Yes Cheryl, because if Peter Costello makes these predictions, they MUST be true! But I do appreciate you ditching the eugenics strawmen this time, I know it must be hard.

Having the main focus on environmental issues is generally just a smokescreen to cover inward corruption that is not dealt with in society. Many environmentalist are the most indulgent of people. Look at Branson's style of self righteous pontification. The real issues we face are the breakdown of the normal family unit, the flood of pornography leading to epidemic child abuse and degradation of humans, conscience free baby killing, total disrespect for any form of authority and the rise of Islam. These are real issues as opposed to the fantasy of man made gw. It was only two decades ago that global cooling and the ozone layer was going to be 'the end'. Many of todays zealots conveniently forget this fact. The Bureau can't get next weeks forecast right let alone totally flawed models that try and predict trends in the future.

Australia has lots more resources to share but unfortunately due to selfishness, self righteousness and godliness we won't acknowledge this. When a Government can be irresponsible enough give away billions of dollars in order to popular we know their is something seriously morally wrong. Our major challenge is far more moral than physical.

Hear Hear Runner !

An intelligent summation of the present.

The author makes some reasonable points in regard to climate change,however climate change will only compound the problem. Even in its wettest years Australia is basically a tired old desert,it's not the USA or Brazil,fantasies of a "Big Australia" are self destructive.The real test is GDP per capita, not national GDP and most of the countries with the highest living standards have small populations.The current high population growth serves narrow sectional interests, not the national interest. Most of the world is coalescing into trading blocs of hundreds of millions or billions of consumers,what possible advantage is the addition of a few million to our population at cost of social and environmental stress?

by ignoring the first law of thermodynamics - the conservation of energy -we then fall into the 2d law of thermodynamics, which is entropy or no, energy cannot be perpetually created, like that famous fusion machine a few years back, remember? Or put another way, by acting on the muddleheaded belief of perpetual growth, we guarantee that whatever order we had to begin with will accelerate into disorder and decay at the rate of knots and our final state will be much worse than we could have ever imagined. Nature will not take kindly to being constantly abused: keep whipping even a mule long enough and not only will it not perform like Phar Lap but we'll just be flogging a dead horse through sheer force of habit. Truly, we don't have attitudes, they have us by the short and curlies.

According to the Weekend Australia, Kevie nominated three reasons
for a big Australia.

National security, long term prosperity and enhancing our role
in the region and the world.

I'm not sure how wall to wall suburbia from Sydney to Melbourne
is going to achieve this, but all you little sardines over there,
should be happily squashed even tighter into your sardine cans :)

Meantime Kevie the wannabe global statesman, can impress you all
on tv.

Long term prosperity -translated means that to win the next election,
the Govt needs a healthy economy and house building for ever more
people, is a major economic driver in the East, for the place
produces little that can be exported. Meantime mining and farming
will have to expand, to pay the nations foreign exchange bills,
so Western Australia, on which the nation depends for its export
revenue generation, will be pushed even harder.