"We will exceed 42 million people in 2050.<<

"Using the same calculation, in 2100 the population of India will be 4.5 billion, and Indonesia's over 700 million. Shouldn't that come into the equation somewhere?

"We do not live in a vacuum."

And three wrongs do not make it right. The deserts will win - a "mere" ten of them in Australia!

Your comments about racism are just not accurate Antonious.

Population sustainability is not just about the size of land in terms of area, but the availability of water, climate and amount of arable fertile land for agriculture.

You say just put up some more dams etc but can you not see the impact this would have on our river systems. There are already significant problems with the Murray-Darling and effects all along that system incuding the Coorong.

Population sustainability does not have to mean no immigration. It can easily be a one in and one out arrangement without favour to any one race/culture.

Issues which have been raised before would be to demolish birth incentives like baby bonuses and maternity leave. Immigration is just one part of the debate and it does not mean a total ban on immigration particularly for refugees.

We have to address this issue soon or we will eventually strangle our cities with inefficient infrastructure. We have the ridiculous situation where Melbourne is expanding at such a rate and the Nth/Sth pipeline which will only contribute to diversion of water from the northern food bowl part of that state.

We must be the only species that goes against the natural instinct of survival. Throughout the world we create overpopulated enclaves that can little support itself in terms of health, food, clean water and housing.

Protagorus is right. Why should we bear the whole burden, when places like China and India and Indonesia have enormous populations that dwarf ours. To the strong belong the land, and unless we are capable of holding on to it, with a sufficient population and a reasonable defence capability, someone probably a Muslim will take it from us.

Australia will always be able to feed itself, and we have a biggish ditch between us and our nearest possibly hostile neighbour. I think Kevin Rudd is exactly right to strengthen our defences,as Menzies started to do in 1936 when he saw trouble coming. The Labor Party effectively defended Australia by making the hard decisions, much to the disgust of Churchill, but Menzies had made it possible for wartime production to be stepped up.

The problem would be us, if the us was all humanity, but while it is only Us Australians,we need to as they used to say populate or perish. Appeasement is not an option but while we have no land border where an army can mass to invade, we have a big ditch between us and them, and plenty of ways to make it dangerous for anyone to cross with hostile intentions.

Antonios,
Ludwig and I have no hidden agendas, we are realists. You are the one with a problem. 'There are none so blind as those that will not see'

Australia is the driest continent on earth! There is only a small percentage that will support agriculture. Take a trip to Kalgoolie or to Alice Springs and see for yourself. Then try to drive from there to Broome and see what that country would sustain.

Have you seen the Snowy scheme and realise that it only supports a small irrigation area. From time to time various proposals have been put up to get water into the interior, but the cost is prohibative and the benefits doubtfull. You're the one who is lazy, because you will not do your homework before you shoot your mouth off.

Many experts say we have over populated now. Tim Flannery, for example, claims out population should only be 14 million.

Everything is easy to those who do not have to do it themselves. If it were simple and easy it would have been done. You do the research before you start accusing me of having some hidden agenda or ulterior motive because I see problems looming with a larger population.

Antonios

I appreciate your interest and I accept your questions as being sincere, despite the allegations of hidden agendas. But I’ve answered them all over and over on OLO, on numerous threads, some of which you have partaken in.

I find it quite extraordinary that you apparently don’t even have the most basic understanding of the reasons behind my desire for a stable population. And it is not only my desire, but one that is shared by many posters on this forum.

Alright, let’s look at water….

“Why do not say anything for better water management…”

I’ve had a lot to say about water management, especially the insanity of continuing with unfettered rapid population growth in areas that are suffering very serious water shortage/supply problems, such as southeast Queensland, Perth, etc.

Surely one of the most important principles of management is to balance the demand with the supply capability. So surely as soon as the supply capability becomes foreseeable as being insufficient to comfortably meet the demand, the most important thing to do is to at least stop the demand from rapidly increasing, if at all possible… and to keep it from increasing at least until the supply capability is capable of meeting the projected demand, with a big safety margin. But noooo, our illustrious governments haven’t even considered that, let alone made any attempts at all to even slightly slow the rate of increasing demand!

Talk about the most abysmal management, the most atrocious governance, the most extraordinary dereliction of the duty of care to the constituency!

They’ll look at every other possibility under the sun; new dams, desal, water restrictions, increased costs to consumers…just as long as their sacred cow of rapid population growth isn’t touched!

What they end up doing is squeezing more and more people in under the same stressed water resources, stressing them more and more, which ultimately is just going to be disastrous.

continued

I mean, the people overseeing this extraordinary mismanagement really should have been charged with serious misdemeanours and locked away for a long time. That’s how strongly I feel about it!!

Woops, I said in the opening post of this thread that my intention was not to rehash the basic debate or merits of a stable population.

So in line with the desired direction of the thread…..

We have a major study, which drew in comment from the public, experts, businesses and all sorts of interest groups, done fifteen years ago, which directly reinforces the goal that I have been pushing since 1989, that we should be heading immediately towards a stable population and that the most practical level is about 23 million.

So how on earth do we get our utterly unillustrious government to do this?