Coming from the land I am greatly impressed by the view that Australia can support a greatly increased population through 'sustainable resource management'. It's all easy peasy too, just flood the country with migrants until the population is forced into sustainability.

Cripes, why didn't those dills in Canberra not realise it was all so simple? It was as though a new sun had appeared on the horizon!

Hold on, why do I have this image of a watermelon, y'know, green on the outside and red on the inside?

Of course with the Greens' record of solving bushfire risk and 'managing' the environment (eyes wide shut and it will all go away) we can have full confidence (sic) in their plans for population control by creating the flood of incomers that ensures later population and resource sustainability (- or maybe something else entirely, like slums and boatloads of refugees heading back out of Australia).

Still, while we are waiting for the all-cleansing human flood, what we should be doing in the interim about the 10% of Australians living below the poverty line, or those Gen Y's who can't afford houses, or the kids and older workers who can't get jobs despite retraining, or the 40% of Australians who can't afford the dentist or.....And how do you convince Aussies girls to keep their legs crossed so that only the preferred 'Over Theres' can fill the boats with their progeny?

Maybe if everyone had friends like Senator Bob Brown, who put out the begging bowl and was richly rewarded, the whole world could live happily ever after (er, could they also have Bob's overgenerous parliamentary superannuation too?).

Then again, maybe if the focus was more on education, the right of women to birth control and abortion on demand, other countries might have some chance of sustainability too. Let's not be too greedy and save all of the sustainability (and women's rights) for ourselves.

Foxy:“Ludwig is suggesting is that we restrict the
numbers of ordinary immigrants - so that we can take
in more refugees. Perhaps that is something that
needs to be considered - as far as sustainability is
concerned.”

[GULP]

Yabby:“Given that Australia right now can't manage to live with 20
million sustainably, before you rush in more people, get the first
part right.”

Why not? An incredible amount of money is wasted, I have seen that in a very short amount of time. Applauding anything that claims millions is being thrown at a problem with the expectation it is The solution. Like all western countries it is always what you have not who you are. Yabby I read something ages ago and you were saying that people don’t want to work here, or where you are there weren’t people that would work in factories and that is why work was going overseas at the time – is it still like this?

Hey I was wondering…. Can’t find it… but compared to population, how many people work in government jobs here – in comparison to other countries?

Thanks Master for addressing my questions, well…sort of addressing them.

You are making a fundamental mistake in assuming that those who are against large-scale and uncontrolled movement of asylum seekers into Australia are necessarily mean or lacking in compassion. Some might be. I certainly am not, as are many.

You addressed my question; <How can we accommodate refugees without opening the floodgates?>

But with respect, you completely failed to answer it. It is patently obvious what I mean by ‘floodgates’. It seems to me that you don’t even want to think about the consequences of a large and continuous stream of onshore asylum seekers coming our way….or that we would be very hard-pressed indeed to accommodate a small number in the manner that you would like without spurring a very much larger movement.

So unfortunately, you didn’t answer any of the questions that you addressed.

May I also say that if you are going to put statements in quotation marks, then they need to be accurate quotes.

“Ludwig ‘believes’ Australia's ecology can't sustain any more people. That's utterly ludicrous of course.”

You’ve really got to get past this belief Master. Or maybe it is something that you know isn’t true, but you feel the need to keep asserting in very strong terms because it is just so totally at odds with your desire to import large numbers of people in an ongoing manner. Perhaps your compassion for refugees is blinding you to the imperative of achieving a balance between undertaking a reasonable humanitarian effort and protecting our own future wellbeing in Australia.

“Ludwig seems to not understand that the country is ‘changing’ ”.

Of course it is changing, largely because of the pressure that we are exerting on unsustainable resources, not least water and oil. A whole lot of the changes that are being made are directed towards alternative energy sources, improved efficiencies and better technologies. But these improvements are largely per-capita improvements. And with the number of ‘capitas’ constantly and rapidly increasing, there is little or no net gain!

Even worse than this, the apparently green initiatives that are happening around us are in effect facilitating more people being supported by the same stressed resources. So the net effect is negative for the environment, resource base and our future wellbeing.

When we see these good initiatives happening in conjunction with population stabilisation then we’ll be on the right track. But until then, we’ll keeping heading straight towards an enormous economic, environmental and social upheaval…..after which we just might learn how important sustainability is.

“Properly managed, Australia can support a greatly increased population.”

Possibly. But until we can be assured that this continent can support this population increase and that the necessary resource management, rates of consumption and improved technologies are in place, one of the most important aspects of good management is to gear our population quickly towards a stable level. There’s no two ways about that – population stabilisation is a fundamental part of the good management of our society and natural environment.

How we do not have enouph water when one of our big problems is the rise of the sea water level ?
From one side we do not know what to do with the increased quantity of the water in oceans and from the other side we are crying for not enouph water!
Today the cost for water from normal supply sources is $200 per acre-foot while the cost of desalinizing water is about $650 per acre foot.
Desalination technology is improving and costs are falling. We can use solar power to desalinizy the water of ocean not only to cover our increased needs in drinking water but also to sent it to our deserts and create usable farmlands!
Dream! Dream australian deserts as farmlands and forests! So much water in oceans so much free energy and we are crying for our future and we block our refugee brothers to stay in our country!
COME IN, COME MY GOOD REFUGEES, THIS CUNTRY IS OURS AND YOURS, ALL TEMPORARY VISITORS ON THIS PLANET!

A CONSISTENT 13 gallons to 16 gallons of absolutely pure water every day, essentially anywhere on Earth with a system which involves a total cost of around $300 to $400!
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

“Ludwig: << Onshore refugee arrivals are only distantly related to population growth and sustainability >>

So what’s your beef then?”

CJ, the full quote should have been;

‘Onshore refugee arrivals are only distantly related to population growth and sustainability, unless of course the numbers become very high...in the order of many thousands per year.’

My beef is multifaceted.

Firstly, if you get your wish about just letting all arrivals move freely in open society, then we’ll most definitely get an enormous influx to the extent that it would be significant in terms of population growth.

Secondly, even small numbers have over the last decade created a whole lot of tension in Australian society, a whole lot of political unrest, a huge taxpayer cost, etc. Without Howard’s strong intervention in 2001, numbers would have been much greater and the costs and tensions much greater as well.

Thirdly, if we are subjected to an increased rate of arrivals in an ongoing manner, these sorts of tensions will continue and attitudes will harden towards refugees, including offshore refugees and those that we have accepted and that live amongst Australian citizens. Our overall humanitarian effort could suffer greatly. Whereas if we were to concentrate on helping the most needy refugees in their home countries or camps across the border from their homes, and directed our international aid effort at the source issues of refugeeism, then the Australian public and hence government would probably be considerably more amenable to supporting an increase in this sort of humanitarian effort.

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