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

This is a bit of a let down. I was genuinely hoping to see an article on OLO with a title like this so I could understand the relentless pursuit of population growth by all of our political parties.

The argument we here given in support of population growth boils down to: things have got better in the last 30 years and this must be caused by population growth. I guess the technological advances that have occurred in the same time frame had nothing to do with it then.

As for all those worries about water, oil running low and CO2 emissions we are assurances it will be OK, don't worry about it. The reason it will be OK? Because none of this has been proved, or so we are told. Ye gods, most of our major cities have desalination plants now. We have one of the most efficient water trading schemes on the planet, and it is improving rapidly - yet Victoria was for a short while a food importer.

Give us something on the subject that goes beyond platitudes, please!

Agree with Michael in Adelaide.

This writer is not in the real world the message should be 'Immigration brought real and tangible benefits'
Yes 1969 was better in many ways one could park anywhere and it did not take long to get to work, the air was clean and no water restrictions just to name a few.
And how stupid can you be to compare Sydney's 4 million people living on 174 sq ks and London with 7 million on 174 sq ks, no they do not love it either.
No point in continuing as writer do you research and do not listen to big business and politicians with their growth fetish/fantasy.
I think we already import 25% of our fruit and vegetables and seeing that phosphorus as well as oil is going to run out how are we going to feed ourselves

This is almost a generic pro-immigration article. Its all about name calling and trying to make you feel like you don’t love your fellow man if you are concerned about population impacts on the environment. Put the focus on Pauline Hanson and xenophobia in the first couple sentences and say there are environmental challenges to meet without providing any solutions at the end.

The important question to ask is: Will the life of the average Australian be better with increased immigration? The answer is no.

Jacob’s three claims are all wrong:

Immigration is less than usual. Wrong.
A) Those population increases occurred when the birthrate was higher. An accurate comparison would compare the immigration rates over 40 year periods. Immigration is higher now.
B) Our way of living hasn’t been sustainable in the past so continuing on the same way isn’t a solution it is a continuation of more unsustainable living. Only now there is less time to fix it.
C) Also JonJay’s points.

Growing population doesn’t threaten our way of life. Wrong.
A) The Productivity Commission reported that average person doesn’t benefit economically from increased immigration and that the environment becomes more degraded with higher immigration.
B) Jacob argues that life is better in 2009 with 22 million than in 1969 with 12.5 million. The Productivity commission argues that productivity was responsible for over 90% of the increases in quality of life and that increased population was neutral or negative depending on the weight given to environmental impacts.
C) Jacob seems to argue that since we now have the most liveable cities, we should endeavour to come back to the rest of world by adding more congestion and higher costs of living. No thanks.

Growing Population is no threat to the environment. Wrong.
A) Jacob comes close to admitting that immigrants do impact the environment but he argues that since they make an impact everywhere they might as well make it in Australia. I disagree. We can only clean up our own act and provide an example for the rest of the world

Of all of the articles I've read, this is definitely among the lamest.

Absolutely pathetic.

Crowding? "People love crowding! Magazines by people that might not actually live in Sydney and Melbourne say they're great!"
I live in Sydney and I say it's crowded. It's also much too wide. Both of which make a trip from one side of the city to the other up to three hours- the time it would take me to WALK from one side of a European city to another.

Water? "I don't believe we don't have enough"- no contradictory sources- just move on to the next point.

But it was your counter to Ross Gittin's Carbon argument of "That's just mean" that dropped the rest of your credibility

The only thing you vaguely kind of implied were it made life 'interesting' (that's multiculturalism- not high population growth), and it gave opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs- who make up a pittance of the population who will be affected.

Large population growth is fine so long as you could actually make suggestions of how we are going to accomodate the extra thirteen million people (which is approximately 4 extra Sydneys).
We have plenty of people actually trying to help and offer practical solutions to accommodate the increase- and you're not one of them Jacob- just another tosser who likes to use spin to get into the papers.

B) Can we lecture the Americans, Chinese and the Indians about reducing greenhouse if we are increasing ours? I would prefer to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.
C) Ross Gittens makes this point in the SMH and Jacob criticises him for it, but not for the logic of his argument. He says he is uncompassionate. This is the old politician trick of changing the argument when you can’t win. If someone argued that the Holocaust was reprehensible, Jacob would have changed the argument to focus on the efficiency of the Nazi Army.
D) Jacob says Gittens disregards people. Apparently he doesn’t think climate change or any other environmental degradation will impact people.
E) Jacob admits that there are challenges to increasing the population and he doesn’t offer any ideas about how to meet those challenges in the same way as Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, Penny Wong and Peter Garrett don’t offer any ideas. They just assume we will get it done. And if we don’t get it done, who cares. That means more coal fired power plants, nuclear power plants, desalinisation plants, less water in the rivers, less farmland with more food to grow and all the challenges listed in the previous posts.

If we were really compassionate about the rest of the world, we would do something in those countries and we certainly wouldn’t take away their best people. Over a billion people live on less than $2 a day, likely to increase over the next 40 years. Don’t imply that you are compassionate because you want to take in 10 million immigrants who are in most cases not part of those very poor. Most immigration is skilled immigrants (people with skills aren’t living in $2 a day) who will keep wages low, buy or rent housing and add to domestic consumption. The purpose of high immigration is not compassion. It is to make the rich richer.

Typical spineless and bearded gnome comments from people who want to cut Oz's population down to 7 million by 2050.

These are Facebook theorists who wouldn't know public policy if it reared up in the face and bit them.

The article should have gone in harder and weeded out the instrumentalist critics such as Michael-in Adelaide, et al, who think we're all rooned anyway. He's the thick edge of the sterilisation wedge, but no snip, snip, snip, for him as he waddles around the leafy Torrens.

So much of the anti-populationist critique is pure fear politics. Their mantra is 'I'm OK, stuff you, I made it here alive'. Now they want to turn back the economic clock to the 1600s when gentlemen called their wive's 'My Lady' and other such piffle.

They hate immigrants not because we can feed them for the next 1000 years, they hate them because they are black, or Muslim or 'not from around here.'

I have a pet theory that most of these people are from Adelaide where the chip on the shoulder sits where their brains should be.

Gee, if Australia would be a better place with an additional 13 million, then by that logic, wouldn't it be just absolutely swell with an additional one billion, or even two? We'll just solve all the problems that would get in the way of this happening, won't we? We're just so clever and smart, we can do anything we want.

This twit just doesn't get it in so many ways that it's not even worth any further comment.

I get to the lunar right xenophobe and figure the rest of the article will not be on the mark. I am loopy left. Left wing do not support immigration, raving right wing capitalists do.

Now get back to right and left wing 101 young man.

You may consider the US. They were not xenophobic bringing slaves. They were not xenophobic bring in migrant Hispanic labour. White south Africans were not xenophobic living in a land where they were minority race. Raving right wing capitalists alone love cheap labour.

I bought a house in the mid 80's for twice my annual wage, single. That very same house would now fetch 9 times similiar wage of same job of today. (wish I still owned it lol, my timing is pathetic) the number of people that have outright ownership of a home has declined. The level of debt has increased. The gap between rich and poor widened so that comparision to the past redundant.

So young man, you see, the worker is now the migrant farm worker, the exploited, the unrepresented in parliament, the underpaid or underemployed and some of you love that..but is very much raving right wing capitalism gone beserk. The decline of racism is that we will treat all equally, all of them like slaves.

Now we need massive numbers to support the pensions of the baby boomers. Obviously not such a rich nation if we need to do that, are we?

It is like a giant Ponzi scheme when you think about it.

(Cross-posted from Larvatus Prodeo discussion "Big Australia" (http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/11/05/big-australia/#comment-835326))

The questions we should be asking is not whether population growth is a good or bad thing. That argument has been long since resolved conclusively in any discussion forum where opponents of population growth have been allowed freely to argue their case.

Any examination of the evidence has confirmed, exactly as our intuition and common sense would have told us, beyond doubt that population growth, particularly rapid population growth, is gravely harmful to this country[1] as a whole and even more so to its current inhabitants.

Clearly someone is gaining at the expense of the rest of us by necessarily making each of us on average poorer, by forcing us to pay, through higher electricity, gas and water charges, council rates, road tolls, registration, and, above all, massively higher housing costs, for the diseconomies of scale necessitated by population growth well beyond what was Australia's optimimum population level. A good start to working out who it is that is gaining from population growth may be my Online Opinion article "How the growth lobby threatens Australia's future"(http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8485&page=0) of 24 Jan 09.

By definition, this group who have undemocratically seized control of this country's destiny through their political glove puppets including Rudd, Howard, Keating, Hawke, Bligh, Beattie, Brumby, Bracks and Fraser to name only a few, are totally antithetical to the interests of the rest of us.

They are demonstrably unable, or unwilling to harness the existing resources and existing population of this country in order to earn an honest living and allow the needs of all of this society to be met. Instead, they have imposed a Ponzi scheme on all of us that has impoverished many of us already and is driving our society, our economy and our environment, as a whole, to ruin.

(tobecontinued)

Sorry Cheryl, the sand is getting in your mouth and muffling what
you are saying.

I was in London recently and their major congestion problem is not
on the roads but on the footpaths. No way I would want to see anywhere
near that size population here.

(continuedfromabove)

That it is a Ponzi scheme is totally confirmed by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's principle supposed justifications for her anti-democratic $15billion fire sale of publicly owned assets that she did not have the decency to inform Queensland electors about during the March State elections (in spite of my own tireless efforts as an Independent candidate to get her to do so). Her excuse is:

"... a State with a rapidly growing population can't afford to ease off building the infrastructure that supports our economy and community. "How Government and the Murdoch press deceive Australian public on immigration." (http://candobetter.org/node/1608)

The question should no longer be about whether or not population growth is harmful, rather the question should be, given this, why anyone in this country would want to see this happen, and, in particular, why Rudd would even contemplate, let alone begin to bring about his insane and reckless plan to increase our population to 35 million by 2050 and what we can do to stop it.

Footnotes:

1. Most environmental scientists argue that Australia has well and truly exceeded its carrying capacity. I hold out hope that if we properly fix up the environment, for example, by adopting Peter Andrews' Natural Sequence and removing all the stupid inefficiencies imposed upon us by free market extremist economic dogma that our leaders are willing captives of and all lived materially more modestly, it's conceivably possible, but very far from guaranteed, that Australia could sustainably support its current population and maybe two or three million more. But none of this will happen if the same people shoving population growth down our throats continue to have their way. (See also, my comment to article "Kelvin Thomson unveils population reform plan at Royal Park Protection Group AGM" at : http://candobetter.org/node/1649#comment-3629)

---

James Sinnamon
Brisbane independent for
truth, democracy and economic justice
Federal elections, 2010

There has, as the author claims, been a fast rate of immigration growth with “little disruption or antagonism.” But things have changed. There is no more fertile land in Australia than there used to be. We are now net importers of food. Two thirds of the country is still waterless; and the states where Jacob Varghese and other big population pushers DO NOT live, are on stringent water restrictions for their relatively small populations. To try to increase the population west of the Great Dividing Range would be idiotic, which leaves only Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to rack and stack them. But, we are constantly hearing complaints in those cities that they are over-crowded.

I’m not sure that a lawyer would know just how well people who need public services are fairing in Australia, but he says that we are second only to Norway.

But, Norway is first, with a population of ONLY 4.8million!

Until government economic stupidity in Iceland, the people there were happy and well with a population of 300,000. There are many small countries doing as well if not better than Australia.

And, if the rest of the world “loves” crowded cities, they can stay in them in the rest of the world, and allow Australia to maintain a sustainable population.

If we keep racking and stacking as Varghese wants, our cities will not be “..marked by their low density, spacious properties and quiet spaces.”

For someone pushing high immigration and big populations, Jacob Varghese presents in his article quite a few reasons why the opposite should happen. His belief that we can accommodate 35 million people as we did 22 million shows that he is out of touch with the ongoing degeneration of environment, infrastructure, Australian industry (lost by the same politicians wanting more people to come here) and the fact that there are now not enough jobs for the people already here.

Importing more people than Australia needed has been the source of all Australia’s problems to date. We need fewer, not more

Ponzi scheme, that was my line ! Though sort of obvious. One day will be payback time.

There could be higher population in the north, very under populated. Atherton tablelands such a rich, fertile, magnificent foodbowl with everything from beef, milk, coffee, tea, banana, barramundi, potato, watermelon, corn, sugar, mango, onions, brewery and fruit wineries..in fact if they grew tobacco again what else does one need? Oh yes bread, import some grain and heaven on earth. Plus of course it rains a lot so plenty of water availability. However zero infrastructure, electricity, water storgae and treatment, internet, roads, transport all 3rd world. So we are not investing very well to support any sort of population spurt. Look at Brisbane they have 2 minute showers. Yet it does not stop development and building approvals. very odd. Like a death wish.

Perhaps this is just another facet of the old adage that misery loves company.

To most political parties, the ¨real and tangible benefits¨ they desire from the gushing stream of immigration they urge, is the indefinite, yet unsustainable, maximum rate of economic growth they crave. If, for the sake of the environment, or for that matter, any other reason, someone actually advocates economic sustainability that includes a reduced rate of immigration, that person is branded as un-Australian by politicians, and indeed, those countless raving disciples of a flawed national multi-cultural policy.

rstuart, you said
"This is a bit of a let down. I was genuinely hoping to see an article on OLO with a title like this so I could understand the relentless pursuit of population growth by all of our political parties".

That is easy to understand. The major political parties receive big donations from developers and big business, so do their bidding. Business is only interested in one thing, selling more consumer goods.

The wants and needs of Australians comes a poor last.

native,
You are right but note my response to rstuart above.
There is an old saying. "He who pays the piper, calls the tune"

Bugger me eh.

Sure refugees bring benefits....when:

-the country doesnt have a housing shortage.

- the country has a social system that is able to help the homeless NATIONALS well BEFORE refugess.

- unemployment isnt on the rise

- The People take a vote as to whether they want more refugees.

- When they can speak english.

So until all of the above get ticked off i say yeah ok no problems.

Blunt: i dont think we need more right now......maybe not for the next 40 years actually.

BTW kevin Rudd, i want an apology aswell.............seems thats all you can do.

Correction: "So until all of the above get ticked off i say no thankyou".

My Apologies,

A little too passionate about this topic.

"Immigrants have added so much since. They have helped our economic life, not just in providing labour and consuming goods and services but also by adding dynamism and entrepreneurial vigour. In cultural terms, immigration has helped to make Australia a more vibrant and interesting place where ideas from around the world combine to inspire creativity. Propelled by this energy, both Sydney and Melbourne have grown into globally-recognised cities of cultural significance."

Had the author been referring to settlement since 1788, he might be condemned as a racist. The statement would seem to imply that indigenous populations become dull and unproductive without a constant influx of migrants, much like the Japanese have over the centuries I would suppose.

If Mr Varghese were dropped in the Australian outback, I'm sure that his dynamism and entrepreneurial vigour would prompt him to enthuse about turning the desert into an oasis replete with fungating metropoli. But somehow I think that the dull and unproductive indigines would be surviving long after his departure.

When immigrants are (generally) intelligent (middle class, educated) people who are fleeing prolems in their own countries, then immigration benefits Australia. Otherwise it doesn't!

For example, During Hitler's time, the European Jews fleeing Europe were generally highly intelligent people. In general, people who have the energy, money and education (intelligence) to get out of a bad situation, are generally the most resourcefull and intelligent people.

But lets not generalise that ALL immigrants are like this.

FOr example around 70% of Afgan-born Australian citizens are welfare-dependant. Now our unemployment rate was well-under 10% and few Afgan immigrants came to Australia before the 1980's, so they weren't on old-age pensions... basically, they are dole-bludgers.

How do I know this? In 2001 the Department of Immigration had on it's web site the rates of welfare dependance of various immigrant groups. It's not available now :-)

So
When immigrants are clever, it benefits Australia. But when immigrants are generally "economic" migrants, there is not a benefit for Australia, only a COST.

Howard's changes to immigration meant for people to get here, they had to earn 'points'; education, desirable skills, wealth, English language... without being an IQ test (too politically incorrect), it was pretty close to that! And consequently Howard managed to INCREASE immigration, despite the huge public anger about 'immigration' under the Keating/ALP government... and the formation of the "One NAtion" Party.

Which basically says smart people help Australia, dumb ones don't.

Why has immigration become a pseudo-religion? You either believe it is good, or you rot-in-hell? What's wrong with the truth, that there are good and bad migrants? and IQ is the determinimg factor

Most respondents attacking the article (and, disappointingly, also the author) start from the assumption that Australia and the rest of humanity are on the verge of cooking the planet, running out of water, and other apocolyptic events.

Such apocolysim is an invariable feature of public debate through the ages. It is also invariably wrong.

Its peddlers take a current trends, extrapolate it forward, and then claim we are all doomed. But humans and the natural world are not like an Excel spreadsheet.

Take the idea we are running out of food. Food shortages raise the price of food, encouraging more investment in existing technologies as well as the development of new ones. For instance, genetically-modified plants can increase crop yields while also reducing the use of pesticides and herbicides.

Population alarmists ignore the human capacity for problem-solving and adaption. I would like to think the reason is ignorance. But I fear it is prejudice - the idea that "we" already living in Australia are doing fine, and "others" can rot in their own poverty.

This raises the biggest shortcoming of critics' responses to the article. They fail to address the key challenge set out by the author: "For as long as we have space, peace and resources some people from crowded, violent or poorer countries will want to make a home here. Who are we to stop them?"

By all means, admit you believe people already living in Australia deserve a better life than people who don't. Whatever you choice of bigotry - race, nationality, religion, intelligence (partTimeParent - Do you know why my migrant parents were "dumb"? Because they had to leave school at age 10 to work. Their children, able to finish school and go on to university, won many academic awards and now fill professional positions) - don't pretend that, morally speaking, you are fit to even tie the author's shoelace.

Banjo: "The major political parties receive big donations from developers and big business, so do their bidding."

I think a slight variation on that is true, Banjo. The major political parties are driven foremostly to get re-elected, and then by ideological concerns. Big donations are but one factor in getting them re-elected.

Another way of saying the same thing is they can capable of doing just about anything - good or bad, provided they think they can still get elected next time around.

My guess is they have been convinced if they stop immigration the economy will tank shorting thereafter, resulting in them being removed from office at the next election. The cynic in me says they know continually growing the population will eventually tank the entire country, but since that will happen outside of this electoral cycle they don't care. The realist in me says they have enough people around them telling them this won't happened that they have convinced themselves it must be true.

Sibba: "Who are we to stop them?"

We are selfish bastards who have the view that in the time scales we are talking about, every society has the opportunity to do what Iran has recently done and take control of their population growth. Or not, as the case maybe. It is their choice, and they have to live with the consequences of their decisions - as do we.

We probably would not be quite so selfish if they would listen to our advice on population size. But they don't, I guess for the understandable reason that people don't like being told by others what they can do in their own bedrooms. Nor would we be quite so selfish if it wasn't patently obvious that we have hit the limits in the country in the amount food we can produce, and the oil and water available.

Finally, expecting us to not believe what we see with our own eyes, and instead bet our future and that of our children and grandchildren on your assertion that earth is a magic pudding is asking far too much.

Sibba seems to be awfully bigoted about people who support sane and sustainable population policies. In typical form for bigots, Sibba assumes that there can only be one reason for supporting a halt to immigration, and completely ignores the resource and environmental issues. Nowhere is it written that any sovereign country has to drop its borders to welcome one and all from any part of the world. Is it selfish to wish to preserve what little is left of the natural world so that our children and grandchildren can enjoy it too?

rstuart - Your assertion - "Nor would we be quite so selfish if it wasn't patently obvious that we have hit the limits in the country in the amount food we can produce, and the oil and water available." - is just that.

The amount of food we can produce is a function of the inputs required (land, sun, water, energy, and so on) and the productivity with which we use them.

The supply of some inputs is limited, at least at any point in time. These include water and land.

The supply of others, notably the sun, is unlimited.

And the productivity of farming is also uncapped, especially when you consider the advance being made in biotechnology.

Add all this together and it is "patently obvious" you have no excuse to be selfish.

In any case, do you really think that, if the future is as dire as you claim it will be, underfed, sweltering, cramped people in other countries will just leave Australians to their underpopulated paradise?

Ultimately, we are only as secure as our neighbours are. A world made up of isolated, inward-looking nations is an unstable and dangerous one.

This is not wild-eyed idealism but realpolitic.

Further, your knowledge of Iran is hazy at best. The recent drop in the birthrate has nothing to do with taking "control of their population growth", and everything to do with the education of young women in that country.

You continue: "Finally, expecting us to not believe what we see with our own eyes, and instead bet our future and that of our children and grandchildren on your assertion that earth is a magic pudding is asking far too much."

You need to look again. The fantasies you see are through eyes laden with prejudice and lack of empathy. Close your eyes, imagine yourself in a poor country with little food and no water, seeking a better life for your children. Then open them again, and look afresh at the peace and plenty around you. If are you still unmoved, then I pity you.

We've got that glove puppet RickS and rstuart (one and the same) back again to defend the anti-immigration lobby who are in fact the Sustainable People for an Undemocratic Australia.

I don't know who Sibba is but he/she is right on. Rick, you should be ashamed. He demolished your arguments in one post I've demolished your arguments in three posts and even Michael in Adelaide's grandmother could demolish your arguments while doddering around the leafy Torrens.

Just come out and say that you, like your anti-populationist, anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-Vietnamese, Catholic, Irish, anti-humanist and anti-capitalist supporters, hate people who don't look like you, eat like you or AGREE with you.

Aren't two posts enough for you to convey your ideas?

Ah, Sibba the uninformed cornucopian. Although even the most ignorant cornucopians I have encountered in the past have evidenced a bit more knowledge about the world we live in, with the notable exception of Cheryl. Might I recommend you Google “Liebig’s Law” someday, read several of the articles, and think about the implications? And you are flat, dead wrong about sunlight. There is only a finite amount of sunlight hitting the planet each day, and that sun will (likely long after humans are gone) die one day as well.

Dare I even whisper the phrase “Peak Oil” to Sibba, and upset an apparently set-in-concrete world view?

And lowering the birthrate is exactly why Iran has worked so hard to educate women. The link between education and a lower birthrate has been well-documented for decades. Duh!

You invoke the god of technology – you know, the technology that has allowed us to overfish the oceans to the point where stocks of many species have collapsed, and to move large numbers of people to less populous countries so that more even more people can be born in more populous countries (yes, dear Sibba, it’s a vicious spiral that does no one any good). To pin our hopes on human ingenuity without a plan B is simply stupid, given the histories of various failed civilizations.

And you’re right. What you’re promoting is most certainly not wild-eyed idealism. It is rabid and unadulterated growthism. And it is destroying this planet. You clearly have no empathy for the future generations who we, and you, are stealing from right now. Shame on you.

Oh, and dear rabid frothing little Cheryl, I notice that one of your vitriolic little Troll friends was banned from this forum some time ago. Sad. And you make a post like that then claim to care about people too. Even more sad. And how many posts have you made in this forum to convey your ideas? Isn’t two enough for an overpopulation denier like you? Despite all that, the only thing you have ever managed to demolish is your own credibility.

Sibba: "the advance being made in biotechnology."

The technology (fertilisers, pesticides, special crops) that sparked the green revolution was developed 50 years ago and nothing remarkable has happened since. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution There are high hopes for GM, but right now they are just that - hopes. More dreams really, as there no obvious way to increase plant efficiency beyond the old methods of GM we used to produce the green revolution in the first place - selective breeding.

In the mean time the things the green revolution depends on are looking shakey. The petroleum stocks we make fertiliser out of will at the absolute best peak in 2040, but more sober analysis's say they have already peaked. The other major fertiliser, phosphorous, which is the limiting factor for land based life, has doubled in price in the past 3 years. http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/phosphate_rock.html World phosphate will peak this century. http://phosphorusfutures.net/peak-phosphorus We could possibly find a replacement source of energy for making ammonia, but there is no replacement for phosphorous.

Most nations have all available land under agriculture, and water is over allocated and water tables are dropping. http://whyfiles.org/131fresh_water/2.html We are so close to world wide maximum food production when Australian suffered a drought the price of rice doubled http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/rice.html

And you want to bring more people so we won't have any spare rice to give to anyone. What do you think that will do to Egypt, who imports 1/2 of its food now - much of it from Australia? http://countrystudies.us/egypt/84.htm

Iran has had a deliberate population control policy for many years. http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/plan_b_updates/2001/update4ss Yes - one of things they did was female education, but it was not the only or even major one.

Add that all together and it is patently obvious you don't have a clue what we are up against. I suggest you take some time to learn about the planet you live on, rather than cheer-leading all and sundry to breed like flies until we hit exponential overshoot. I like to think we are smarter than flies, but really posts like yours and the behaviour of our pollies makes me wonder.

Same old argument again. Immigration is fantastic because it delivers a plethora of cultural and economic benefits. When this is contested, it is argued that it is extremely selfish and amoral to live in an underpopulated paradise, and in such an instance we will be invaded by our overpopulated neighbours.

Can I understand from this that population growth advocates want Australia to be more populous and Australians to be poorer for the reasons of morality and security? It would also seem that at least some growth advocates would agree that less populated countries are more desirable places to live in.

I'm loving this- absolutely LOVING it!
So far, it's been about five, six pages?
And so far, absolutely EVERYONE is either stating they wish the author would have said something intelligent (both anti-growth and not-so-much-anti), or are actively picking apart what he (kind of) said.
With the exception of two people, Cheryl and Sibba- who basically follow the author's example and;
a- insinuate everyone who is not supportive of large growth and immigration is a xenophobic redneck, eco-extremist or someone who believes "the assumption that Australia and the rest of humanity are on the verge of cooking the planet, running out of water, and other apocolyptic events."
b- REPEAT the author's already-dismissed remarks about us being 'selfish and mean'- as if anyone will care if you simply repeat it often enough.
(and don't complain, these are fair accusations as all three of you have made them- each).
"For as long as we have space, peace and resources some people from crowded, violent or poorer countries will want to make a home here. Who are we to stop them?"
Um, someone who wants to continue having such things?
And that's not even an argument- it's a whinge- try harder.
So far, there have been NO arguments or counter-arguments made by the pro-side why they are right and the other side is wrong- save the couple that have been sliced and diced every which way by everyone else.

So let me get this straight- apparently, I DON'T deserve better than to live in a crowded, congested city, with more limited access to infrastructural resources, and eating GM food because somebody elsewhere in the world currently is?

Quite frankly what goes on outside the Australian jurisdiction is none of our business or our problem outside passively promoting alternative approaches and leading by example. THAT is a sustainable, politically-stable method.

Selfish? Tough. By the way- do Cheryl, Sibba and Jacob use their house as a 24/7 homeless shelter? Just curious.

Well King, glad I came in at the end, the man must be either young or an immigrant, neither of which would qualify him to make a comment about a xenophobic lunar right in Australia.

As for 1969 being compared to now. Well having lived in Sydney, I know 1969 was the best place in the world then bar none. I was born there and lived there; now only visit and love it, but, was it a better place then? You bet you socks it was. It saddens me sometimes, it was where I lived and loved now it is becoming somewhat less than the city I loved.

I love ethnic diversity. I love the change in attitudes to food because of that, but is that the only measure?

We cannot sustain this number of people unless the government knows what it is doing with future infrastructure and it seems on past performance none of them do. Governments think they can sustain a country like this, dry and wide, via taxes on a growing community regardless of the loss of decent living standards.

I think Jacob is a moron or a stirrer and put this post into play to be controversial. He says nothing much to back his claims. London...really? Say no more.

I didn't look at the last two pages, were they worthwhile?

Sibba "partTimeParent - Do you know why my migrant parents were "dumb"? Because they had to leave school at age 10 to work. "

Sorry Sibba, I don't assume YOUR parents were dumb. individually.

The problem with PUBLIC POLICY is that you MUST generalise. There are always going to be exceptional CIRCUMSTANCES and exceptional INDIVIDUALS that are THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULE.

But POLICY and LAW must be based on what is generally the best for the voting public.

To let in 1000 people who are destined to be dole bludgers (and their children and grandchildren and future decendants) just in order to allow one really clever person to come in is a bad POLICY GENERALISATION. To let in 100 bludgers for 800 contributers is a good compromise. To quote Howard we want to choose who and by what means people come into this country.

Curiously, it is the THIRD generation that really shows the nature of a cohort of immigrants. The first generation have valuse from their childhood countries, the second generation are born in the shadow of their parents and often also wirk exceptionally hard due to parental pressure... but it is the third generation that really shows results... rates of welfare dependance, of marriage outside their own migrant/religious group, their integration, their education and incomes... the best generalisation (generalisation!) for how these third generation migrants will adapt is IQ.

sorry for what you call bigotry, and I call rationality.

Are all the people who wish to have a continued migration to this extent willing to go out to the middle, northern and western parts of Australia and make it fertile so the population numbers postulated can live? OR DO YOU WANT TO LIVE IN ANOTHER THIRD WORLD and don't give a rats?

This country is not a green, fertile continent. It is not the fertile Americas.

While you are all arguing about how many and how easy, do you intend to work hard in the future to enable that number of people to live here decently and make this country a place that is able to cope. Are you? Or are you all just city dwellers, buying food from supermarkets without the slightest idea of how or where this comes from? Get real.

Are you willing to work and see that your children are willing to work for this country in the future, to keep it as great as it is now? We did in the past.

You are gonna have to work hard. Have you thought about living in over loaded rentals with more and more grid lock on the roads. Is this what you want? Don't wish too hard you might just get it.

Of course Australia can house 35 million people if the appropriate infrastructure and 'green' technology keep pace. It's a big if, but it can be done.

However, very few politicians and commentators have the guts to ask the Australian people two fundamental questions;

1. Does culture matter to you?
2. How do feel about being a cultural or ethnic minority in your homeland?

I grew up in Hurstville on the south side of Sydney. In the 1990's it stopped being a European suburb, let alone an Aussie suburb. Because I don't speak Chinese or Cantonese I felt culturally isolated and thereofore emotionally compelled to move to another part of Sydney where the language and cultural symbols are familiar to me. I am sure that there are many 100's of 1000's of Anglo/European Australians who feel the same way.

And so, the important point is this. Having ones 'home' suburb, and accompanying life-memories repeatedly obliterated by non-Western immigration is a sure way to destroy the morale of an individual. On a national scale it destroys the morale of the nation and creates a whole host of sociological problems.

Ironically, we need look no further than our own Aboriginal population as an example of this. Overseas we can see the plight of the Palestinians, Tamils, Tibetans, and Uighurs. Speak to Saudis living Jeddah, or Arabs living in Dubai, and they will relate stories of dislocation.(I lived in Middle East for 3.5 years).

Do Australians want a population of 35 million, but (relatively) few or no Australians living in its two oldest cities, Sydney and Melbourne? What a horrific thought. Just ask an Aborigine or a Palestinian.

Culture matters.

Immigration celebrationists tend to be some of the most dogmatic people on the face of the planet. No matter how many times you demolish their specious arguments, you can be sure that the same immigration celebrationists will be back to repeat the same old cliches, half-truths and fallacies at the very next opportunity.

Jacob Varghese's inane article is a case in point. In a few paragraphs, he trots out all the old, discredited arguments in favour of high immigration, repeating the same old line that mass immigration is wonderful and anybody who disagrees is either a far-right Hansonite or a far-left green zealot.

For example, he tells us that "only the most reactionary would argue that the Australia of 1969, population 12.5 million, was a better place to live than the Australia of 2009." Yet, by nearly all objective measures, Australians had it better in 1969. Housing was more affordable, working hours were less, our cities were less congested and polluted, crime rates were lower, communities were stronger, social capital higher, national cohesion greater etc. No wonder why so many older Australians pine for the good old days.

Perhaps Varghese's most asinine argument comes in the form of the claim that "no matter how much we like to whinge about our “over-crowded” cities the rest of the world seems to love them." As another poster pointed out, the (third) world likes our cities preciously because they are not (yet) as over-crowded as the places where most of today's immigrants come from - the mega-slums of Asia. Yet if immigration-driven population growth continues at its current frenetic rate, Australia's cities will eventually come to resemble such over-crowded Third World dumps. Obviously there are limits to how many people how cities can accommodate before quality of life is irreparably degraded.

Rick S and rstuart i commend both of you who are able to share the opinions of many regarding immigration. And challenging those who attempt to put words in your mouth aka

Cheryl

"like your anti-populationist, anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-Vietnamese, Catholic, Irish, anti-humanist and anti-capitalist supporters, hate people who don't look like you, eat like you or AGREE with you"

Without boffering on about the political side, i also cannot deny my eyes when i see

- homeless people
- the unemployed
- the social isolation
- Culture onclaves (which are far from pretty, maybe they should make one in Brighton)

Idealists are dangerous with this setting.

(Continued from above...)

Varghese asserts that "immigration brings very real and tangible benefits to very real and tangible people." But does it bring real and tangible net benefits to the existing Australian population? Varghese doesn't bother to ask this question.

Yes, immigrants themselves benefit enormously from immigration, especially if they are coming from the Third World. Big business also benefits from immigration, as it means more customers, cheaper labour, and minimal training costs. Ethnocentric minorities benefit from the importation of more of their own kind, and the ruling ALP benefits from the rapidly growing 'ethnic' vote. But the existing Australian population does not benefit from immigration. Rather, they are forced to bear a number of unpleasant economic and social costs.

Whether or not current immigration policy is in the national interest or the interests of the majority of Australians evidently doesn't matter to Varghese. According to him, we are obliged to accept continued mass immigration on the grounds that we are all descended from people who came from somewhere else and thus have no right to close the doors on others.

However, since every nation could be called a nation of immigrants (or a nation of invaders) if you go back far enough, consistent application of the principle that a nation of immigrants must be open to all future immigrants would require every country on earth to open its borders to whoever wanted to come. But, strangely, only Australia is said to have this obligation.

It is also blatantly unfair to make the factoid that "we are all descended from immigrants" our sole guide to national immigration policy, when there are so many other important and true facts about Australia that could also serve as guides. For example, since its inception, Australia has been a member of Western civilisation, with its people and culture being derived predominantly from the British Isles. Why shouldn't that little historical facs be at least as important in determining our immigration policy as the pseudo-fact that we're all "descended from immigrants?"

Immigration brings real and tangible benefits, but to whom? Certainly not the average Aussie who has to put up with lower wages, higher housing costs, clogged cities, overloaded public services and infrastructure, water shortages, further environmental degradation, cultural and demographic displacement, and a host of other costs incurred by immigration.

According to Swinburne University's Katherine Betts, some of the negative economic effects of immigration include:

* Downward pressure on domestic wages.
* Higher housing costs.
* Adverse effects on the balance of payments.
* The diversification of resources to infrastructure.
* Diseconomies of scale in the cities that have passed their optimal size (considered to be around 500,000 people).
* Waste of human resources by the neglect of local training.
* Pressures toward capital widening at the expense of capital deepening. (We can ill afford to be a nation that invests mainly in real estate.)

This is saying nothing about the very real environmental and social costs of immigration to the average citizen.

And for what? So that the big end of town can be subsidized with more consumers and cheaper labour?

Australia's current immigration policy is stupid, reckless and undemocratic.

It is a stupid policy because there is absolutely no reason for it—in particular, Australians as a whole are no better off economically because of mass immigration.

It is a reckless policy because it threatens to ruin our fragile environment, diminish our quality of life, dilute our per capita wealth, and undermine national cohesion and identity.

And it is an undemocratic policy because it second-guesses the Australian people, who have shown through smaller families that they want to stabilise population size and through opinion polls that they want less immigration.

It's high time Australia rethought immigration.

Exactly Reyes, but most of those pushing for the immigration numbers are not putting forward the end reality in any believable manner. Most older Australians know the reality of the harshness of this country. Some newbies seem to think well, that will all be solved, it will never happen.... Perhaps, perhaps not.... However, you cannot change the climate in this country as many think.

It is simply not sustainable to take that many people in such short a time frame..

Do Australians want to have a lesser lifestyle ...NO, do they care about their culture as it is, YES you bet they bloody do. Call us what you will, we want the people of this country to prosper not fall into third world. Hell I want my grand kids to have some sort of meaningful cultural inheritance and decent lifestyle.

Oh, by the way Raebee- to answer your question, no, the article wasn't worth reading beyond the first page- pretty much everything Jacob said was spread over the reply pages.

The sad part is there ARE ways to manage an increasing population (which WILL increase at some rate for a while) both comfortably, democratically (people could actually support it) and sustainably-- yet most of the people that get the privileged spotlight are expand cities, use up more natural resources, and tell everyone to knuckle down and get used to it.

To King Hazzar, sorry but I do not believe it is manageable to maintain that many people in a decent living standard in the time frame of a decade. We are too far behind now with infrastructure, it is not possible to amend this in 10 years without degrading the living standards. Rental properties are horrendous, that's why people live 6 to a room now.

The money for infrasucture is not there mate and what money there was has been wasted or mismanaged. Closing rail lines is an example, we should be building more. Nothing much is being done to collect water, the governments in the states see no further than the main cities. Successive federal govermnets have had a policy of cutting government speding. Therefore I still say it is not sustainable without loss of living standards.

People who immigrate rarely go out to the country centres. Decades of lack of government spending has already degraded many of our country towns paticularly regarding health care. So are we to think that politicians of the future are going to be any different? I think they will be worse. They don't care as long as there are people to tax. You know why they don't care? Because they will never live the lifestyle they intend to inflict on the average Australian. They will continue to live their protected livestyles. Why not if you can do it I suppose?

I generally agree with most of the comments on here.
However one repeated comment made is;
"Look how the immigrants have improved Australia".
Frequently they are referring to restaurants, coffee shops etc.
Well booee, almost all those commentators were not here in the 1950s & 60.
What would they know ? I dispute that it is better now compared to
what it would have been if immigrants had not turned up in the years since 1950.
Are they saying we would not have had improvements in anything and the
country would be like a 1950s museum in this century ?
What a load of rubbish.
There is no need to list all the things we are putting up with these
days that just never happened then.
Perhaps we need to bring back the 6 o'clock swill.

Let us not hear any more about needing more immigrants to improve the
country. We have definately reached the point where more is worse.

For those who have missed it, the Public Health Association of Australia has called for some leadership on Australia's population growth, citing many of the same concerns raised in this forum, including environmental instability and unsustainable population growth.

The full media release is at
http://www.phaa.net.au/documents/mediaRelease/MediaReleasepopulationpolicy.pdf

Quote

"There is every reason to be optimistic that in 40 years Australia will be an even better place with 13 million extra people to share it with."

Unquote

The place may be called Australia, but it won't be "Australia". Australia is not just a place, it is an idea, a concept. It has already mostly lost that concept: 13 million more and it will have lost what it was completely.

Perhaps it doesn't deserve to survive.

The truly sad thing, Dougthebear, is that Australia and many other countries are being suckered by the ideology of growthism. Immigrants and immigration are taking the blame, when it really rests with those who are trying to perpetuate this ideology: those who have some measure of control of national and international economies and politics. Following the money trail will show who really should not survive, but they are taking down many valuable cultures and nations instead, along with numerous other species on this poor ol' planet.

"Australia is ranked second only to Norway on the Human Development Index, a rounded index of human welfare . . "

Funny that. Norway also has a population growth rate that is 1/7th of Australia's.
Blows the argument to pieces that only rampant and artificial population growth can save a nation.

I think most know what is behind the accelerating population push.

Govt wants more consumers and therefore more GST events. Seems to be irrelevant that most the production behind transactions will take place in China. After all, Aus now produces very little, except perhaps debt. The following list gives an idea of where Aus stands in terms of paying its own way in the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_current_account_balance

No amount of extra consumers dressed up as immigrants is going to fix the current production/consumption imbalance here unless increasing immigration is linked to productivity.

We will just get further into debt as a collective = Stupid White Govt.

In my own opinion (and the logic train of thought), Australia will suffer under increased population - not because of this lost ideological 'Australia' - but simply because Australia does not have the resources to support such a growth in population. Of course, economical benefits surely exist; greater workforce hence stronger economy, greater tax gains. However, in its current barren state, Australia is at water shortage and when put into perspective, 35mil population cannot survive off the water resources currently available. Just because the economy strengthens neither opens our heavens nor that of anyone else that wishes to live in Australia. They will surely struggle.

In regards to the cause of population growth, essentially the government policy must be completely remodelled as current legislation is in clear and flagrant support for population growth. There are incentives to have children such as the baby bonus and the increased period of paid leave for mothers (12 months). The government also provides rebates for childcare. It would require a significant amount of effort and time to slow natural increase and reject the multiculturalism policy well-cemented into Australian life since the days of Whitlam.

As for Dougthebear, I say an increased Australian population will not result in the loss of a so-called 'Australian concept'. Albeit, it will contribute more to this multiculturalist policy, and Australia will see even greater sense of such multiculturalism. It is merely an issue of supporting a greater population, not accepting one.

And unrestrained multiculturalism will see the death of the culture that is - Flinders, Eyre, Burke, Hinkler, Kingsford-Smith, Bradfield, Monash, Hart, Blackburn, Florey, Cowan, Ansett, Barton, Chifley, Menzies, Whitlam, Singer, Blainey, Bradman, Lillee, Chappell etc etc

And the people that belong to that culture will be have no place and no home.

hemissus wrote: "Ponzi scheme, that was my line !"

I wasn't meaning to steal your thunder. As I said I had simply cross-posted from another forum. Glad to see that this phrase is being more widely applied to population growth.

As far as I am aware it was first used in the article: "Is population growth a Ponzi scheme?" in the Christian Science Monitor of 17 Aug 09 at http://features.csmonitor.com/economyrebuild/2009/08/17/economic-scene-is-population-growth-a-ponzi-scheme/ by David R. Franks.

I borrowed the phrase to write the article "Queensland's pursuit of population growth is a Ponzi scheme" of 20 Aug 09 at
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9695#155591

The economy of the supposed "Smart State" has, in fact, become largely geared to suit the needs of the most unconscionable exploiters, that is slumlords.

An article "37 students found living in one house at Sunnybank Hills" of 16 Sep 09 at http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26080851-3102,00.html

All around me, modest units, which people on unskilled incomes were once able to afford, are being converted so that they can be jam-packed with foreign students.

Those hoping to get modestly comfortable accommodation near to where there are amenities now have to compete with people who are prepared to pay (I am told) around $200 per week to be packed in to a small living space often with complete and possibly incompatible strangers.

No wonder people in Australia are literally starving today. So many have no money left over after they have paid the rent. One headline in a local paper talked of 60,000 going hungry each.

The situation today has been deliberately brought about by our political leaders to suit the demands of land speculators and property developers.

Apart from total stupidity I see no other possible reason for political leaders such as Kevin Rudd, Immigration Minister Chris Evans and Queensland Premier Anna Bligh to plan to further increase our population by a massive 60% by 2050.

(tobecontinued)

(continuedfromabove)

For years, successive Premiers of Queensland have been talking out of both sides of their mouths about population and have been allowed to get away with it by an unbelievably servile newsmedia. (And don't be fooled by the Courier Mail's posturing from time to time against some aspects of the Bligh Government's gross misgovernment of Queensland. They are barely scratching the surface.)

When it is politically expedient the Queensland Government blatantly touts for more immigrants, such as when Bligh recently chimed is to say (in the face of its abysmal failure to do so up up until now) that Queensland could meet the challenge of population growth. On 8 December 2005 they placed full page advertisements in the Courier Mail (and I suspect other major capital city dailies) inviting more people to move here (http://candobetter.org/node/1121#PopulationGrowth). Then, on other occasions, when the problems caused by population growth, on top of its own mismanagement, becomes too obvious to ignore, Bligh will plead that it's not her fault. It was all caused by population growth. That was her response to two successive Auditor General reports which damned her Government's mismanagement of the health and public transport systems.

Never once, have I heard a Queensland journalist confront Bligh or her predecessor Beattie with this obvious self-contradiction.

It is hard to imagine even the newsmedia of the Third Reich being more cooperative with its Government than the Queensland press is today.

---

James Sinnamon
Brisbane Independent for Truth,
Democracy and Economic Justice
Australian Federal Elections, 2010

http://candobetter.org/AustralianElections/Brisbane

daggett, you hit the nail on the head.

Premier Bligh recently said cost blowouts in Qld were necessary if Queenslanders wanted the services of teachers, police, courts, etc. Add the extra cost associated with increased demand for electricity, water, garbage disposal, etc and bingo. This is effectively Bligh's admission that accelerating immigration broke the State Budget.

Immigration into Aus is at the moment unfunded and apparently even uncosted.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/22/2749974.htm

Real benefits