Australians really want brought in to the country. See the website for details.

At present we treat migration as one big tap, which at the moment is set to allow in a flood. Critics advocate turning down the flow, or closing off the tap completely. Both approaches use the same clumsy instrument - a national intake figure - which by its nature cannot respond to the different needs of local areas.

This is where We Will Decide is different. It adopts a bottom-up approach where each local area can signal to what extent it wants a higher population, and the further development which accompanies it. Think of it as a separate tap for each local area.

I can’t be sure I’ll last long enough to submit We Will Decide to any Senate committee of inquiry, so I hope others interested in this area will step in to advocate this better mechanism for setting the migration intake. We Will Decide has been available online for 5 years now, and no media outlet has publicised it. Perhaps some of you people out there with influence could lend a hand.

ttbn nailed it:

“In fact, both major parties are out of step with public opinion”.

They certainly are; but will the electorate tell them that at next election? Probably not.

Both major parties are very aware of the difference between an issue in a public opinion poll and an issue that will change votes. They also know that their rival party has the exact same policy so that leaves voters looking for an alternative that doesn't have the resources or history to make a significant impact.

Sustainable Australia (https://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/) and Dick Smith have been battling along for 10 years and they get my vote but not many others.

Pro-high population growth proponents have been successful at painting opposition to immigration as racist and the left side of politics is so afraid of being called a racist that would rather see our standard of living drop and pollution increase than have anybody dare call them a racist.

Ah Ericc,
The lefts have developed an anti-white policy so they are racists.
Well, at the next election I am going to vote Conservative,
2nd pref Australian Unity Alliance, 3rd pref One Nation then Libs,
then ALP, then Greens.
Not all will be available of course, just drop those not running.
My purpose is to shake them up as much as possible.
To be realistic in my electorate the libs will get in, but the senate
might be a different kettle of fish.

So I recommend you do the same. Of course if you are rusted on Labour
then just swap Libs and ALP in my list.
Aside from marching on parliament with pitchforks thats the best I can suggest.

Australia is not overpopulated, even if a few of her capital cities are. And then only because pollies serving special vested interest? Simply compound the problem.

We spend somewhere north of 70 billion P.A., just to have entirely redundant, state legislatures, or if you will, the only tier of government, we'd be better off without.

And instead, divert that money to nation-building infrastructure that spreads and decentralises the modest population numbers. Should include rapid rail, dispatchable MSR thorium power and deionisation dialysis desalination.

To ensure our productive farmland remains just that. And transforms some of our most arid regions into our most productive, without ever once over-utilising natural overland flow!

We can spend money on roadblock fat cat parliaments or nation-building, but not both!

Something needs to be done. Unfortunately those with their greedy snouts in the taxpayer trough? Are the last who will do it! And will know for sure and certain all the reasons it CAN'T BE DONE, WON' T EVER HAPPEN!

The last time we did real nation building, The snowy mountains scheme we were forced to bring in folks from all over the world, with eminently compatible belief systems.

All we need is a can-do visionary leader and several visionary projects.

And we could double the number of folks who call Australia home, without any trouble, or unseemly social disruption.

Tired of incompetent state government or corruption central with their mouths fastened firmly to the taxpayer nanny tit as the alternative to progressive nation building?
Alan B.

Anyone called a racist should be proud of themselves. It's abuse used by the Left when they don't have argument. There is simply no excuse for mass immigration in a developed country.

Looks like some have to consider the following before voting Labor after these statement.

Mr Shorten said a future Labor government would adopt the boat turn-back policy but he also vowed to nearly double Australia’s refugee intake to 27,000, improve conditions at offshore detention centres and give more money to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to support its work in the region.

BUT this from one of his party.
Mr Albanese said his party now had a “comprehensive” solution to the asylum seeker problem and does not believe a future Labor government will need to turn back any boats at sea.

“I don’t believe [turn-backs] will start,” he said.

“Everyone in Labor wants to make sure there aren’t turn-backs because there aren’t boats.”

Also - Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek and frontbencher Penny Wong also voted with the left, to ban boat turn-backs, that's right open the floodgates.

If Labor win any money says the boats will start immediately, Shorten says he will turn back boats, reminds me of NO carbon tax and many other pre-election promises by politicians.

Australia’s population is already too high now. There are too many people on welfare, with our per capita income shrinking as it always does with high immigration; immigrants are the only winners. Wages are stagnant, but prices are still rising. Multiculturalism has stymied integration and self-reliance. The dogma that all cultures are equal and can co-exist in one country is nonsense. Australia must be more discerning and stop all immigration at least until there are no longer 750,000 unemployed already here.

Kudos to Ericc, Bazz, Philip S, especially ttbn.

//They also know that their rival party has the exact same policy so that leaves voters looking for an alternative that doesn't have the resources or history to make a significant impact.//

Added to that is the problem that left-leaning voters who are concerned about overpopulation don't really have anywhere to turn, because the anti-immigration parties have an unfortunate xenophobic streak. When they say 'there's too many people coming into this country, we should decrease it significantly...', I'm all ears. Unfortunately they usually tend to continue 'so we should ban all Arabs/Africans/Asians/whoever the flavour of the month is', at which point they lose me and presumably a good many other voters who aren't in favour of that sort of crap.

If they're actually serious about reducing the number of people coming in, the dog-whistling is a terrible political strategy because it turns the voters off in droves. If a centrist party whose platform simply involves decreasing the overall number of immigrants to something more manageable, without any of the xenophobic rhetoric we hear from the likes of our Pauline and her ever-dwindling band of merry morons, I think they'd probably do quite well. But it looks like the anti-immigration parties are more interested in clinging steadfastly to their bigotry than achieving the stated goal of reducing immigration. Hey, what can you do?

Toni Lavis on the mark....

Interesting article. The author busts some of the myths associated with high immigration. It's obvious that politicians will quote growth in GDP rather than growth in per capita GDP, since growth in per capita GDP is often negligible. As so often, anyone who is sceptical is accused of racism, because those who favor high immigration really can't offer a justification on economic or social terms.

There are two questions that are never answered "What is the optimum rate of population growth?" and "Is, for example, a 10% rate twice as beneficial as a 5% rate?"

Backdoor visa manipulation and shortcuts to permanent residency have to stop. And, there are too many incentives for immigrants to latch onto permanent welfare they have contributed nothing to.

Toni Lavis

Sustainable Australia (Check out the website - https://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/) seems to be the one party that doesn't put the focus on Muslims or Asians like One Nation, but the pro-pop-growth groups cleverly lump them together so that people will continue to think that anybody against high immigration is a racist.

Dick Smith got really mad when the ABC essentially did this last year and went to the ABC studios to comment but was turned away. Later he was shouted down on Media Watch (who defended the ABC of course) who said they've given a lot of coverage to population issues, but they didn't address Dick's comment that the coverage always implies that opposition to immigration means you are a racist.

ericc,

Agreed.

Sustainable Australia is in the process of attempting to register as a party with the Electoral Commission. I'm a member btw.

Australia, down at the bottom of the world and the trade chain, needs at least 50 million people. In order to create a domestic market large enough to create the very economies of scale essential to an exporting economy in a globalized competing free market.

That is why the thrust must be on quite massive decentralization and a move away from the counterproductive tribalism, that puts state against state! When our cause is only really served when it is Aussie old and new, against the rest of a, competing for their economic survival, world.

Every western style economy rests solely on just two support pillars Capital and energy. Before these were fully privatized or corporatised, we went through a post-war period of unprecedented prosperity. And due to visionary leadership and visionary ideas.

Ideas in practice quite massively grew the economy and demanded the highest migration numbers of that day. This nation as it exists today was built by waves of migration, some of it forced and some of it voluntary.

And stands almost alone as the very source of that period of unprecedented prosperity. that changed a backwater basket case economy into the first world trading nation of today.

We've always had a cohort of die-hard fundamentalists who blame the new chum for every bad or sad episode in their life.

Even those of their own doing or making!
As they support with their thoughtless, asinine, obtuse election-winning votes, the very cause of our economic doldrums or lack of leadership/future vision.

Future vision doesn't talk about itself, push itself off into the 12th of never or discover all the reasons it can't be done or won't work?

People, if you can't or won't help build this nation and its newest period of unprecedented prosperity?

Then get yourself and your moribund mindset or corrupt motives, the f#&K out of the way.
Alan B.

What is often overlooked is that since 1788 people living in Australia
always had the facilities, technology and development of other developed countries.
Looking at the 19th century Australia had railways, shipping and
at the end of that century telephones and telegraph around the world
and the start of electrification.
I never thought much about it until at a meeting I attended about 1954
a visiting Dutch Engineer commented that "Australians must be hard workers"
We nearly all laughed, but he protested
"They must be hard workers to build a country like this in 160 years !".

So my point on this is that large populations are not needed to have it all.

Dead wrong Alan B.

Australia has one of the highest standards of living in the world. That high standard of living for the average citizen is now being eroded by high immigration and high population growth that makes the rich richer and the average Aussie poorer. Corporate profits climb but average wages stay flat as more workers mean wages can be depressed.

Increasing the population to 50 million would take 36 years at 2% growth. Less than 2% growth is currently making Sydney and Melbourne less and less liveable every year. You want to hark back to the high immigration of the 50's and 60's and say it was all great. I'm thinking of the last 15 years where we have failed to keep up with the demand for infrastructure because there isn't enough money to pay for all the additional infrastructure that the high population demands need.

The notion that we need migration to make the country great implies that the current population is full of turds that can't do anything right. I completely disagree. The people that are here now can build a great country and build it sustainably.

We don't need additional people to make thorium energy technology work. We don't need additional people to make any new technologies work. When we concentrate on the existing population we can improve technology which improves productivity and improves living standards.

Alan B

A market of 50 million is tiny compared with the hundreds of millions or billions of consumers in China, India or trade groups like the EU. So any economies of scale would be relatively neglible.
Many nations with populations smaller than Australia have become prosperous by manufacturing products that overseas consumers want to buy. They achieved economies of scale by exporting to much larger markets, there's no reason why Australia couldn't imitate their success.

Australia isn't the US or Brazil, the old desert we live in can't absorb people indefinitely.

Bazz's comment that “...  large populations are not needed to have it all” is perfectly true. We have only to look at the Scandinavian countries to see that.

Imagine, if we could put an inland canal through the central dead heart as a two-lane side by side system. Then use massive northern tides and an entrance, lock gate system. We could use those huge tides to ensure a constant flow of water to and from lake Eyrie, via the gulf and one one of the iron ore ports. and utilising ground already mostly below sea level.

Not a difficult engineering project if most of the require earthworks were done by suction dredging and high-pressure water monitors that included a stream of injected abrasive material.

Along both sides of this canal, we could build around two dozen MSR thorium powered nuclear plants and adjacent deionisation dialysis desalination plants to produce cost-effective, potable water suitable for human and animal consumption and broad scale agriculture.

Now that single project and the towns new cities they'd invite could accommodate as many as fifty million new migrants. Not today but over the two or so decades of the life of such an, add water and see where it goes, project

Those already here standing to gain the most from such future vision and pollies with enough backbone to ensure it happens.

As or Scandinavia? Point taken.

And we could with our plethora of abundant natural resources, could, if we but paid their tax, improve on!

However, I think we can do a whole lot better with less, as you can read on another thread.

High living standard? Seriously!? What for the homeless or the huge unemployed cohort in SA?

Take the blinkers off!
Alan B.

Yes Alan B, fill the artesian basin with salt water ! Yes sure.

Australia does not have that wide sweep of good land right through the
middle of the country with which the USA is blessed.

If large populations are such a good idea why are so many from large
countries trying to come here ?

Alan,
How about no canals etc, then no need for that extra 50 million people.

Pointless project, unneeded people, simple!

The biggest obstacle we have to a decent reduction in immigration is not just the big business lobby but the agreement between Labor and the LNP not to debate immigration, which Hawke negotiated. Big business wants high immigration because it ensures more sales of consumer goods without them having to compete with each other.

We will have to be rid of the agreement between the major parties before any meaningful discussions can be had as to what our population should be.

As to where should the numbers be cut. That is easy, stop the entry of people from those groups that cause us grief socially. Their culture will not allow them to integrate and they would be happier elsewhere.

Over the weekend, our fool of a PM, instead of saying he would start listening to concerns about mass immigration, decide it would be good idea to send immigrants to rural areas (as if that hasn't been mentioned 1.35 million times).

Apart from being entirely un-enforceable, how stupid can he be! There are fewer jobs and infrastructure in the country than in the city. Kids are leaving country towns to get work. There is no money or inclination to build infrastructure in the country; they are not even doing it in the cities where it is more economical. Employers are not going to move to the country on a political whim.

The PM has proved that mass immigration is just about more votes for politicians (he overlooks the fact that most of those will go to Labor) and more wealth for his big business and developer cronies. Never have we had a PM with less interest in Australia and Australians. He is deliberately bringing people here, WITHOUT JOBS TO GO TO, when we already have a permanent unemployment figure of 750,000 people

ttbn Quote "we already have a permanent unemployment figure of 750,000 people".

That figure is from the Government so any money says the real figure is higher.

Yes, Philip. I shudder to think what the real figure is. There are probably many more people with no work, as well as casuals and the underemployed. The sad fact is that there is no work. Unskilled jobs and mid-range jobs have been deliberately let go oversees by the very same people who are killing the country with mass immigration. There are also a lot of bullsite jobs (unnecessary, and thought so even by the people doing them) that are veiling the true level of enemployment.

Comment by someone on another site I like it.

Quote
How about stopping immigration completely until all Australian citizens have a secure job and a roof over their heads. Handing over our country towns to immigrants is NOT a solution considering the average Aussie is struggling to survive as it is.

It's not just numbers of immigrants we should as a nation control, it's quality. Nobody should set foot in Australia who fails to accept the right of every resident to accept OR REJECT the requirements of any religion. Returning ISIS collaborators need to be put in prison for a decade or two followed by permanent expulsion from the country.

Send large nmbers of migrants to a country town and they take over the
town and you will need a passport from Iraq or somewhere to pass the border.

So much for Gov figures.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5989465/Population-expert-Bob-Birrell-wants-mail-order-bride-crackdown-900-partner-visas-granted-weekly.html

More than 900 foreigners move to Australia on spousal visas EVERY WEEK - amid fears 'mail to order' Russian brides are leaving their partners as soon as they're let into the country

More than 900 foreigners who start a relationship with an Australian citizen overseas or online are granted spousal visas every week.

The figures equate to about 48,000 foreign wives - and occasionally husbands - being allowed to move to Australia each year after being granted a partner visa by the Department of Home Affairs under the family migration category.

The rules on spousal visas haven't changed since 1996, when the Howard government introduced a two-year waiting period before foreigners could be accepted.

One of the country's most respected population experts has called for tighter rules to ensure those granted the visas can speak English, integrate into the country and work.

Dr Bob Birrell, the head of the Australian Population Research Institute, said the existing rules were open to abuse.

'My main concern is just how weak our rules are on spouse migration,'

'A person can sponsor a spouse about age 18.

'They could have arrived yesterday and there's no evaluation at all on the financial capacity or the financial security of the spouse, or to provide for the spouse.

Dr Birrell, a former Monash University academic and immigration policy adviser, said the existing system also allowed the unemployed to bring a spouse over.

'They don't have to have a job, they could be on welfare. That is not taken account of,' he said.

'Nor is there any evaluation of the sponsored spouse capacity to integrate in Australia: does he or she have any English, have any skills?'

Lawrence Shave, a 74-year-old Pentecostal evangelical pastor from southern Perth who is twice divorced, five years ago found a Ukrainian woman to be his bride.

Unfortunately for him, Oksana left him for another man.

Last year, he advertised for a Russian bride aged between 20 and 44 via the SingleBridesAgency.com dating website, which specialises in eastern European women.

539,000 immigrants moved to Australia in the last year - and 75% ended up in crowded Sydney and Melbourne.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5997983/A-record-539-000-immigrants-moved-Australia-net-pace-262-000-highest-13-years.html

A record 539,000 immigrants moved to Australia in the 2016-17 financial year
The net level of 262,489 factoring in people moving overseas was also high
Australian Bureau of Statistics said 74 per cent went to Sydney and Melbourne
Former immigration minister Philip Ruddock said migrants preferred big cities

The net annual immigration pace was 262,489, factoring in people moving overseas.

Three-quarters of immigrants are moving to Sydney and Melbourne.

The revelation came a week before the Australian population was set to surpass the 25 million milestone, 22 years earlier than predicted in the federal government's first inter-generational report of 2002.

The net immigration figure of 262,489 was slightly below a record set in 2009 and came before Immigration Minister Peter Dutton this year announced a small 20,000 cut to the migration rate.

Of the net arrivals, 39.8 per cent moved to New South Wales while another 34.3 per cent of them moved to Victoria.

With very few migrants moving to regional areas, that meant 74 per cent of them moved to Sydney and Melbourne, which were already congested.

I think the Government are deliberately confusing people with the figure.

It says.
Of the 539,000 people who migrated to Australia in 2016-17, 315,000 of them arrived on a temporary visa, including 150,000 international students, 50,000 working holiday makers, and 32,000 workers on temporary skilled visas.

During 2016-17, 276,000 people moved overseas.

BUT if people are on say temporary visa that implies they go home.

Now tell us how many of these people on temporary visa stayed here and do not intend to go home or have applied for permanent visa.

Australian Bureau of Statistics has the figures there were 23,900 on Humanitarian visa I believe that means refugees, that amounts to nearly half the 50,000 that Labor let in on boats over a period of years.
Add to that 29,800 on family visa, it appears Slight of Hand Turnbull is trying to outdo Dudd and Dillard.

315,000 arrived on temporary visas, including over 150,000 international students.
50,000 working holiday visas.
32,000 temporary skills visas.
106,000 migrants on permanent visas.
45,800 on skill visas.
A blatant slight of hand is once here they can change from one type of visa to another very easily