Yobbo,

Beautiful, sharp, illuminating - a gem of a post.

Thank you.

P.s. I challenge anyone to find fault with that post.

It does mean one (Andrew B) will have to actually find out what Islam is, and what effects Islam is having wherever it exists in the world.

Islam is a horrible yoke placed on the Arab people by Mohammed.

(Who said Cronulla was merely a race or immigration issue? How could we possibly frame it like that? It is about Islam for goodness sake we have no problems with anyone other religion/polity that comes here)

of course we need immigration.

look we have ten million workers now. as the population ages this will go down to seven million.

in twenty to thirty years we will have five million oldies unable to look after themselves. that will require about one and a half million workers to look after them. one million for looking after, another half to manage the workers.

with only seven million workers, one and a half million of which will be looking after our parents, that leaves five and a half million left to work in the rest of the economy.

that is almost half of what we have now.

all these nursing positions will have to be low paid, else the economy will fail. australians will not be able to live off these nursing positions and pay for their parents care. australians will need to work in higher paying jobs to look after their parents.

immigrants can take these low paying jobs, and be able to look after thier parents in comfort (due to the cheaper costs of living in thier own countries (exchange rate etc)).

it is not hard to understand.

all we need to do is make it clear that muslims who believe in an islamic world state are not allowed in.

given that all the pacific islanders will need places to stay when global warming comes in full force, isn't it smart to get them used to living in australia now, by giving them the three months a year working visas they want.

hell we should be training them as nurses now, for our parents health. Oh I forgot, we just care about ourselves and not even our parents, let alone our communities

Sorry I can’t respond more fully to all these comments – the two posts a day rule and wordcount limit make it impossible. Try visiting my webdiary – www.andrewbartlett.com/blog - where I often write on these and other issues.

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.

While I understand people thinking that a specific ethnic group might support a specific political party, I also don’t understand the regular suggestions that migration as a whole benefits political parties. If it clearly benefited one party, then the other would oppose it. It is a lot easier politically to ‘sell’ low migration which is why politicians tend not to do much spruiking about high migration, or imply it’s a year to year thing – one of the points I was trying to make in my article is that if politicians genuinely support high migration (which I presume they do or else we wouldn’t have it), they should be ‘loud and proud’ about it and counter some of the apprehensions expressed in these comments.

Judging by some of the posts, while some people who support low migration feel they are automatically labelled as racists, it appears people like myself who support high migration apparently do so for “personal power, glory and self-aggrandisement”, because we “don’t want to alienate business”, “won’t face reality”, “don’t have the best interests of the country at heart” or even humanity as a whole!

Fida Mae – I’m not aware of any religions that can be equated with a political ideology, although there may be sects or denominations that could fit in that category (depending on your definition). There are currently some groups (like Hamas) who are proscribed under law and people who are known to be members have difficulties entering Australia. I think it is much better to focus on a person’s character and conduct than target a religion.

its seculat vrs non sec.

Regardles of the press Aussie culture rights are receiving recognition John Howard's Aussie day speech mentioning something about new Australians speaking English etc.

As for new Aussies for the work force yeh sure, i reckon there will be a few dutch refugees very soon. If its true that we need numbers so high to maintain ourselves im sure Aussies would work a little harder to cover the gap prefering a choice in who and what comes in to our daily lifestyle.

As for us havign more Western babys, we also have earned the privalage in the West to no not be slaves of overbreeding, that to is a very importent cultural aspect of The West that needs respecting and curtailing to. Agreed as well tho, We could lift our Anglo pop to some degree.

please excuse my slpoopy spelling latley ive been tired.

Ludwig: there is more than one path to sustainability. I prefer pathways that have a chance of working and aim for socially just results. John Coulter was – and remains – a zero net migration person. I am sure the ACF Council is currently having as much fun dealing with his anti-migration views as the Democrats did 15 years ago. Fortunately the Democrats fully disassociated themselves from that stance quite some years ago. I can never comprehend environmentalists who call on people to think globally, *except* when it comes to migration, when it becomes ‘stay out of our country’.

Migration to Australia increases our populations levels - although even the current rate will lead to a stabilised population in Australia by mid-century - but it does not increase the global population level. People still consume resources wherever they live.

It’s true people living in Australia consume more than many other places, but this shouldn’t be used as an excuse to keep people out, but rather a reason to reduce our unnecessary consumption. Of course, a lot of it relates to economic prosperity, but suggesting we can be prosperous but others can’t is not just (and not sustainable either). Also, broadly speaking the welathier societies get, the fewer children they have. Most western countries already have birth rates below replacement levels.

Focussing on 140 000 or so permanent migrants when we have over 3 million people going in and out of Australia each year seems a bit myopic too. They might be tourists or other visitors, but they still consume resources. They also have the added consumption and emissions involved in travel. I hope the ‘migrants are unsustainable’ advocates aren’t suggesting stopping international tourism.

Blaming migrants for the NSW government’s incompetence and gutlessness in managing water and other resources is also a bit unfair. As a country we actually have more water resources per head than many others, and simply waste it. Our profligate approach to energy and irrational policies on transport shouldn’t be used as an excuse to say we can’t cope with more migrants.

Well isn’t this fascinating. The theme of responses on this thread is very strongly against high immigration.

Andrew, if you want to save the Democrats from extinction you need to drop this awful future-destroying position and really become sustainability-oriented.

Become really different from the Laborials, like the Demos were in the early days. Present an exciting alternative.

Become our SOS party (Save of Society). Address peak oil with a vengeance. Guide us onto sustainable footing as an absolute imperative. Denounce consumerism and continuous growth. Push for the widespread recognition of genuine measures of economic wellbeing and quality of life instead of absurdly misleading indicators like GDP.

Don’t get bogged down in issues of multiculturalism, health and aging, work and family, or most of the other policy platforms that you hold. ALL of these things will rapidly worsen if we fail to address the threat of rapidly rising fuels prices and our overall rampantly unsustainable direction.

My heart aches when I think about what Australia desperately needs in its political scene, how close the Democrats were to that in the early 90s, and what they have become.

The Democrats have become the wrong sort of SOS party (sold our souls).