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The Forum > Article Comments > How the growth lobby threatens Australia's future > Comments

How the growth lobby threatens Australia's future : Comments

By James Sinnamon, published 9/2/2009

Common sense, not to mention the evidence, tells us that a larger population cannot possibly be in the interests of Australia.

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Its so good to see the production of so many intangible assets and untradable goods in this discussion.
Posted by Dallas, Thursday, 12 February 2009 9:29:27 PM
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“James Sinnamon … is working hard to get the message out. I don’t have to agree with every word he says to appreciate his every effort. I wish there were more like him.”

Hear, hear ericc.

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I couldn’t agree more Malthus.

Welcome to OLO.
Posted by Ludwig, Thursday, 12 February 2009 9:32:08 PM
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James Sinnamon's byline for this article says:

"Common sense, not to mention the evidence, tells us that a larger population cannot possibly be in the interests of Australia."

Let us accept for the moment that, in a secret ballot, a significant majority of Australians would endorse that position.

Could it be that the promotion of high immigration (in the absence of which there would be no large population growth in Australia) in the face of such common sense, may be more fully explained by the existence of a complementary interest group to that of what has been described here as 'the growth lobby'?

For several decades now the level of enrolments on the electoral rolls has very closely approached, or even perhaps exceeded, the total number of persons estimated as being qualified to be on those rolls. Likewise, there has been intensified over this same period attempts to change the fundamental polity of Australia from that of Constitutional Monarchy to that of some unspecified republic. Could it be that the objective is to bring into Australia sufficient persons having no natural attachment to our traditional polity such that a vote some time in the future to change to a republic would be believable or made explicable, by this demographic trend?

Note well that I am not attempting to impute to the majority of such migrants, and believably future citizens, the actual holding of such republic-supportive views. I merely state that it could be held, in explanation of some future fundamental change to the Australian polity, that such persons could have tipped the balance in a vote.

Now what if there exists an interest group in Australia that has already mastered the art of rigging elections at local, State, and Federal levels, and this group's interests more or less coincide with those of which James is pleased to call 'the growth lobby'? Would such a group of election-riggers not have a vested interest in sustained high migration as a smokescreen to what they were really about?

Consider the National Electricity Market without present Constitutional restraints. Open slather.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Friday, 13 February 2009 6:16:02 AM
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BiancaDog, I have also read "Overloading Australia" by Mark O'Connor and William Lines and agree that is an excellent book chronicalling Australia's ruinous path toward overpopulation. The authors succeed in comprehensively demolishing the specious arguments used by the growth lobby in their campaign for ever-higher levels of immigration. I found the chapter "The racist bogey" particularly interesting. The authors make the point:

"In general, rather than opponents of high immigration having a hidden agenda, it is immigration's advocates who have a personal or institutional vested interest, whether they are are ethnic 'leaders' seeking to increase their 'market share', industry groups seeking to increase their business opportunities, or New Class intellectuals expressing their moral superiority."

The chapter on Australia's immigration-induced housing crisis, fittingly entitled "Pyramid-selling Australia", was also especially relevant. O'Connor and Lines note how politicians, business groups and journalists talk as if the "supply" of housing is the only factor worth considering, while completely ignoring the "demand" side of the equation and the fact that high immigration is deliberately being used to ensure the housing market "pressure-cooker" situation the real estate industry desires.

The authors are blunt:

"Whatever money land speculators gain by pushing up prices is taken from the pay-packets and household budgets of those who must buy their overpriced properties. Mortgages that require both spouses to work long hours lead to much stress and pain, many a nervous breakdown, cracked marriage, alienated or dangerously neglected children, and even to homelessness, drug addiction, and ruined lives. Yet, no commentary on Australia's recent property boom refers to the process as parasitic. This is remarkable, granted how difficult it would be to argue that it is not."

In all, "Overloading Australia" is probably one of the most important books published in Australia in a long time. As O'Connor and Lines show, unless we act soon to stabilise our population, our environment, our society, and our quality of life will suffer irrevocable damage.
Posted by Reyes, Friday, 13 February 2009 4:11:41 PM
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Thank you, Reyes (and FG, Ludwig, KAEP, Malthus, ericc, Efranke, VK3AUU and others),

Reyes, it was also my intention to quote precisely that paragraph (and a few others as well) from the chapter "Pyramid-selling Australia" from Mark O'Connor's and Willliam Lines' excellent book, which I am two thirds of the way through.

At $20 a copy, it's a perfect and economical gift. I got one for myself and gave away another 9 at Xmas

Apologies for my last post. (Those terrible grammatical errors are the consequence of staying up too late and then getting up too early, but that's no excuse.)
Posted by daggett, Friday, 13 February 2009 4:26:47 PM
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Former federal Labor MP Barry Cohen on the folly of ongoing immigration-driven population growth:

"When the Chifley government initiated the post-war immigration programme, the slogan was ‘Populate or Perish’. One justification was that having just fought a ferocious war with Japan, we needed to build up our population to defend Australia against ‘the yellow peril’. The White Australia policy was alive and well. Our population of six and a half million could not justify our occupation of such a vast empty continent. Economies of scale would enable us to produce goods at a lower price and increase our ability to export.

Only the last of these three reasons has any validity today, and even that is questionable. Our export income is no longer dependant on the mass production of consumer goods. Specialised quality production, agriculture, mining, tourism and educational services earn most of our foreign currency.

The latest excuse for increased population is a shortage of skilled labour. Those arguing the case may be right, but in doing so they should answer the following questions: how many of our current unemployed can be trained to fill these jobs? ... If more skilled labour is required, why can’t we cut, at least, temporarily, the numbers brought in under family reunion and humanitarian categories? Halving both categories would reduce the annual intake by 35,000. What impact will the current increase have on our population level? When will we achieve those levels? What then? Where will new migrants live? Where will the water come from to service them?

I could continue, but I’m sure you get my drift. Which brings me to my life-long obsession, that governments never connect the dots between increasing population numbers and the ‘crises’ that daily beset our citizens — congested roads, air and water pollution, prohibitive land prices, housing shortages, overcrowded hospitals and schools and so on. And that’s before the impact of climate change."

Full article:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/3078096/balance-population-with-quality-of-life.thtml
Posted by Reyes, Friday, 13 February 2009 4:35:02 PM
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