Nothing governments can do will stop the majority of immigrants flocking to Sydney and SEQ. They will find a way whether you force them to live in Orange or Dubbo.

This makes the wellbeing of Sydney and SEQ residents intolerable. If its intolerable NOW, why advocate an acceleration of this hell?

Because the big MacBanks and their back pocket politicians dont'give a rat's about our WELLBEING.

..A new survey that compares the wellbeing of people in all 150 federal electorates reveals the safe Labor seat of Grayndler, covering Annandale, Leichhardt, Petersham, Newtown, Marrickville and Summer Hill, tops the national list for all-round unhappiness.
The compiler of the national happiness scorecard, Robert Cummins, professor of psychology at Deakin University, said Sydney generally had more miserable people than the rest of the country.

It shows the happiest electorates tend to have a lower population density, a high proportion of people over 55, more females, more married people and less income inequality. Importantly, they have a strong sense of "connection to their community".

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/welcome-to-the-angstridden-inner-west/2006/02/12/1139679480760.html

Wellbeing? You can't make a profit out of that.

If residents have to be miserable for MAC BANKS to make profits and for their CEOs to be paid $1million per day in bonuses then like the Funnel Tunnel, residents just have to learn to like it .. OR ELSE.

Future attractions:

NSW government has spent unknown millions on back room public serpents, consultants and planning instruments to satisfy the big Banks vision for an overcrowded profit motivated future NSW, centered solely on Sydney. Is this where the $500 million budget shortfall has gone?
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/debnam-targets-back-office-bureaucracy/2006/02/12/1139679480814.html

Rockdale council has spent undisclosed amounts of ratepayers money on plans to turn Botany Bay into a rich man's paradise that no local ratepayer could ever afford to visit. Anyone with half a brain can see this be a backdoor to the big Banks dream of Botany Vegas. This IMO is all the Kurnell Desal plant was ever about. They won't be developing prime real estate for the benefit of local residents.

Gentlemaen, its time for ACCOUNTABILITY.

Andrew

Further to my last post:

You wrote; “Fourthly, whilst most resources are finite, the efficiency with which we use them certainly isn't.”

Oh dear! Most resources are NOT finite!! Most are renewable. Surely it is now our highest priority to make sure that those potentially renewable resources do not reach a point where they are effectively exhausted, nor anywhere near it, and to see that those approaching exhaustion or unaffordability are both substituted and used very much more frugally (a la oil).

Fisheries, forests, soil, water, energy sources, etc - they are all renewable... and all showing major signs of stress.

Shouldn’t this be the overwhelmingly most important objective of the Democrats?

Andrew

Last Sunday you wrote "in my view, pro-environment policies should not mean elitist or anti-people policies".

What on earth gave you the idea that a limit to population numbers is "anti-people"? In fact, it is precisely out of concern for humanity that this insane obsession with packing the globe with the largest number possible right now has to stop. What good has it done humanity for the world population to grow from 2.5 billion in the 1950s to 6.3 billion today? Sure, there is a larger QUANTITY of people but what about their QUALITY of life? According to UN figures, there are 25,000 people a day dying of starvation - there should not be a single person added to the world's population until this figure is reduced to zero. But what is going to happen? The world population is destined to rise to 9 billion by 2050. How many people will be dying of starvation then, with fisheries, agricultural land, water resources, fossil fuels, minerals stretched beyond their limits? What about inter-generational equity, or don't those people (our children and grandhildren) matter?

Truly, I don't think you give a fig for the plight of the world's starving. In fact I think you are anti-people because you would rather see population growth halted by famine, disease and war than by deliberate human planning. I am digusted by the moral bankruptcy of this "anti-people" argument, it is so short-sighted and stupid. I would much rather listen to Sir David Attenborough than you on this subject, he knows what he is talking about and with respect I place a lot more store by his credentials as a natural historian than by your relatively narrow background.

By the way, the link to Dr Bartlett was a streaming video and it seems pretty clear to me you didn't bother with it, otherwise you would not have said that you had read his piece. Your response to the points he made was a complete non-response.

Andrew,

It would help this discussion if you would clearly state your reasons for your proposed high immigration policies.

Once again Andrew - why?

Thermoman - the link goes to a page which provides a transcript. I read the transcript. I responded - in particular noting that it was wrong to link Australia's migration intake to talk of exponential growth. But if you prefer to think I'm a liar, feel free.

I don't know how many times I have to say it, but migration does not increase the world's population - it moves them from one part of the planet to another. How having some people live here instead of somewhere else makes things worse for the world's starving is beyond me.

Your argument is basically saying you want to help the world's starving and help everyone else's quality of life by keeping them out of Australia. We try to help them in some general manner as long as they stay away, so we can continue to have one of the biggest per capita ecological footprints of any country all to ourselves.

last word, if you haven't been able to figure out my reasons for supporting migration from my article and all of my comments, then I doubt my repeating them is going to help much.

The current levels of migration to Australia, which I call 'high' (as opposed to some of the enormous numbers which the Business Council and others sometimes spruik, which I would call 'massive'), are already policy of most political parties in a general sense. My article was basically saying that, seeing we have these policies, we should to do more to promote the reasons behind this approach.

I believe the biggest plus is the social and cultural enrichment, followed by the economic benefits - a more solid foundation to our economy and more investment, export and trade opportunities. The benefits to Australia from the migration intake over the last 60 years are many and obvious. That doesn't mean that this will always be the case regardless, but it does show the clear pluses that can come through migration.

Of course everyone is racist. As very young children we learn our species identity. We recognise the difference between ourselves and the family dog; and the dog from the cat. We learn our gender identity at a very young age too. And we learn our racial identity. This can even be confused. At a very young age we develop a mindset as to what we find attractive based on who we see and interact with in our everyday environment, which guides us in the later choice of a mate. In the case of say a Japanese family living isolated from other Japanese people within say a Norwegian society it can be expected that upon maturity the offspring of the Japanese family will find themselves sexually attracted to Norwegians and not Japanese. Simply because of the earlier mindset of racial identity.

Blacks, muslims, jews etc too are blatantly racist - otherwise they wouldn't persist in using words and phrases against us that is politically incorrect should we refer to them in the same manner. Politically correctness is very one sided and very very racist. I'm not a racist. I'm ok with everyone being equal. Problem is blacks etc don't want to be equal, they insist they're better and downtrodden to boot. If there were true equality I could speak publicly about them the way they speak about me.