Can you see the glaring contradiction in Mercurius’ murky post?

He writes; “A trained monkey could improve the environment by capping the population and forcing people to use less”.

Or put in neutral terms; it is blatantly obvious that environmental health, which includes the natural and humanised environment and our resultant quality of life, can be improved by both limiting population size and reducing per-capita consumption.

Yahoo! At least he can see that limiting population growth is a pretty fundamental tenet for our future and he can appreciate the basic level of Eric’s and most respondents’ argument (as if anyone couldn’t see it).

But then he rabbits on about those who call for population stabilisation really wanting to get “rid of the bloody foreigners” and practicing xenophobia dressed up in green camouflage.

Sounds to me like he is one mixed up soul who is trying very hard to pervert the issue with baseless accusations of xenophobia when he knows full well that Eric’s arguments have eminent merit and have nothing to do with the x word.

“A government and a society worthy of the name will find policies and solutions that lead to better environmental outcomes even with lots more people living even more prosperous lives.”

Oh what a lovely notion. I used to believe that too about 25 years ago. But it so blatantly is not the case. Alchemist summarises this pretty well in his last post.

For goodness sake, Mercurius doesn’t have faith in Howard or Beazley or our political system to do the right thing by us in the longer term. Does he??

Why are so many people deeply concerned about high immigration and ever-increasing population? Because our political system and leaders have shown us over at least the last couple of decades that they are completely not up to the task of finding policies and solutions to our ever-increasing problems, but rather, continue with the same old practices that caused the problems

Marilyn Shepherd -

Thanks for raising the issue of tourists. Although I agree with Daggett that increased petroleum prices may harm our overseas tourism industry in the future, I don’t think the government should step in. I like the idea of as many people as are able to, visiting Australia. I think the people in the tourism industry understand the risks with rising oil prices and other factors.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, http://www.abs.gov.au) records that Tourism provides about 4% of our Gross Domestic Product and that “Domestic visitors generated 76% of tourism industry GDP in 2004-05 while international visitors generated 24%.” That means overseas tourism provides 1% of our GDP. I doubt if that means 1% of our energy usage, because manufacturing takes a significant piece, but even if it did take 1% of our energy it would not be the major factor that you implied with your comment about 5 million overseas tourists.

The ABS writes that there were 5.4 million short term overseas arrivals and 4.6 million residents leaving for short term holidays every year. That is a net difference of 800,000 travellers in Australia using Aussie energy. The median length of trip was 10 days, so we can estimate an average of 15 days. 800,000 people staying an average of 15 days is like 33,000 people staying a full year. 33,000 is probably closer to the impact with respect to energy and other resources, than 5 million. The 33,000 people leave as well, while net immigration means the numbers build up every year.

Mercurius –

I know you know its not a joke, but just for the record I will state that the reason that I said “It’s good to dream” is because the current political preference is to do nothing about immigration or sustainability. My dream is that the government will do something. When ideas are put forward the government says “Oh no we can’t do that,” and we end up with business as usual.

My view is that the government wants high immigration because a drop in immigration would slow the economy temporarily (hurting the governments chances of getting re-elected) and the benefits of low immigration are long term (meaning nothing to the governments chances of re-election). The government doesn’t see any benefits in reducing immigration and business likes immigration because it helps keep wages down and increases the size of their markets. Business therefore supports the governments high immigration program.

As I’ve said in previous posts I am happy to hear any ideas to reduce environmental impacts, but the easiest and least painful one is to reduce immigration. I understand that this is impossible to accept for many people. Many people would rather have pollution, congestion and a reduced standard of living than reduce immigration. If the government was raising the minimum renewable energy target to 3% and then 4% and then 5%, initiating a carbon tax, recycling wastewater, preserving park land, rehabilitating eroded and salt affected land and making it clear that the reasons that all these things had to be done was because we needed to have high immigration, then I could accept high immigration as vital to the Australian people. But none of this is happening and I don’t think that high immigration is absolutely vital for the Australian people.

From your post I assume that you understand that high immigration makes it harder to solve environmental problems. Why do you think high immigration is so important for Australia?

LIES-AND-BETRAYAL

The argument for stopping-unfair-immigration-practises has nothing-to-do-with Racism-or-Politics. NSW citizens are-impeccable-when-it-comes-to-tolerance-and-equality. The insinuation that we are racist in the Fair-Placement-immigration debate is-without-basis-and-quite-offensive. It is unfortunate that big-business-and-Media profitabilities are compromised by any hint of this fairness and they subsequently dredge up lies in prime time media to confuse-the-issue.

Should we believe-their-propaganda-just-because-its-on-Tele?

What the debate IS about is BETRAYAL. There is-no-longer-Public-trust-in-either-Federal-and-State-Governments who have chosen to conspire with certain MACWESTBRIDGE enterprises to-Betray-NSW-citizens-into-lower-standards-of-living in order to create milk-cow-SYDSEQ-investments in public-demographic-industries for their own benefit. The subsequent use of immigrational-gerrymandering-and-branch-stacking means that Sydney is becoming slum-ridden-and-gridlocked while high profile NSW Labor immigrants swan around, speeding in the RIGHT lane and aspiring to become-aristocrats-at-OUR-expense. The Animal-Farm-penny has well-and-truly-dropped. This is the worst act of bastardry performed on this state since Federation. No government has an election mandate to BETRAY its citizens through an unfair placement of immigrants and a corruption of the democratic process. The penalty is election loss and the successor Government had better understand-the-new rules if they want-more-than-one-term.

NSW citizens do NOT want a lower-standard-of-living and will-not have-the-bogey-man-ageing-population-problem. We have a sizeable proportion of the world's-mineral-wealth and we want to use it to OUR advantage within a population of around 23million Australians where future-slower-immigrant-intakes do not go into stressing SEQ-SYD to-profit-a-handful-of-grubs. The SYDSEQ-FULL-UP-signs are definitely posted. Governments-and-their-Private-backers had better-damn-well-get-used-to--it or find-other-employment. We are also-grown-up-enough-to-KNOW that there is nothing-we-can-tell-overseas-countries. We don't owe them anything and have no responsibility to them. The assumption that a pip-squeak like Australia might have this attitude would cause the greatest offence to other countries like China and be extremely undiplomatic. The responsibility we do have is to SURVIVE double digit interest rates (fix-term-rates-are-already-double-digit). We can best survive with technology and a population firmly entrenched in a culture of quiet enjoyment of life and environment, fully-paid-for-by-mineral-wealth and backed-up-by-hi-tech-research-and-military-assets.

Don't let big busness interests tell us that mineral prices will decline. Despite their BS Schrappnel, The fact is that New market opportunities in 3rd world countries mean that in as little as 10 years those countries will be first world and needing our minerals.

Thermy, I take a 3 day break and look what sort of dribble runs amok.
The difference between the Swedish example and your speculative Australian example of a small country with viable auto industry is that the Swedish outo industry is locally owned. Our's is not.

Our's is all owned by major transnational corporations who can, and certainly do, exercise their option of closing down plants in less profitable nations and replacing them with imports. And this does, indeed, reduce employment and adversely impact the balance of payments.

To suggest that a viable, locally owned auto industry will replace these closed auto plants, from scratch, in a declining or stagnating economy is pure fantasy.

Anti-migration people should also note that none of the research into the economic contribution of migrants has ever bothered to determine the amount of money that is brought into the country by migrants long after they have settled here. The data on how much is brought in on arrival is easy to collect but there is no way of determining how much comes in, by inheritance for example, many years later. But it is substantial.

Most non-refugee migrants actually come from countries with percapita net worth that is equal if not greater than Australia's. And it is a fact of life that sooner or later they will inherit a share of their parent's net worth. And in most cases it is sold and the funds are brought here. And it works both ways.

Most non-refugee migrants are not complete family movements but are more likely to be an Australian who has done nothing more sinister than finding a soulmate from another country. And if Australia is so stupid as to withdraw the welcome mat for such couples then they will make their life elsewhere. And then it will be the Australian expat whose inheritance will be providing jobs in another country.

And if you think this is only a minor economic feature then take a look at the data on net worth according to age-class before you shoot our economy in the groin.

Persius,

You want more migrants? Put them in your street and tell them to STAY. Sydney and SEQ are FULL-UP and FED UP.

You cannot externalise the costs of keeping the economy temporarily afloat ( it can't grow at 3% levels into a looming PEAK oil) by abusing majority voters in SYDSEQ with lower living standards and loss of quiet enjoynment of their cities and environment. We the people will awaken and vote you, Iemma and Costello into the well paid and highly unmeaningful private enterprise jobs that you have sold us out for.

There IS a role for some immigration if it involves 'fair-Australia-wide-placement' and governments make it clear that that fair placement is PERMANENT by shutting down further development in SYDSEQ. Send them to Melbourne and Canberra and let THEM cop the external costs of Australian businesse's economic growth.

If you continue to ignore the main focus of this debate you will not be taken seriously.

You wouldn't share your inherited wealth with strangers and migrants won't be sharing it with YOU or Australians. They will be doing what you would do, abusing and enslaving their new neighbours with that wealth to create a life of elitism and comfort. AWAs make it so easy and attractive and I can tell you its causing suffering. THAT is a crime and will not remain unnoticed by voters and the judiciary.
Australia is not Animal Farm and PIGS don't rule here.

Further I have heard of Italian bricklayers who export CASH in suitcases. You can't expect us to believe economic statistics based on legal transactions between migrants and their home countries. Everyone KNOWS and I bet you do too.

Your ingenuousness and weasel words are have been duely noted

Further, in an SMH article today, Costello boasts of current economic strength and a need to take development powers from the states so he can ensure a continued program of unfair immigrational placements without the risks of cooperative state governments being voted down. How Costello ever expects to be PM is the JOKE of the 21st century.