Hi Yuyutsu,

" .... life in these crowded conditions .... " ?

Australian homes are bigger than ever. We're having fewer children than ever. Without immigration and the refugee quota, our population wouldn't be rising at all.

Perhaps it's the helicopter-parent generation coddling the kids ? In my day .....

Joe

The insanity of the academic social engineers has brought us to this stage. How much longer can we tolerate these morons ?

Is this a report on a report that states the obvious?

Well I'm going to go with:
For girls - Addicted to YouTube on the iPad;
For boys - Addicted to TV and gaming consoles in their bedrooms.

With all this decline in activity, one issue.
How will Australia compete on the world stage? Years ago in Bradman's day our cricket team carried all before it. Our swimmers led the world: the Konrads kids, Dawn Fraser, Henricks and WIndle. Our tennis champions were legends: Hoad, Rosewall, Court, Goolagong.

Now our cricket team struggles. Our Wallabies are a disaster. Our swimmers are doing OK, depending on whether they allow Sun Yang to swim (some minor issue about whether this 6 foot seven Chinese has been taking helper-drugs....).

We will only be doing well at couch-sitting, Googling and beer-drinking.

As someone raising grandkids, and with 25 grandkids all up, I see the problem as partly the obsession with internet based activities, including social media, and poor diet causing obesity and thus less interest in physical activity. Also, the lack of affordable sports activities is an issue.
Some sports, like acro dance, gymnastics, tennis coaching etc cost up to $15/hour, which when coupled with costs of uniforms, competition entry fees etc gets really expensive, specially if you have several children.
Team sports, like football and netball cost less but have a fairly short season and not all kids are into aggressive type sports.
I have a group of grandchildren who walk to school and back together each day and this is an activity parents could arrange in their suburbs, so that kids at least get that activity every day

Dear Joe,

«Australian homes are bigger than ever.»

This trend is changing. More people are forced into apartments with little or no garden/yard area, which is especially detrimental in the context of this article because children lack outdoor play-space.

«We're having fewer children than ever. Without immigration and the refugee quota, our population wouldn't be rising at all.»

One cannot look at Australia in isolation.
World population has been too high for about 2000 years and the effect is cumulative, even if birth-rate has slightly eased recently in Australia.

In this climate, if we don't want to be flooded and bought off with foreign goods or even to be outright invaded by other countries and/or their refugees, then we are forced to compete and defend ourselves against other countries with greater and denser populations.

Now in order to compete and defend ourselves, we cannot avoid regimentation and state-oppression, a painful price to pay. The aboriginal population of Australia until the 18th century, about 750,000, was just about right (taking into account the arid inland), but alas what could they do when the white men from overpopulated continents invaded? They lived close to heaven with no state (or other central organisation), no modern weapons and no industry, so they could not defend themselves nor compete with the white-man's industrial goods, hence they easily succumbed.

To avert this oppressive regimentation, population needs to be reduced around the globe, down to a level of about 100-200 million people. Area-wise this would mean an Australian population of 5-10 millions, but given the uninhabitable arid inland, the aboriginal number of 750,000 is closer to the mark.

«Perhaps it's the helicopter-parent generation...»

I am not familiar with this term.

What I can say is, that as a child in 1st grade, I used to walk to school and back on my own, a kilometre away, including through an open field and a forest. It was an important experience which sadly today's kids miss.