Well done, Jennifer Marohasy, for speaking the unspeakable.

"But there has been no honest discussion or clever policies put forward by Labor, the Coalition or the Greens to deal with the key underlying environmental issue which is population pressure - locally and globally."

Will there be a politician brave enough to say anything anywhere near as brave and then act on it? Maybe, if comments like the ones previously posted keep surfacing. It's clear we won't have any leadership on the environment and sustainability, but we may get the politicians to follow.

In my dreams, Dr. Marohasy follows up the comment above, with something like: "Reducing immigration and dumping the Costello Baby bonus are relatively simple policy ideas, but they would be a good start to getting Queensland and Australia sustainable." Lets hope Dr. Marohasy and others in the community continue to put pressure on the government and opposition parties "to deal with the key underlying environmental issue - which is population pressure."

I don’t know Jennifer , Maybe the Qld liblabs are simply coming to their senses a bit , On water that is .
Lets face it there’s been a lot of talk about connecting a pipe from the toilet s bend to the kitchen tap lately .
With that image in mind the idea of accessing water from a shiny new dam would be very sweet indeed .

The environment thing as an election issue is getting a bit old anyway .

I expect that in time when our primary producers have been regulated out of competitiveness & our only option for vegetables looks like being those grown in human waste in china & meat grown in unknown conditions from a place with a high disease incidence , The anti farmer tree clearing thing will get a bit old too .
Climate change will I believe be nothing compared to the potential effect of fear of climate change .

“But there has been no honest discussion or clever policies put forward by Labor, the Coalition or the Greens to deal with the key underlying environmental issue which is population pressure - locally and globally.”

How true. And how nice it is to see this expressed by Jennifer Marohasy.

It really is extraordinary that this factor goes unaddressed, especially by the (pseudo)Greens.

“Nothing will do more to maintain the quality of life in the SE corner like encouraging new arrivals to settle in the rest of the state.”

Perseus, for as long as we have a rapid overall influx of people, spreading them around the state is not going to be the answer. But at least you realise the need to relieve population pressure on SEQ.

“A stable population number is a necessary but not sufficient condition for environmental sustainability”

Absolutely right eyejaw.

“Why isn't there a huge movement to stop immigration and cut back on population growth ?”

A very good question kang.

“Until we stop this population at all costs we will continue to lower our collective standards of living.”

Spot on Rhys.

“We really should be debating our carrying capacity, forming a population policy and tailoring immigration to suit.”

Most definitely Banjo.

Oh this is wonderful. The unspeakable population issue is really starting to be spoken about. I reckon it won’t be long now before our pollies are forced to sit up and take notice.

It is wonderful to find great minds thinking alike on population, high time we started a campaign. However ... perhaps one of you can say something about the only argument for population growth and migration that is at all convincing: i.e. without population increase the aging population will have no taxpayers to support it/us and pay our pensions, please tell me that this is not true or that it is exaggerated! (Mind you, even the prospect of poverty in old age would not sway me, at least I hope not).

Don't include me in your population love-in, Ludwig. Population isn't the problem, it is "concentration of population" that is the problem. Spread the 50,000 new arrivals in Qld each year evenly over the entire state and the population of Gayndah (pop 2883) goes up by 36 people requiring 14 new houses. They will need no new roads, no new power lines and, provided they include a water tank, no new Dams.

Longreach (pop 4033) would get 50 more people in 19 new houses using existing roads, existing power and no new dams.

Sarina (pop 9862) would get 123 more people in 47 new houses using existing roads (perhaps some side streets) existing infrastructure and no new dams.

But at the moment the SE Corner with 65% of the population is getting 85% of the new arrivals which is 10,000 more than their share. Over the next 20 years that will be 200,000 people in 77,000 houses requiring 20 new suburbs with all the bells and whistles.

Each new arrival in SEQ costs the existing residents $12,000 a year in congestion costs. That is twice as much as the $6,000 that the state government spends on each queenslander. For a family of four this will amount to $48,000 a year and service $520,000 worth of debt. So there is a very strong self interest in the SEQ population doing all it can to encourage that newly arrived family to keep going north and west where their congestion cost will be zero.

While the major political parties look after the interests of big business, the only party in the last twenty years to advocate a reduction in immigration, to nett zero, is One Nation.

They advocated this untill we sorted out where we were going in relation to employment and population. Makes sence to me