I bet that most people on this forum live in a major capital city. Ask yourself why people don't spread out more into central Australia. Hmmm...desert, drought (not much water), rising salt on what was once good agricultural land and not much infrastructure.

Where do the vast majority of immigrants settle? To places where the infrastructure is well established - our major capital cities! Australia is the driest continent in the world, and a fragile country at that. There is no way Australia can hold 3oo million people like the U.S.

But for some reason, Australia likes to act like some kind of mega metropolis. It is a bit hard for corporates to treat everyone as nobodies under the spectre of a skills shortage and low fertility. Immigration shortcuts this problem.

Um, did anybody else notice Eric's comments in his article that he wanted to look at some numbers "just for fun" and "it's good to dream"?

Sorry, but I took those to be clues that the article was intended to be humourous.

As a caricature of a foaming-mouthed fortress-Australia moat-builder, this was an hilariously funny and insightful piece of satire. Well done Eric.

But the real punchline? The number of comments here that took Eric's comments seriously.

But then, fair enough. Australians have always taken the view that it's the bloody foreigners causing all the problems, so I guess this sort of comment is business as usual.

As long as we're OK, the rest of the world can go to hell in a handbasket, right?

Having said that, I do look forward to hearing more of Eric on the stand-up circuit. He's much funnier than Sam Kekovich.

I can only presume all the anti-immigration folk want to keep out the 5 million tourists who bring billions with them to spend each year too? Really, you don't? Why the hell not.

They drink our precious nectarous water, trample out gold plated soils, pollute our beautiful blue seas and create employment for tens of thousands of Australians.

Compare that to the immigration intake of 150,000 and refugees of 13,000 and see how utterly ridiculous you sound.

Rhian, thank goodness for some common sense. 1.2 million less Australian's causing pollution just means 1.2 million people somewhere else causing the same pollution.

Absurd a mondo is this argument. Here is the thing though - the aborigines were here first, they were treated appalling by the invaders and nothing has changed in over 220 years has it except the invaders are from 200 different countries now.

Mickijo, really? No problems in Australia before now? I remember being 7 years old and sent to the proverbial coventry because I wouldn't go and bash the catholics in the convent school.

What about the Greeks and Italians who hate each other and so on? You are just using this as another overt attack on muslims - people you don't know and don't want to.

Eric, you need to reconsider the population distribution thing because it simply doesn't make sense when the population of the world keeps growing just to keep a few people off this island for a year or two. Eventually the world will need more space but it's OK. We are told that the Japanese are getting so old they will have a 25 million reduction in their population but then I guess another 25 million Africans will be born.

Stupid.

Fifty years ago, population, 10-11 million, at least 4 car manufacturers, thousands of small manufacturing industries. We were told, populate or perish. Now more than 23 million, dying car industry, non existent manufacturing, growing monopolisation, more than 3 million unemployed, collapsing infrastructure.

Supposed intellectuals living in match boxes piled on top of each other, only see buildings and smog around them, wanting more of the same. I'd like them to describe how the country can support constant growth with dwindling resources.

A bus fills up to its safe carrying capacity, those on the bus have a right to say not more or else the bus will tip over. There will be those just like on this forum who will say, we've a moral obligation to take more people on the bus irrelevant to the consequences. We see this all the time overseas, overcrowded buses crashing because all the drivers want is more paying passengers, not a safer bus.

Considering the lies flowing incessantly from our politicians, believing them's like believing in the tooth fairy, nonsensical stupidity. Now we discover they sent out troops to Iraq purely to make sure we could sell our wheat and they stuffed that.

I look forward to two years time, petrol will be over $3 litre, cities under fire from radical weather, dying infrastructure, unsafe streets and imported foods. Still fools will say, more people to fill the boat, our moral obligation is to fill up until we sink.

Put forward all the economic illusions you want, without alternatives, there's no future. We don't have to cut back on consumption of oil or stop population growth, our future self-centred economic greed will do that.

Moral obligations are a religious attempt at making us feel bad. All those advocating continuing immigration should provide and example and move to the country, taking the immigrants with them to provide an example of how it should be done.

Marilyn Shepherd wrote:

"I can only presume all the anti-immigration folk want to keep out the 5 million tourists who bring billions with them to spend each year too? ..." (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4603#46302)

I think tourism has its place, but it is unhealthy that any economy is as dependent upon tourism as Australia's now is. The other most significant economic activities, upon which Australia now depends, are the pyramid selling scheme, known as the real estate market, and the extraction and export of non-renewable mineral resources. Even our rural sector is largely dependant upon fertilisers which are manufactured from the planet's finite and dwindling stock of non-renewable fossil fuels. This cannot be sustainable.

Tourism on the current scale comes at a cost to the rest of us. Many of our own holiday destinations are now overcrowded and beyond our means due to both our increased population and to the far greater numbers of overseas tourists.

Also, for me there is something undignified about turning half of the country into a theme park and ourselves into quaint objects of curiosity for wealthy foreign visitors to marvel at.

Any government with vision, and with our best interests at heart, would set a goal of winding back our dependence upon tourism before inevitable steep rises in oil prices make it unviable.

Don't worry, immigration will self limit.
A CSIRO study of some years back held that the population will not exceed 25 Million because there will not be enough water for more people than that.

Nuclear powered desalination could change that but it will be further away than the need for water.

BTW, the nuclear waste is nowhere near the problem as has been suggested. Neither in volume or time.
I am told that there is a technique that reduces the long half life products significantly and the volume is also very small.
This from a real expert in nuclear technology.