I agree with most posters here, especially Ludwig and ChasP.

The reason both major parties have high immigration is simply that they are pandering to big busness, who wants the sale of more and more consumer goods. Big business does not care if ques are longer, if it takes longer to get to work or houses are to dear for first home buyers, etc. In short they do not give a rats about our standard of living. Their only interest is profit!

Big business give big donations to both major parties and the parties reciprocate by policies of high immigration. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

We should insist that the political parties adopt a population policy each and make immigration the main election issue. Not withstanding the two majors have agreed not to publicly discuss immigration.

Good points Banjo.

This site provides some interesting insights to political donations:

http://www.democracy4sale.org/

For the sake of democracy (well the best we can get it to be), there certainly is a case for banning political donations.

Immigration policies dictated by the interests of big business at the expense of the environment (and the voters) are short-sighted and foolhardy to say the least.

"The Federal and State governments must immediately announce and work towards stabilising the population at current levels and have a moritorium to halt any further population growth for at least five years until some of these problems are tackled and dealt with. To do otherwise is plainly suicidal for our society and the quality of life of current residents."

There is an associated cultural aspect as well. There are only so many migrants the Government can bring into the country before we weaken our culture and score an own goal. While a lot of migrants work hard, are law-abiding and are happy to live here, there is a limit to how many can come into the country before attenuation of our culture starts to occur. After all, in the physical world the majority rules.

This is a good reason in itself to start looking at imposing limits.

If the Pacific Rim countries go the way of Europe (as is intended by the New World Order devotees), then everyone in Indonesia, Malaya, Phillipines, Vietnam etc etc would have an automatic right to live and work in Australia at any time they chose. This is what has happened in Britain where thousands of Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians etc have flooded into the country, undermining wages because they are prepared to do jobs for less than British workers and putting enormous additional pressures on housing, education, health, and social services etc.
This is your future Australia, like it or not.! This is what Rudd and co are planning. If those who share this Common Purpose (NWO) get their way - which they will. Suggestions of trying to control current immigration is therefore merely putting a finger in the dyke.

The problem is not population when it comes to water management. The problem is water storeage and management. Governments fail to build Snowy Mountains schemes because of fear of offending the negative population growth advocates. Australia has plenty of water, that is why we record floods each rain season. Australia has fertile soils for food production we just need to manage better the water we receive.

Australia could support on its land mass about 60,000,000 people. Again we build houses, parks and factories on fertile costal lands rather than poorer dryland hills.

Philo,

Australia can't support a population of 60,000,000 people unless we pipe the excess water from the Kimberleys and south east Queensland to southern Asutralia which has received one third of ts climatic average rain for the past decade. In the past decade the autumn rains have failed to fall in Victoria and Queensland had received winter rain.

The changing climate patterns mean the population of South Australia, Victoria, southern New South Wales, southern Western Australia will be living in a desert shortly. Unfortunately these areas are still the foodbowl of Australia and still grow half our export crops.

If we are keen to see a higher proportion of children in our population we will be spending more on teachers, education, child care. If we continue to build sprawling suburbs we will have to build infrastructure like train lines, trains, trams, water pipes, sewerage pipes as well as electricity power lines.