Australia is not growing but shrinking in terms of per capita GDP i.e. we're getting poorer. Housing is less affordable than ever. Cities like Perth and Adelaide may be facing dire water shortages with rising food prices. Electricity may have to be rationed in a few years. In the next 20 years most of the boomers will have passed and their support needs will decline. China, Japan and South Korea seem to be coping with an ageing population.

My fear is that when Australia is over the demographic hump it will no longer be such a desirable place to live. It will be poorer, more expensive and riddled with tension. In a hospital visit last year the staff spoke to each other in Hindi. High immigration is creating more problems than it solves.

Yes, lets be honest with ourselves.

Average population growth in the OECD bloc is about 0.5%. Apart from Canada, no other rich nation can match our crazy rate of population growth, 2.4%.

Most importantly, poll after poll shows that most Australians want much lower migration. The author should be listening to them - not lecturing them.

“Much discussion” my backside. The political class - those causing unwanted and inappropriate immigration - don't want to talk about it at all. Both members of the uniparty are using mass immigration to cover up the sorry state of the Australian economy and change our culture forever. Dutton’s “promise” to lower immigration is as unbelievable as are all the utterances of our self-serving, increasingly dictatorial political class.

Immigration, multiculturalism, have divided the Australian population. The “best country in the world”, “our beautiful country” etc, still mumbled by the shockingly naive Australian zombies, is dead and buried. It is now a piss-weak country at the arse end of the world: virtually defenceless, self-hatred, growingly totalitarian (censorship, digital ID, anti-Semitic, identity politics and Maoist divide and conquer tactics, agreed on by the Coalition and Green Labor).

Illegal aliens are “Mostly, they are allowed to stay”. How pathetic is that!

“Australia has developed one of the most successful multicultural societies in the world”.

There is no such thing as “successful multiculturalism”. Most countries, certainly Australia, make no attempt to insist on, and enforce, a keep-your-culture-at-home policy, and be actual Australians in public. None of the hatreds and behaviour you claim to be escaping will be tolerated here.

And, enough of the bullsh-t about a “declining and ageing population”. The ultimate population for this vast, mainly uninhabitable continent was, and still is, 13 million.

There are Western countries with half of Australia's population doing much better than we are.

Australia is rooted, thanks to the sort of rubbish prattled in this article.

I was going to comment, but there's little to add after the earlier comments.

daily reports in Australia of shortages of Tradespeople, Doctors, Hospitality workers and so on.
Guy Hallowes,
That is plainly due to education being pushed for education's sake instead of educate people who can comprehend being educated. Every dill now flashes a BA & that makes then think they're "too educated" to become lowly trades people. Exactly the opposite is the case. They'r not intelligent enough to become tradespeople but they're deemed competent in their incompetence & fit for the Public Service . The Peter Principle is going strong indeed ! Have you taken a look at the average bozo lately ? Drugged & pi$$ed to the eyeballs, covered in tattoos & getting all the support to go through life at everyone else's expense courtesy of Labor !

The real test is the ability of a country to provide a decent life for its citizens and look after its environment. Here is a link to the UN Human Development Index (HDI), a measure of human well-being.

http://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks

Our rank is 10. All of the countries that rank above us have much lower population growth rates, and some in the top 20 have declining populations. They don't seem to be suffering from it. All the countries in the top 20 apart from Australia and Hong Kong have had growth in their HDI index. Ours is falling.

Here is our performance on the Environmental Performance Index. Our overall rank is 17, but it is brought up by our marine protected areas. Our performance in other areas is woeful.

http://epi.yale.edu/epi-results/2022/country/aus

Divergence,
You're confirming what I have stated for a long time here but no-one believes, it's a matter of mentality !

Good overview, while Australia and the Anglosphere have been led up the garden path by the fossil fueled white Christian nationalists, population controllers and their fear of the 'great replacement'.

This has been helped along locally since the time of Howard by Tanton Network of former ZPG types including dec. John Tanton and Paul Ehrlich, linked to SPA and 'Australia best demographer', chasing inflated headline data for RW tabloid headlines....to wedge the centre; too easy.

Their desired outcomes, along with Tanton Network in the US sharing donors Koch Network which 'own' the GOP and inform Fox, is using current ageing voters for a permanent corrupt white Christian nationalist autocracy.

Globally on their obsessions with (declining) fertility, population control, women's bodies, 'other types', social - Darwinism, immigration and especially population growth, they are wrong.

Confirmed by many demographers, the UNPD has inflated fertility rate forecasts to reach a high end of century number and existential threat to 1% &/or white voters. Fact is fertility has and is declining much faster, hence they forecast mid century peak then decline....

See Bricker & Ibbitson (2019) 'Empty Planet:The Shock of Global Population Decline'

'For half a century, statisticians, pundits, and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline.'

Andras,

Global population is still growing at around 80 million people a year, just like in the 1960s. The growth rate has fallen, but the base is much larger. The world isn't going to run out of people any time soon. We and our domestic animals have gone from comprising perhaps 1% of land mammal biomass in the Paleolithic, when people probably just had dogs at best, to 96% now. The leading cause of extinctions is habitat loss due to appropriation for human purposes. We are pushing the other species off the planet and seriously encroaching on our life support systems.

http://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2204892120

http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html

Australia looks big on the map, but it is really a small to medium sized country wrapped around a big desert, much as ttbn has said. France can feed more people than all of Australia (multiply hectares of arable land by grain production per hectare). This is what our latest State of the Environment report has to say about population pressure here in Australia, where we have added around 7 million people since John Howard decided to triple the immigration rate.

http://soe.dcceew.gov.au/biodiversity/pressures/population

The people who are obsessing about fertility declines (no doubt partly due to higher densities as well as better contraception) are like someone who is morbidly obese, has lost a few kilos, and is now terrified of starvation.

Believe it or not, racism is not our most serious problem. Nor is a shortage of money for the immigration industry.

racism is not our most serious problem.
Divergence,
Agree, the real problem are the stupid people who perpetuate racial hatred at all costs !

If racism was made unprofitable the problem could be curbed ! Let the constituents decide on immigration instead of bureaucrats. Could be a valid election issue.

Population is growing, mostly due to us, but slowing everyday....

Problem solved 'the global population is headed for a steep decline'.

Unless people wish to hurry it up for their own self gratification, but how?