What comes first, economic growth or increased immigration? It is like a dog chasing it's own tail.
Under increased immigration we have increased crime, drugs,ethnic refusal to accept Australian laws and traditions.
Is increased growth an asset or a liability? I have a feeling that it is the latter.
We are not concentrating on industrial growth, we only export minerals and dirt and if that fails tomorrow what is left?
We are importing tradespeople while young Australians, black and white, are being dumbed down with a low schooling culture, drugs and alcohol.
Not the lucky country now.

A couple of points:

Immigration does not change global population growth, it just redistributes it. Reducing immigration may lead to a reduction in Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, but will have no effect at all on global emissions unless migrants are responsible for more emissions here than they would be in their source countries. So the net effect of Australia reducing migration on global emissions may be positive or negative, but will certainly be far less than the national emissions data the article discusses. And of course it’s global emissions, not where those emissions come from, that matter for global warming.

Further, there is no linear relationship between emissions and population, as the author assumes. In particular, our export industries are concentrated in emissions-intensive activities like minerals and agriculture. Our minerals and energy exports will barely be affected by changes in population growth, and agriculture might change its output mix with lower population growth, but the effect on emissions could be positive, negative or negligible

I have always been cynical about high immigration. What type of people are its biggest advocates? Soloman Lew, Richard Pratt and Lindsay Fox, all of whom are super rich and I am doubtful they have the best interests of Australians in mind.

High immigration creates extra demand on infrastructure which creates skills shortages. Immigrants are used to plug the shortages, which in turn exerts more pressure on infrastructure.

The social and environmental concerns of high immigration is not on the agenda for our 'leaders'. It the economy stupid!

Finally, Bronwyn suggests more refugees. Will you accept that many of these will be unskilled, working class types? Unskilled working class refugees are crime prone just like unskilled working class whites. Basic sociology.

Reduce immigration! Eric, I expect to see your limp body hanging from a tree very soon.

In 1991, SJ Rimmer put the cost of our immigration at AUD$7.2 billion each year. Up to and including 2006 that's AUD$108 billion. If we spent $7.2 billion each year on research into renewable fuels I feel sure that we would have had a solution to our problems by now. Instead we've been entertained by people dressed in costumes poncing about celebrating their national day. Who cares. I want to see people dancing in the streets after hearing the news that research by us has led to a cheap renewable and clean energy source.

Dream on Sage.

That's an excellent article, Eric. It told some hard facts that the politicians and mainstream media would rather we didn't know. There is a good case to be made that the Australian and US governments were unwilling to sign up to Kyoto because they knew that population growth would make it impossible to meet the targets. From ABS figures Australia's total household energy consumption increased by 50% between 1975 and 1995. 76% of the increase was due to population growth and 24% to increased consumption. US per capita consumption of energy and most other resources has been flat or declining for more than the past 30 years. The big increases in total consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are entirely due to population growth. [President’s Council on Sustainable Development, Task Force Report, Sustainable America, March 1996].

Zero net immigration would involve an intake several times as great as Bronwyn's 15,000 to 20,000 refugees, so that many shouldn't be a problem. I also agree with Tom N that we need to look at the pronatalist policies of the government as well as the high immigration policy. The environment cares about the per person impact, not about whether the source of that impact came from here or somewhere else.

The Skeptic needs to look up the DNA evidence recently reported in the Sydney Morning Herald showing that there were up to 5 waves of Aboriginal migration into Australia. Whether the group identified as the oldest really was the first is anyone's guess. He can also google Kennewick Man and the links leading to the new discoveries in Mexico and Brazil showing that the earliest settlers of the Americas were racially different from modern American Indians. Unless he believes there is a use by date on ancestral guilt we are all descended from migrants.

It might be better for Australia's environment if we reduce the number of immigrants to Australia and phase our population down to 12 million people.

The thing is, we need to look at this planet as a whole, not just as a bunch of fragmented countries. If we don't accept the immigrants, they won't cease to exist. They'll just cause more polution, etc. in other countries.

So we need to look at environmental sustainability from the point of view of our whole planet, not just one country.