davidf

You might scout around Land and Water Australia:

http://lwa.gov.au/

I'd like to see water availability represented by a graph of the quantity of water available vs the percentage of time it is available. There are huge quantities of water available for short periods of time, which might be great if you want to grow a crop lettuce, but is useless for supporting a large population. It would also be good to look at the intrinsic storage capacity in different parts of the country. We are often shown deluges in parts of the Australia, but how much of this rain could be stored economically? And how close to capacity are the storages of Australia's capitals?

Andrew,
Re Immigration:

You say: “I don't understand what you are getting (at) when you mention ‘other countries’. I was responding to Ludwig's quaint notion that 'other countries' might adopt population control just because Australia - the country with one of the lowest population densities on earth - stopped people from entering to live here.”
No, you were doing more than that, you were spruiking the L-I-E that the rest of the world subscribes to the Andrew Bartlett immigration agenda . And that, any tightening of Aust’s immigration stance would put it offside with the standards & practises of the everyone else . The reality is all our near neighbours have very tight immigration controls–and, are determined to maintain them.Note Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi’s comment to the Bangkok Post: “if we cannot be firm we cannot deal with this problem. We have to be firm at all borders. We have to turn them back,".

You say: (my) “scare quotes to describe the “refugees” from Burma is intended to suggest they’re not genuine.
Your argument seems to be that because they’ve “endured’ hardship that makes them genuine – (LOL) by that measure 99% of the worlds population would qualify as “refugees”.

You say: countries like Thailand and Malaysia have far more refugees that Aust.
What you conveniently neglected to mention was that – rather than being guests or prospective citizens– any “refugees’’ in either Malaysia or Thailand are likely to be there by default: illegally &, in transit to somewhere else . And if past practices are anything to go by, such “refugees” will be sent packing at the first opportunity.
(PS: By the way, Malaysia under Mahatiar long pushed the goal of greater population – more population – as long as it is not refugees!)

And as for : “morally bankrupt”.
When did “We’ll keep the bastards honest” morph into,
“Honest! we’ll do whatever you bastards want” ?
( with the you bastards = various UN committees & covenant

David f,

The CIA factbook includes economically irrecoverable and undivertable Monsoonal fresh water loadings for Australia from Nth NSW all the way to Broome in WA. This can't be realistically included. Especially with new global oil finds diminishing rapidly and Australia set for a nuclear free future, there won't be the grunt available to achieve such titanic projects.

The actual USEABLE water load for areas capable of or desirable for carrying meaningful populations is in fact around 3% of US equivalent figures. The dire condition of the Murray Darling basin and the need for a Desal plant in Sydney to attract favoured political immigrants is testament to this. In fact if Nathan Rees doesn't lose his job over the increase in water and electricity costs essentially making NSW citizens pay for the desal plant to attract migrants and increase HIS political power, I will be quite surprised.

The total immigration package of effects MUST be discussed. The tired old Shillard cliche that migrants increase spending and thus jobs is about to be proved a lie as unemployment projections are set for 10% by year end. One sided arguments and even direct propaganda in Australian media & in parliament only include the flakiest of advantages of immigration and exclude the dangers. This is directly a function of how much money corporations spend on media and political donations.

I'm not surprised AB is being coy about this point. Polititians and corporate-paid media have vested interests in profits from large populations and they don't care about future Bass Hill or other catastrophes this will cause. They know (or believe)these catastrophes can and will be externalised to Australian citizens and never appear on their bottom line or as a debit to their immigrated political power.

Its TIME that all changed and this is a good place to start.

Australian politicians need to be told and told often ... Australia 20 million, NZ 60 million .... STOP F'ing us over.

Divergence,

Your post provided some useful commentary and links on polls that relate to population growth.

Here is another one:-

http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2008/4337/

It is interesting to note that the above survey questionnaire included the population issue as an economic issue and not as an environmental one. Even so over-population was seen as a problem by some even in this context.

On the other hand insufficient population growth/aging population did not garner enough votes to register as a problem at all. One has to wonder whether over-population would have registered as a problem by a significantly greater proportion of the people sampled had it been included as an environmental issue.

One also has to also wonder how the developers, retailers and other "growth at all costs" lobbyists were not sufficient in numbers to influence the polls. They certainly do have a profound influence in the making of government policy on the issue.

Andrew B,

I can't find any easy way to find any survays on the population issue on The Australian Election Study site. To find a relevant poll would require trawling through numerous questionnaires
conducted for the study over a number of years and I cannot be bothered at this point.

Thanks Fester. I hadn't read your post re the link to the Australian Election Study before my last post.

I agree that the perception that population growth leads to economic growth is probably erroneous. David Coulter of Sustainable Population Australia studied the statistics and found that for the richer countries there is no statistical correlation between population growth and per capita GDP growth.

I would venture to suggest that during this current recession per capita GDP will be lower than it would otherwise have been had our governments not embarked on there programs of mass immigration and encouragement of increased fertility rates in Australia.

Andrew
Re The environment:

While many the best brains admit uncertainty re climate outcomes, you , confidently draft back-of-the-envelope encyclicals about how many people Aust can sustain.You clutch at straws like “Aust (has) one of the lowest pop densities…” & our renewable water to pop ration is better than the US and conclude –yes we can!
“Pack em in ,move down the aisle please and allow more passengers to squeeze onto the bus , and oh, there’s still plenty of room on the roof !’

You’ve got real spunk – with that sought of risk tolerance you’d have made a killing in the US derivatives market…leastways prior to mid 2008! And if your policies ever get adopted in Aust, I dare say we’ll be killing ourselves here too.
.
A nations carrying capacity is the number it can sustain in the worst of times – not what we can get by with, if we all tighten our belts, in the best of times. If you pack the continent based on today’s conditions you may well have a disaster zone tomorrow