David Latimer,

I'm not interested in a response from Mr Bartlett.

I respect politicians in this country about as much as your inane analysis of my previous post.

By the way who are you tell me who to respect. How long have you been boss of the barbecue.

Nice to pull out the "racist" card. Anyone who disagrees with you is a racist, they are a neo-nazi. They are the anti-Christ. Your post was as usual "piffle".

Mark Latham had a name for John Howard that discribed his realtionship with George Bush. Fits you to a tee.

"Let's not be coy, only the capital cities will get the immigrants and for example the 100,000 extra immigrants in Sydney each year"

Ok lets not be coy and state some realities. Australia's currant
account, at -5.9% of GDP, is still a disaster and we urgently need to focus on exports, a high % of which come from regional areas.
You city slickers want to keep importing your toys to play on OLO etc, somebody has to generate the wealth, thats the reality of it.
So perhaps migration needs to be directed at people who will live in regional areas and help generate export wealth. Thats where there is a mass shortage of labour.

Its pointless for people like Andrew to scream about live exports for instance, if regional abattoirs cannot even find staff to process livestock. Fact is that Aussies have it so good, that they don't need to work, certainly not something like on a meat chain.
Many young kids today don't want to get their hands dirty, its far easier to lie in bed and play video games, then move to where the work is, get out of bed and work hard for 8 hours.

If overcrowding in cities is the problem, then change the migration policy, so that those regional areas which really need staff to increase exports, can obtain them for jobs which city based Aussies don't want to do anymore.

Andrew -

Regarding being myopic about international tourism, I find it hard to believe that a person in your position does not grasp the difference between tourists that are “in and out” and “permanent migrants.”

To formalise - international tourists stay an average of 26 nights and they don’t buy houses or cars so they consume less per day than permanent residents. That means 3.5 million international tourists is more like 170,000 residents. But they go home, the 140,000 permanent migrants stay, so next year that is 280,000, the year after 420,000, etc. After 25 years the cumulative impact of the migrants is 10 times as much as the tourists and in 50 years the cumulative effect is 18 times as much. In other words the permanent residents and their offspring are using 18 times as much energy and water, producing 18 times as much rubbish and sewage, using 18 times as much farmland and fisheries as the international tourists.

If being concerned that migrants having 18 times the impacts that tourists have, makes me myopic, I guess I don’t understand the context in which you are using the word.

Just so you are clear, I am not advocating stopping international tourism, I am advocating reducing immigration, so that we have a better chance to live sustainably in the long term. Reducing migration will have a much more significant impact on living sustainably with the finite resources that we have, than stopping international tourism. In fact I believe that if we do a better job looking after the environment, we will be able to attract more international tourists. We will be able to attract people who are looking to get away from the polluted parts of the world, and visit a place that is clean and uncongested. That increased international tourism would result in a boost to the economy, that will not be possible if we maintain the current unsustainable policies.

KAEP’s response highlights exactly the type of attacks that seem to result every time someone dares to suggest that perhaps there is a middle road to this argument. I stated that I have worked hard and enjoy the benefits of that – you suggested as a “captain of industry”. I am certainly not that! The benefit I enjoy is going to a job every day which I get up and look forward to going to. You have attacked me without knowing anything about me. You suggested selfishness on my part, again without knowing anything about me. So be it. I will ponder that view the next time I stand at the end of the hose as a Rural Fire Fighter. You demonstrate the ignorance which seems to predominate both extremes of this debate.

For the record, much of my study has been on urban sustainability and I could sit here and discuss subjects such as Natural Capitalism, deep ecology, sustainable urban design, affluenza and a wealth of other related subjects. I am a systems analyst and as such I look for systemic relationships between issues under consideration. The issues of overpopulation, resource scarcity, immigration, aging population, foreign ownership, the so called brain drain, the population pressures on our major urban centres etc cannot be considered in isolation. Australia has the capacity to develop well thought out policy frameworks in which we will find a middle road that will allow us to consider not only short term skill shortages, but longer term aging population issues, resource demands etc. Extremism of any sort will not bring the necessary clarity to this debate.

Alchemist - and here I thought your name was based on the book!

You may be right about the constitution, but I would point out that the constitution says nothing about a PM, only an unelected governor general ruling the nation, do you want that as well. As anyone who has studied politics in australia will tell you, our constitution bears no resemblance to how Australia is run.

Your ignorance regarding democracy shows how worthless you position truly is. We live, and have for a hundred years, in a representative democracy (not a direct democracy as you seem to assume). Direct democracy could never work, as there would be no stability of government. For your information, democracy is not just about rule by the people, it is also about the rule of law (which has changed the effect of the constitution), acceptance of capitalism (the right to own something), liberalism (inividuality) and equality before the law (not equality full stop). The fact you only recognise a fraction of what a democracy is, clearly explains why your veiws are so outlandish (hamas outlandish).

get an education

Bartlett said: “I find it hard to see how people can be so strongly of the view migration is a negative when Australia has so clearly benefited economically, culturally and socially from big waves of migration over the past 60 years.”

Australia’s economy, culture and social aspects are ultimately dependent upon a healthy natural ecology, the only feature that ultimately supports us and other species. Our economy, culture and society are subsets of the natural ecology and must always fit within its finite bounds. Is this so difficult to understand?

I live near Mandurah WA, growing its population at 7.1%, thus doubling every 10 years as a result of overseas and interstate migration.

Colinsett drew your attention to the national damning study – Future Dilemmas. One of the local studies gathering dust on government and corporate bookshelves that validate the assertion that our natural ecology is progressively deteriorating as population/migration increases is the August 2002 “Economic Development and Recreation Management Plan for the Peel Waterways”. Part of the major finding of this study stated that: “Without corrective action, the Peel Waterways will not be able to support the increased demands of expected POPULATION GROWTH.”

Another damning report was “Peel Away the Mask”, a Nov 2001 study of the social condition of the Peel Region. The summary of this study’s findings stated that, “The community issues have been rapidly building during the last few years but it is only now that the warning signs are becoming increasingly apparent to the wider community. There is strong potential for the area with many natural and human assets but with the RAPID INCREASE IN POPULATION, the gaps in services are becoming wider as the service providers are struggling to cope with the demands of increasingly vulnerable community members.”

Currently, according to majority scientific opinion, we are using the earth’s and Australia’s natural CAPITAL in order to maintain our profligate lifestyles, having already used up the INTEREST. In other words we are already using “our kid’s inheritance”.

How can increasing Australia’s population via migration benefit anyone but the news-media and the corporations who support/fund government?