Jacksonn,
Belly is right the land is unable to sustainable current practices and is rapidly facing the law of diminishing returns.
Ludwig is also correct when he states that there are too many people in Australia. BUT I would add the caveat as I have said many times the land isn't the current major stumbling block but what we DO with it HOW and WHY.
Building houses over our best soils, inappropriate farming practices wastage, wrong products, rubbish disposal, building in in appropriate areas et sec.

I agree with Ludwig.

Now of course, if we had some central planning bureau ( stacked full of actuaries & futurists & economists) it might determine that Aust. could safely accommodate many millions more …if, we’d just let them micro-manage peoples lives .

But, there are two issues that trouble me:
What does it do to the human psyche to be so tightly supervised, that, what you eat, drink & otherwise do is measured & policed to the nth degree?
And, sometimes, experts have a way of getting things wrong:their planning & predictions can run very very wide of the mark. What would happen if we had a natural disaster on the scale of the current world financial crisis ?

No thanks, we better err on the side of caution .

Sorry I upset you Antonios but the facts remain that we have already done massive damage to our country and increasing the population will only make it worse. I have no "nationalist" or "racist" agenda I would think the same whether any increases came from an improved birthrate or from immigration. I love this country and want to see it protected not exploited and degraded.

You are very wrong in your assesment of the possibility of increasing agriculture in Australia. Have you not heard all the farmers constantly crying out for assistance, seen all the farmers who have walked off their land? Have you never seen eroded or salinated land. Have you not seen the reports of duststorms and bushfires? Havent you heard the Murray river is all but dead? All thanks to our overuse and destructive farming of the australian land.

This is the oldest continent on earth and after all these millenia it has been ground down flat and leached of all its nutrients. There is very little that could be considered more than marginally fertile. That is the reason it can only support sparse grazing (compared to other countries) and the reason there is very limited cropping let alone intensive food production. We are lucky to get decent grain crops to grow.

Our rainfall is very variable and droughts are more than common. How come you dont see this? With our clearing and the results of climate change rainfall has been decreasing in many parts of the country over the last century or so. You talk about massive flood events and the waste of that water but even the floods are very variable. One year its the Hunter valley the next year far north queensland that gets flooded. A year later it might be tasmania or south east qld and the nth rivers. How could you possibly get that water to where you need it.

Your advocacy of new dams, irrigation systems etc is just ridiculous and shows you have done no research whatsoever. The community will not support massive new dams the like of the snowy scheme. Turning rivers inland or flooding lake eyre have all been shown to be unviable and the information is out there if you look for it.

Desalination is an extremely expensive system for making drinking water let alone for irrigation. The carbon costs from desalination plants will in the future make most of the current ones white elephants. There is no possible way desalination could contribute to increased farming. Please do some research.

43% of our land may be crown land but it is also desert or national park and totally unsuitable for habitation let alone agriculture.

This is not the green and fertile land of Europe or the Americas this is the sunburnt country. A land of droughts and flooding rains. Read that poem and continue to learn about this country and one day you will understand. This is the best country in the world and we have a duty to future generations to keep it that way.

I don't advocate more agriculture. However I would be in favour of it being more focused to our NEEDS.
I can't see why we have untold industries that focus on producing products primarily for the overseas profligate market.This is most often done at the expense of local needs and our environment.
Wheat, cattle, cotton etc are prime examples....I ask why?
I am aware of the 'global' market but
a. is it a level playing field?
b. do we have a net benefit?
The answer to both is a clear no so why do it.....profit. But for who and when is it enough? The first is clear and we've been conditioned to accept the absurd that there is no viable alternatives. To emphasize this we get the 'reds under the bed' extremist scare tactics instead of reasoned discourse.
As was observed elsewhere we're big on grand displays...save Koalas, Butterflies, wombats old growth forest but not if we have to do do something. Conservation isn't just the above it's asking do we really need that 2mtr resource hungry plasma TV and a million other sensible decisions.
It is on that basis I believe that is we stopped growing wheat for o'seas markets we would have more than enough agricultural land to grow all the other things we have to import which cause us to grow more wheat to pay for it. the eternal self destructive cycle of over exploitation.

mikk,
Slowly sir take a breath! I am not upset!
Do you mean if we water our land it will not be good for agricultural use?
Do you mean it is good for grass but if we water it will not be good for crops?
I am sure we can improve our water managment system, even we can sent plenty water in the deserts if we want it. The question is if we can give life to dry land and deserts by watering them.
There are countries which use sea water more than 60% of their total needs, including of cause the irrigation.
The oceans have so much water arount australia!
I found you are going hand by hand with extrem nationalists about our population.
You know I desagree with you and I prefer a better use of our land to be good enouph for hundrend twenty milion population!
LET'S CONVERT OUR DESERTS TO FORESTS, LET'S CONVERT AUSTRALIA TO A STRONG COUNTRY, LET'S SUPPORT OTHER COUNTRIES WITH FOOD AND OXYGEN!
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaid