Hi Perseus,

I agree that zero population growth would slug Australia’s growth, but so what? Why is there this constant obsession with economic growth anyway, which in many cases equates to environmental destruction? Growth can come from other sources, notably improvements in technology. If negative population growth countries like Switzerland, Italy and Japan can do it, why can’t we? Quality is better than quantity.

Zero population growth?Did you know that China considers Australia almost uninhabitated.If not for the US nothing would stop them or India for that matter,who have populations bursting at the seems.

Why buy it,when you ca simply take it?

Robg, zero population growth will not merely reduce economic growth it will produce negative growth. But you are right when you say that growth can come from other sources like technology. And one of those new technologies is improving the way we govern ourselves, including altering the structures of government to deliver better governance, with lower overheads, lower infrastructure costs, lower congestion costs and better quality of life. Thats what new states will do.

Your example of Japan as a country that has done well with zero population growth would have been more credible if they had not spent the entire last decade in a very bad economic slump. And Switzerland has specific niches and is helped in no small part by proximity to markets and banking services for every tin pot dictator that ever raped a third world economy. Don't call that clever and don't call it sustainable and don't propose it as an realistic option for Australia. It aint.

What Perseus says about high immigration driving up population growth and land prices is right.
As demographer Alfred Sorby once said, "The cows in the paddock would like to be fewer than the farmer decides."
Recently private immigration agents team up with solicitors, realtors and various universities touting for foreign students and use the internet to flog Australian land and housing all over the world to the highest bidder. Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board encourages this dubious practice. Property development associations lobby mainly for population growth and subsidies for housing from the public purse. APop, officiated by professional developers, financed the Victorian Population 'Summit', [and then others in other states] (speakers mostly journos posing as experts) with Steve Vizard and Richard Pratt (afficionado of piping every drop of H20 in Australia) to push propaganda for population growth; the HIA constantly touts for higher immigration, along with the Real Estate Institute of Australia, the Royal Society of Engineers and other mutual beneficiaries of infrastructure expansion. Then these same organisations have the hide to pose as concerned community organisations hoping to alleviate the housing crisis that they have lobbied successfully to increase with every year since 1960 or so. Their reps pop up on the boards of charitable institutions, 'advising' them on 'affordable housing'. Said institutions have become so dumbed down that they say nothing; just invest in ... housing.
Menzies yanked housing into the private sector in the early 1960s and turned on the immigration taps at the same time, gradually disbanding public housing and its funding. We have been on the road to hell ever since and the Housing industry, property developers and building materials industries have become shameless addicts to the immigration gravy train. Lately they have been tossed new appetisers in the baby bonuses, proving that our politicians will stop at nothing.

It doesn't have to be like this: Western Europe supplies housing for its citizens as a matter of right.
Check out the submission at
Affordability Enquiry www.pc.gov.au/
inquiry/housing/subs/sub153.pdf

Everyone who discusses housing prices misses the main point.
I know it sounds pompus but its true, I am the only one who realises why house prices are so unmanagble.

I'll let you into the secret;
Quite some time back the feminist lobby pressured the government to force the lending institutions to lend against both husband & wife incomes.

Now what do you think happens in any market, any market at all, when twice as much money is thrown into that market ?

Surprise surprise prices go up to meet the available funds !
Now it is no longer an option for the wives to go to work, it is essential ! After all if you borrow on two incomes you have to pay with two incomes.

The women did not do themselves a favour in pressing for two income borrowing. It is the root cause of late age births and the resultant problems associated with that. It is the cause of Peter Costello's concern over the birth rate, it is the cause of concern over the lack of trained people to run the economy. It is the indirect cause of many of societies problems.

So now you know and don't let the feminists berate me about it as you can see the Empress has no clothes !

Bazz: Of course! So what you're saying is that, in a twist on the old joke, it doesn't matter what sort of watch a husband buys his wife for their anniversary, nor even that there's one on the microwave, because there's one in the bottom right corner of her PC at work!

In a sense you're right (about inflationary pressures), but I don't think society's problems are merely a matter of everyone (but especially women) realising that women need to get back in the kitchens or bedrooms where they "belong". Whether people (men or women) like it or not, those days are all but gone, so it's a moot discussion.