An excellent article Eric. I agree wholeheartedly with your last couple of lines, "It is up to the citizens of Australia to vote in the politicians who will best serve their interests. Both major parties now serve the interests of big business."

I also find many of the positive responses to your article to be pretty well on the ball but I will point out to some that the Greens, although they are generally bashful about addressing the issue do at least have a population policy that is very much a step in the right direction. And in any case who else can you vote for if the two major parties are not serving us well? They won't change no matter how many of their voters want them to unless they see the issue as one that will sway the votes.

Bob Brown had something to say about the subject in the Senate not too long ago which is worth noting. Refer below: -

http://candobetter.org/node/806#speech

Senior Victorian why don't you put together some facts to substantiate your criticisms?
It is strange how critics of things like zero population growth and climate change practically never embellish their criticisms with facts of any kind. Come on! Give it a try in this case..

Posted by Kiashu, Wednesday, 5 November 2008 11:33:42 PM

Kaishu,

I was wondering where you got the idea that to have a "multitude of cultures" we had to have positive immigration?

If you look at the immigration statistics from teh Australian Bureau of Statistics you will see that most long term immigrants to Australia come from New Zealand, who recently overtook the UK.

Please don't confuse population planning with racial intollerance. The former requires study and a scientific methodology, the latter requires ignorance and hatred. They are therefore, by definition, mutually exclusive.

Posted by Senior Victorian, Thursday, 6 November 2008 1:46:10 PM

Senior Victorian,

No one is talking about refugee intake. We are talking about immigration intake. They are counted speratately. But if you insist;
In 2007 Asutralia took in a paltry 13,000 refugees. Not all of them are still here but I can't get firm figures. In the same year 25,000 Asutralains permanently emmigrated.

We could easily take more refugees if the ridiculous immigration program was abolished.

I must correct my last post. Permanent leavers from Australia in 2007 was in the order of 75,000. I read the wrong column and quoted the 2002 statisctics. For that I apologise.

examinator, I didn't understand your initial post, but I think I have got it now. I think you are saying humanities impact on the planet would be lessened if Australia accepted more, not less immigrants. And more generally, the planet would be better off it we concentrated on the well being of poorer nations.

The reason I didn't understand your first post is because the article isn't about humanities impact on the planet, or the well being of the worlds population in general. It's point is a rather more selfish one, and is summed up nicely on the OLO front page: "A high immigration intake does not benefit the average Australian". None of your arguments seem to address that directly. By the by income (ie poverty) is not the main predictor of fertility rates, it is women's education.

That aside, I believe the only thing we in Australia can do to reduce mankind's ecological footprint that has a hope of working is to control our own population. You speak of getting other countries to control their population - as though if we just showed them the way and gave them the means they would leap at it. On the contrary. They show as much enthusiasm for control their population as we do ours, and would almost certainly regard any such efforts as an unwanted intrusion into their internal affairs. And as for suggestions that we somehow make 3rd world countries like Zimbabwe improve their food production and distribution - that is a joke, right?

Finally, the suggestion that allowing more immigrants in would somehow reduce our impact on the planet is just fantasy. Aside from Australian's have a bigger footprint than most other nations, if we tripled our population by accepting 40 million immigrants in one year, that would still not account for one years world population growth which is currently around 60 million per year. So while it would destroy our own fragile ecology, it would have almost no impact on the rest of the world.