Andrew this link, suggested by Thermoman, is absolutely ESSENTIAL viewing: Al Bartlett (http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461).

Dr Bartlett most wonderfully and succinctly explains why there is so much concern about population growth and peak oil. Please check it out.

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Yobbo, you should do the same, to see what 1.5% continuous growth really means.

“You might have a point except that immigration is not a net drain on Australia. Only the humanitarian and family reunion strains of immigration are a net loss. Other forms of immigration are a net gain for Australia.”

All Immigration is a net drain when you consider environmental impact. Economics that doesn’t take this into account is at best pseudo-economics. In real economic terms it is most definitely a drain in the longer term.

“Because 1.) it's much cheaper to import skilled people than to train them themselves. 2.) to even have people worth training we would have to first pay people to have more babies, and then later pay those babies to study. This is a double cost to us.”

In reply to 1. Yes, so as is our stupid way, we pander to what is cheaper and easier in the short term rather than setting ourselves up for long-term security.

In reply to 2) what?? I’ve searched an inkling of sense in this, but there isn’t one.

“Our immigration intake is not "ridiculously high". Our immigration intake increases at an inverse rate to our natural population growth rate. As people have fewer kids, we allow more net migration. The total population growth rate of Australia has been pretty constant at around 1.5% per year for the last decade.”

Our population growth is ridiculously high. Immigration makes up about half of it. “ It makes no sense to increase immigration as the birth rate falls. Besides, the total birthrate has remained high, while the fertility rate has slowly fallen.

“Who cares? Immigration is supposed to benefit Australia, it's not some global goodwill program.”

Believe it or not most of the good people on OLO do care. Yes it is partly a goodwill program, and so it should be

Hi Robert. I do tend to mix up race and culture in my writing, but I do hope that most people would understand what I mean.

I had tried to read the article Meredith posted and that you refer to but I found it so draining. It was difficult to focus on. Maybe you could give me a run down if you have 350 words free.

Everybody is busy challenging each other trying to prove whether racism does or doesn’t exist.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we all just agreed that Racism does exist in every one of us - to different degrees, with different results, and for different reasons? It’s in our Genes and mixed with our Pride.

If we all just agreed that, because we can all choose to put our faith in different gods and have different beliefs then we must all believe that the one we have chosen is superior to the others – otherwise we would have chosen the other.

Racism is really only an emotion or a belief. Discrimination is an action, they are two different things and the word racism shouldn’t mean both. Not too many people really believe that one human body is more superior to the others. They just think their choices are more superior.

The system is not set up to consider us all equal and all worthy of protection. That is an issue that needs to be addressed. Unfair and unjust discrimination should be against the law regardless of your race or culture.

Damian where exactly did I say you attacked me?

I agree with you when you say that a Christian hopes that you will one day become a Christian but I am not so sure that Muslims will be content to just hope that one day we will all become Muslim

'Yobbo' (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4099#29306),

Thank you.

The content of your contributions reveal, probably far more accurately than what we might assume from what Andrew Bartlett has written, the true motivation of many high immigration proponents.

It is not about care for one's fellow human being. It is about grubby motivations of personal enrichment, regardless of the consequences for poor people from other countries, or even for citizens of your own country. There is certainly no concern shown for future generations.

You show no concern for your countrywomen and countrymen who have missed out, and are missing out on training opportunities because this mean-spirited and bone lazy Government would rather poach skilled workers from poor overseas nations than get off its own backside in order to provide those opportunities to its own citizens.

In regard to the supposed "net gain" brought to Australia by immigration, had you read the SMH report, mentioned by a previous contributor at http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/more-skilled-migrants-will-lift-economy-but-theres-a-catch/2006/01/16/1137260004193.html?

It said: 'But the Productivity Commission says there is a catch: little, if any, of those higher wages will be received by Australian-born workers. "It's probably true that the gains are largely snaffled by the migrants themselves," said a commissioner, Judith Sloan.'

As one who has been both unemployed and underemployed as a result of this Government's skilled migration program I can readily relate to this.

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Perhaps 'Yobbo', you might care to tell this forum exactly how you personally benefit from immigration. Are you a property speculator who wishes to use the crude means of increasing demand for land through population increase to allow you to profit at everyone else's expense? Are you a landlord? A mortgage broker? A real estate agent? Are you engaged in the flogging off of places in our universities, once affordable to most Australians to the highest overseas bidder? Are you an immigration agent, a lawyer or perhaps a recruitment agent?

Clearly, there are quite a few who stand to benefit immensely from immigration and that is why the media facilitated chorus in favour of immigration has become almost deafening in recent years.

Yet the benefit they receive is at overall the expense of this society, of the planet as a whole and of future generations.

The only reason that some economists are able to present immigration as economically beneficial is that they rely on the deeply flawed GDP measure, which was designed, in the 1930's by US economist Simon Kuznets, for an entirely different purpose. In 1934 he urged the US congress to not use the GDP as a measure of prosperity, but his plea has been ignored by those economists right up to the very day.

One final point, 'Yobbo', I noticed your remark "The barrel of a rifle is also narrow. Narrow and accurate."

I, for one, don't find this to be very funny, if that was your intention.

I call on you to unequivocally apologise to to other forum contributors and visitors for having made this remark and to offer us an explanation as to why you chose to do so.

If you fail to do so, then I call upon the administrators to revoke your rights to contribute to any Onlne Opinion forum until you have done so.

The truth the PM and the Democrats don't want us to know about immigration qu0tas:

Boss of the Cock-fights tells birds to put their manners back in.

The Boss said he agreed with the chief justice and believed fighting birds were not polite enough to each other, especially in supermarket checkouts and tollway overtaking lanes.

"I think there are certain vulgar expressions that have no place on television and if there's not some self discipline exercise in that I think cock-fighting standards will continue to deteriorate."

I will also, in concert with MY Private Public Partners, be building bigger fight pits and charging greater admissions to boost MY economy. May the best birds win.

The Boss did say that he was bringing in 140,000 new fighting birds per year and he expected tax-paying birds will pay more to build additional New Migrating Fighting-Bird Centres to give them a head start and maybe some manners.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pm-to-public-improve-your-manners/2006/01/31/1138590476814.html

Internal Cock-fight Inc memo: Management will continue its aggressive propaganda program to ensure the birds never find out that overcrowding in ill equipped pits is the reason they fight. We must continue to ply the trade that THEY should feel guilty about fighting. This makes for better spectacles and easier to control birds. We DON'T want them finding out the truth. They might join as one and fight US.

Give it up boys and girls - MC is as Australian as meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars - it is likely the pie manufacturer is over seas owned as is the car manufacturer and some American laboratory has taken a patent out on the kangaroo DNA - but hey! we can still call an Ugg boot our own.

All this migration has and still is according to some sending us to hell in a hand cart - over run with migrants, full of shopping strips with foreign language signage, governments grants to ethnic groups, embargoes on ham sandwiches at cetain public functions - we still manage to slip 5 of our major cities into the worlds top ten most livable cities list

Apart from the fact we treat large numbers of new comers like garbage, many of them still stay and most of them contribute to our quality of life and have got us to where we are to day - which remains by most measures not too bloody bad.

Cronulla, 9/11, London 7/7, Osama, Islamism - are a bloody side show and the sooner we focus on getting on with our lives the better off we'll all be.

I simply do not care about other cultures encroaching on mine; if my culture is worth preserving it will survive - if it is one worth saving it will adapt - thats what cultures do - if they dont they die.

Any one would think Australia and Australianess is some sort of cultural relic preserved in aspic for all time. And I am sick reading about our values - and our "way of life" and for that matter our heritage.

I beseech the editors give any story that features the words Islam, Mulitculturalism, immigration, and/or terrorism a wide berth.