Thanks for your comment Cheryl. I tried SMH and The Australian without luck I'm afraid.

The comment suggesting that the Democrats action in disassociating themselves from net zero migration is connected to the decline in their vote is a new thought. I've heard many views on why the Democrat vote crashed (plenty of them involving me in the reasons), but I've never heard this one.

As my article suggests, politicians who support high migration should promote it more. It would be interesting to see how well a party promoting big cuts in migration would poll, but I'm not aware of any currently, (though there are some who just keep quiet about the issue).

Governments have done better lately in encouraging migration to regional areas, but we can still do better.

In regards to the comments on religion:

I don't profess to be an expert on Islam, but I have read plenty (including people like Daniel Pipes and the thought that the White House listens to him worries me greatly), and had a lot of discussions and meetings with many Muslims. The religious views of some fundamentalist Muslims are intertwined with political ideology. This does present significant problems. However, it won't be tackled by trying to cut ourselves off from mainstream Muslims. That would make the problems worse.

Fundamentalist Jews could also be said to be intertwined with a political ideology. This also causes problems, but trying to cut off contact with all Jews wouldn't help either.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of any religion. Many of them have great ethical frameworks, but I don't see the value of the supernatural stuff. However, it obviously works for a lot of people and as long as it isn't a vehicle for restricting other people's freedoms and rights, it shouldn't be an issue.

People's willingness to support democracy and diversity, the rule of law and key principles such as equality and freedom should be what we assess, not what their religion is. Clearly, the separation of church and state doesn't apply in all countries, but it certainly should apply here.

Some more brief responses:

Lastword: Part of the point of my article was to emphasise that politicians who support high migration should be more open about that and do more to promote why. The article itself is part of that. As to the Democrats website, the official policy is fairly general. I'd be happy if it had more detail on immigration in addition to all the material about refugees. I shall endeavour to remedy this.

One of the benefits of having more debate on migration numbers – including from people opposing migration - is that it can draw attention to our hopeless performance on environmental issues, whether it's water, energy, land, transport, etc.

Environmental sustainability has to be central to any policy. Everything else – our economy, society, culture – is dependent on this (this is also long-standing Democrat philosophy). I support the ACF policy (mentioned in one comment). I believe high migration can be consistent with sustainability.

I'd also note that it is impossible to credibly argue in the political arena for increasing our humanitarian intake while suggesting family and other migration should be cut by 100 000 a year.

I repeat my view that – unless our birth rate turns around – our population will stabilise with net annual migration of around 100 000, but I will find a source for analyses I've seen showing this.

I support efforts to reduce global population, and Australia should definitely do more assisting this. I "ignored this" matter in my article because that wasn't what the article was about.

I don't see why we should stop people coming here, or how it helps ecological sustainability, or addressing peak oil, etc, if people are consuming resources elsewhere on the planet instead of here.

As for the statement that "Money spent helping them at home is more efficiently utilised than providing them with an Australian way of life and level of consumerism." - this seems to me to just be a way of saying they can stay poor, while we keep consuming as much as we want. Unjust and also unsustainable.

Thankyou alchemist, I totally agree:

"All policies should be determined be electronic referendum. That way we will go in the direction the people want. Politicians should only be elected on the platforms they put up for various portfolios, not by core and non core lies."

I they already have this system in Switzerland.

Andrew,

The economic case for immigration, which you have embraced, is utter nonsense, and is essentially the same kind of neo-liberal economic 'rationalist' garbage which I had thought the Democrats had long ago rejected. Much of these arguments have been repudiated (with seeming reluctance) by the recent Productivity Commission report into population and have been completely demolished in a recent press release of Sustainable Population, Australia (http://www.population.org.au) which quoted SPA Vice President and former National Leader of the Democrats (find copy here : http://www.candobetter.org/population/spa-mediaRelease-19jan06.html)

I can just about understand the Democrats favouring immigration for humanitarian reasons, but it should not take very long to understand how deeply misguided those motives are as collinsett(http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4099#29013), Ludwig and others have pointed out. The number of people we could help by allowing them to migrate here is miniscule compared to the many hundreds of millions who are persecuted, oppressed and in dire poverty around the world. The number of people, two years ago, living in sprawling shanty towns with no proper economic role, whatsoever, to play, on the outskirts of sprawling third world cites alone was over 1 billion. (see article, "Planet of Slums" http://www.candobetter.org/population/NLR-Davis-Planet-of-Slums.pdf (136k))

As collinsett (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4099#29013) pointed out, if the sacrifices that our society is making now to accommodate new immigrants, and, incidentally, also, to line the pockets of land speculators and property developers (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=3954#24278), were, instead, given to those countries as foreign aid, many hudreds of millions of more could be helped.

Also as Greg Wood, who posted (http://tinyurl.com/e3gus) to John Quiggin's blog wrote :

"... the massive upswing in resource demand effected by those emigrating to the first world consumer states ... directly leverages back upon the resource sacrifices made by the nations that they are leaving behind."

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So, in fact, poor people from those countries could be far better off on the whole if we immediately cut back, rather than increased, our immigration intake. (And I don't see that your more recent post (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4099#29106) has properly addressed this argument. Allowing a small minority from those poor societies to become rich in our society, is indefensible when it demonstrably adds to the poverty of many millions of others left behind.)

I would hasten to add that, notwithstanding your current deeply misguided support for high immigration, you are one politician that I have enormous admiration for.

It seems to me that you are in politics for the best possible motives and if I am correct, then you should be able to find it within yourself to understand the reasoned and factual arguments, presented here and elsewhere, against high immigration, and act accordingly to change the Democrats policy back to roughly what it was when John Coulter was your leader (which is, incidentally, also supported by Sandra Kanck a serving Democrat member of South Australia's upper house, who helped, last year, to organise protests against Dick Rumsfeld's visit)

If you were then, as other contributors have suggested(http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4099#28768), to shout from the rooftops against the recklessness and stupidity of high immigration as well as high consumption levels when the world is facing, in a matter of years at most, oil shortages, I believe that the Democrats would immediately displace the Greens as the recognised "Third Force" in Australian politics.

Given a few weeks more, it would be the Democrats, and not the Labor Party, which would come to be regarded as the real opposition to this utterly rotten and despicable Federal Coalition government, and by 2007, the Democrats could expect, at least, to be an influential partner in Government.

The ball is in your court: either continue with the present course that will help lead our society further along the path to Hell, or use your voice and influence to help bring about the necessary change in the direction of our society.

“There are still today many people who insist that the jihadist attacks on so many cities are not part of a wider campaign. There are also, legions of paid and unpaid apparatchiks propagating the notion not only that there is no wider campaign, but that any wider campaign has nothing to do with Islam. Such claims – as it becoming clearer with each attack – are based not on knowledge, but on hopefulness, not on truth, but on helplessness. Western governments have so consistently welcomed Islamic Trojan horses into our cities, that the only strategy now apparent to many of them is to pretend the problem is not there, or to pretend that it is other than it is”

http://www.newcriterion.com/archives/24/01/targeted-jihad/

The idea you can equate, in scale and kind, Jewish and Muslim violent behaviour must just have been a throw away line. You don’t really mean that.

Daniel Pipes is worried too and he can justify it.

http://jewishworldreview.com/0106/pipes2006_01_24.php3

How can you respect the ethical system of a man who said he always existed? John 8:57-58 And they picked up stones to cast at him.

We know how the story ends, they didn’t think much of him either.

I won’t get into how much your metaphysic is supernatural, but its alot.

Anyway, the issue isn’t whether you see the value of the supernatural, but whether Muslims do and whether the book they derive their ‘ethical system’ from is a threat to Australia.

‘Fundamentalism’ is a religious necessity in Islam given the nature of the revelation (dictation by the Angel Gabriel; a copy resides in Heaven. Jewish/Christian? – God uses his imperfect creatures who are historically and contextually conditioned. The Quran as ‘given’ has no context it is an eternal word not historically conditioned). So the fundamentalism argument doesn’t wash. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA10Ak01.html

If you read the link below you will understand why Islam religiously sanctions political extremism. Just as Christ sanctions us to be Good Samaritans. My point? We’re not all good disciples, but a religious revival in Islam is all it takes.

Open the pdf file

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/001307.php