Pretending that population densities in Australia should be the same as those in France and the UK is just childish. My parents moved to Port Macquarie a few years back, and by the end of every summer the whole town is praying for the campers to go home, because there just isn't enough water to go around. And there's counter-cultural about that.

oops.
Please read "there's NOTHING counter-cultural about that".

The selfishness is in precisely the opposite direction. The corporate elite gets richer by pushing population growth because it means such things as bigger markets, the ability to make a killing on land speculation, an oversupply of labour so that they can have a cheap and compliant work force, and savings on training costs. Their wealth will insulate them from the crowding and other problems they create. Social inequality grows since very little of the wealth trickles down. Take a look at the graphs at the Economic Policy Institute site (www.epinet.org) in the US, where they have had massive population growth, and you will see that in real terms the median wage has barely increased since 1973 and that the minimum wage is worth less than in 1960. Now look at the CIA World Fact Book and you will see that among developed countries there is no correlation between population size, growth rate or density and GNP per capita. Finland is at the top in education, and near the top on the UN Human Development Index and World Forum Competitiveness Index with very little population growth.

Countries vary in how productive and forgiving their environments are. Only 4-6% of Australia is arable, compared to 50% in some other countries. According to the government's own State of the Environment reports every environmental indicator apart from urban air quality is getting worse. Most of the land in those coastal areas the authors want to develop is also important for biodiversity.

We know that quality of life in the cities is getting worse thanks to the crowding and resource shortages forced on people by the growthists in government and the corporate elite. For example, we know that high density living is bad for children's development (see Prof. Bill Randolph's "Childen in the Compact City" (available on Web)) but more of them are being forced into it.

Even more of us ought to take a stand against overpopulation and overdevelopment by putting incumbent politicians last and any other growthists on the ballot as close to the bottom as we can get them.

Until there is a way to create an international city that keeps its natural allure, then all power to the NIMBYs. I live in the international city that is the urban monstrosity of Sydney. I weep when I visit family in Brisbane and see the overdeveloped international city it has become. I have lived in the US and Britain and seen what happens when there is no real countryside or small towns but an endless stretch of large urban developments. It is awful and soul-destroying. And people who live in these places spend enormous amounts of money going on holiday to get away from them. What do we do when there is nowhere left to go, to get away from it all?

All well and good, but until we have employers (other than service providers eg retail and outposted government agencies) that are happy to set up shop outside the major cities then how is the population going to find employment? And don't get me started on the obvious lack of adequate infrastructure like roads, health care, transport, water and rubbish disposal in some of these areas.

Who are these people? If you have a look at their journal there's a heck of a lot of
Climate change denial,
Blue collar western Sydney populations are better than inner city tertiary educated "elite" people
Childare should be undertaken at home by the childs mother- full stop all the time always
Uranium mining is the cure for climate change,
More cars and bigger concrete jungles across the nation are a good thing.

Wonder who the (I suspect) developers who back this lot are?

We dont have the population growth that warrants destroying one of Australia's most wonderful areas.

Why bother, go an hour up the road to tweed and the Gold Coast and go for your life.

I never thought as a property person/capatalist id say this, but until we have no room left in one of the biggest countries land wise in the world, why should we look at promoting more growth on the east coast in one of the few remaining unique and beautiful areas.

Why dont you look at Tamworth or Chinchilla instead?

Great article.

It is the first criticism I have seen of Sartor's plan that notes that it aims to exclude working families from an attractive region with huge potential in order to better preserve it for the moneyed elite currently in residence. An appalling piece of legislation for a Labor government, but not, unfortunately, out of character.

I don’t blame anyone for wanting to get out of the Sydney Basin; every step taken there costs and costs a lot. It is not possible to avoid the expense whether it is parking, water, rent, tolls or building codes. The no go areas of Redfern, Macquarie Fields, Lakemba and Sutherland do not endear Sydney. The further I can get away from the place the better. I don’t know that the North Coast is the answer, as the economy is Centrelink dependant and the only viable industry in town seems to be the club scene. The penguin like procession to the poker machines on pension day and the drive by the unemployed to the local drug dealer does not depict a desirable setting in which to live. The result is a malnourished social security dependant underclass as your neighbours.
I think the areas to west have most to offer eg. Harden, Leeton, Forbes Finley etc.

Ah, the joys of coastal development on the large scale!
Conveniently flat land, ocean views (except for the neighbour's house), and just pipe all the accumulated rubbish into the ocean and forget it, ---.
What's new in the perspective of coastal real-estate "nation-building" over the past century? Nothing much it seems, from this article.
The authors obviously don't want to know about anything that might exist in scientific data relating to it.
Certainly not in regard to:
Geological data from Fred Whitehouse and colleagues in the 1950s about the inadvisability of Gold Coast development upon beach foredunes built up during calm weather,in between savage erosion events from cyclonic seas drifting down from the north. (Only had one little scare so far in half a century - maybe about due for a big one?.
Geoscience Australia publications on City Hazards, which details the perils of coastal developments from Cairns southwards through south-east Queensland and into New South Wales.
The detailed mapping, currently taking place, of the already-familiar problem areas of acid sulphate soils.
The State of the Environment reports commenting on east coast developments.
Climate Change data (unbelievable to the authors of course) which would multiply all of the above hazards.
And most of all, the impossibility of ever-continuous increase of human numbers.

No, the authors don't want to know. Why? - Maybe they also want to believe in fairies at the bottom of their garden. Or are gardens a dirty word in the urban developments of their fantasy?

We have been better at protecting our arid zones than our coastal at least as far as parks are concerned. Even those are at the mercy of people who have a right to ride their trail bikes and four wheel drives exterminating wallaby and bush as they go for entertainment purposes. Australians seem to have an immature passion for toys and games which will see to it most of the coast line , not only Northern NSW will be divided up and over populated to become an eye sore of garages with gable and living quarters and seas and rivers of bitumen. There is already development on the over stressed Murray with the awful industrial drone of speed boats and jet skis.

Then again with moderate to worst case senario climate change much of todays coast will be gone and the Murray Darling basin will be flooded by the sea. This will create new areas for coastal development (Broken Hill may be the hinterland for the future gold coast) for those who had not lost their money on the current coast line or the lower topography of the Murray Darling basin.