Ross, my grandmother was a refugee, my mother was a refugee, my wife was a refugee and I think you're an idiot! The point of concerns about our population growth is that we DO NOT have the resources to cope, and with peak oil having been passed in 2008 our resource availability will decline in the future. At current growth rates our population will DOUBLE IN 37 YEARS. Why do you believe the government's current projections on a lower rate when previous estimates have been so wrong? What policy have they based a lower future rate on? When do they plan to reduce immigration or stop promoting larger families?

Less oil in future means less food but we already consume more than half the food we produce! Where will we import food from in future when the rest of the world cannot supply enough for itself? And desalination and other new infrastructure for water require MORE energy and MORE CO2 emissions not less! You are as ignorant as Penny Wong who believes we can increase population by 60% while cutting emissions by 60%. Meanwhile, finance minister Tanner seems to believe Australians should live like Bangladeshis - inhabitants of one of the world's poorest and most overpopulated nations! Heaven help our children against this self-serving self-deception!

Whether Australia has reached optimum population however defined may not be clear until it is too late. Visitors to Sydney and Melbourne may think those places are uncrowded because where they come from is too crowded. In other words Australia has yet to repeat their mistakes. We don't know yet whether there will be unhappiness over finite resource sharing, either the average or a fair distribution. Those resources include water both for essential and aesthetic needs, gas, low carbon electricity, housing, job security, distance to work and a varied diet.

I suggest if Australia has 35m underemployed people but few own cars while water and electricity is tightly rationed and our diet consists mainly of cabbage and potatoes then that won't be an improvement. Resentment will fester leading to a resurgence of wedge politics. The current policies of high legal immigration, baby bonuses and meek acceptance of illegal immigration are steadily pushing the envelope. Some would argue that we would be better off with a smaller,wealthier population Scandinavian style. Note that Japan is not seeking to increase its declining population. In my opinion Australia has more than enough people and we should retrain the locals for new types of jobs, not import more people.

Jacob, I think Michael is a bit hard calling you an idiot, rather I
think ignorance is a better tag for you.
Ignorance can be understood. It is removed by information.

Growth is finished, it is over and with it business as usual.
Our big problem will be to try and keep some decent standard of living
and food production going at a decent level.
We are facing trying to do an energy conversion that we should have
allowed 20 years to achieve, but it looks like we might have only
five years or less to do the job.
Water will not be our biggest problem, industry will be using less so
that will help with that problem.
I am sorry that you have no concept of what faces us.
Global warming is not our biggest problem either.

On top of it all it looks like the International Energy Agency has
been fiddling the books and we are in a worse situation than was thought.

Have you ever heard of the phrase “lies, damn lies and statistics”? Mr Varghese tries to hoodwink us with all three with his claims. He tells that population growth is predicted to decline to 60% from 2009-2049, compared with 88% growth between 1901 and 1941. Quite right if we are comparing percentages. But we are not. We are comparing numbers of people.

A more accurate comparison is that in the 40 years from 1901-1941 our population increased by 3.3 million compared with a projected increase of 13.5 million over the next 40 years, is of course almost 4 times larger. Further, the two increases have to be taken in context.

A population increase of 3.3 million during a period when our markets and cities were small, our resources were large and underutilised and where the effects of global warming were not even dreamt of as science fiction.

A population increase of 13.5m is proposed at a time when global warming and its effects are becoming more evident in the form of increasing extremes of climate, very real threats from rising sea level, declining agricultural land and rainfall reducing agricultural production and overcrowding in our bigger cities evidenced by inadequate public transport, health and other services.

A population increase of this magnitude will result in net growth of greenhouse gas emissions at a time when neither we nor the world needs them. Telling us that will not exacerbate global warming and that we will be able to handle it because we have in the past is platitudinous, a denial of the realities which confront us.

No, Mr Varghese, by and large I think Michael of Adelaide is right

Nowdays it is true that, for the affluent, there are many more restuarants offering a great variety of tasty cusines. However, to most Australians this is almost the only noticeable advantage of the massive population change that has occurred over the past two generations. An entirely negative sign of the national multi-cutural policy is the vast number of people, although they or their parents were born in Australia, who describe themselves, not as an Australian, but as a resident of Australia.

Jon.Jay

"…lies, damn lies and statistics" indeed.

But, more to the point, SLEIGHT OF HAND.

Consider the following five examples:

SLEIGHT OF HAND 1

Varghese does not cite a single study that points to any benefits for the EXISTING RESIDENTS and their DESCENDANTS of immigration on the scale contemplated.

He simply ignores this question.

SLEIGHT OF HAND 2

Is a common fallacy.

If some is good then more must be better as in:

Some deregulation of banks produced benefits, therefore more was even better and best of all was no regulation. Look where that reasoning got us!

Even if past large scale immigration was "good for Australia" this does not in and of itself prove that future large scale immigration will be beneficial anymore than a bull run on the stock exchange proves you should risk your all tomorrow.

SLEIGHT OF HAND 3

An implied false dichotomy.

The argument is not about large scale immigration versus no migration. It is about the future SCALE of migration.

What is the optimum SCALE of future migration?

(For what it's worth my gut feel is a level that keeps total population more or less stable. But at least I am honest enough to admit it is gut feel. I have no evidence one way or the other.)

SLEIGHT OF HAND 4

Ignoring counter-examples.

Has Europe's mass migration added "dynamism and entrepreneurial vigour" to the EU?

Maybe it matters who gets to migrate.

SLEIGHT OF HAND 5

Maybe the world likes our "over-crowded cities" precisely because they are NOT especially over-crowded in comparison to cities such as Mumbai, Calcutta, Beijing or, for that matter, London.

I could go on but I think that will do