Pericles wrote: "What we are witnessing in terms of net intake is well within the capacity of the country to absorb."

What is your basis for saying this?

All major cities are running out of water. We are expecting power blackouts in Queensland this summer unless people can be persuaded to not set the settings of their air conditioners too high. Moreton Bay is filling with silt, as I have already pointed out on a previous thread (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834#53620). Brisbane's roads are congested. Brisbanes's public transport is overloaded. More and more Australian wildlife species are threatened as their habitats are destroyed.

And, of course, there is the acute shortage of rental accommodation, which is the topic of this discussion.

How do you define what is "well within the capacity of the country to absorb", what is just "within the capacity of the country to absorb" and what is not?

High immigration (and high population growth in general) is certainly a causal factor of ridiculously high property values, that mean 40-year mortgages for the average person purchasing the average house, ridiculously high rents and ridiculously high rates for those who do own their own homes.

These things strike right at the core of concerns for the average person…. and yet the number of people concerned about population growth / immigration seems to be so small.

There are many other negative aspects to our relatively high rate of pop growth that vastly outweigh any positives. Some of these are bleedingly obvious to all of us, such as continued rapid growth in SEQ, Sydney, Perth, etc while water resources are critically stressed and a continued rapid increase in greenhouse gas producers while the push is on to reduce our GHG emissions.

The various concerns are well-expressed repeatedly on this forum.

So, why hasn’t mainstream Australia rallied against high pop growth and in favour of a policy of stabilizing our population??

This is the great mystery.

Ludwig

I would suggest that the democratic process is being subverted. Politicians have publically acknowledged pursuing high immigration against public opinion on the basis that they are acting for the public good. The false assertion that all opponents of high immigration are motivated by ignorance and racism is also heavily pushed to shut people up. But people do have their say sometimes. Look at the French and Dutch referendums held earlier this year: Despite heavy "Yes" campaigning by the major political parties and the media, the "No" vote prevailed. And the ultimate insult was a lamentation by politicians and in editorials about the prevalent racism and ignorance in the community, and the need for education on these issues.

After The French and Dutch examples, it is very unlikely that democracy will get a look in on a population policy in Australia.

Graham Young wrote: "Studies show that immigration has very little positive or negative effect on the economy, so it wouldn't affect GDP, ..."

The GDP is not an accurate measure of prosperity. Simon Kuznets, who devised the GDP measure in the 1930's for President Roosevelt's administration, never intended for it to be used in the way that it has and spent his latter years trying very hard to stop GDP figures being misused in the way that they are by some on this forum. I think that The media release of Sustainable Population Australia of 19 January 2006, in relation to the Productivity Report, that you are referring to is relevant. I have put a copy here: http://www.candobetter.org/population/spa-mediaRelease-19jan06.html

Below are some excerpts:

(The then SPA National Vice President and former Democrats Senator) Dr Coulter claims that beyond that the Productivity Commission Report is flawed.

"Both GNP and GDP count many costs as benefits adding them to the index rather than subtracting them. The report draws attention to the increased population adding to congestion and pollution but fails to recognise that the costs of ameliorating these adverse effects will appear in the national accounts as additions to, rather than subtractions from, GNP and GDP."

Dr Coulter says that as these costs loom larger as a component of GDP the contrast between this index purporting to show an improvement in 'standard of living' and the recognition that quality of life is actually deteriorating will become more stark.

"There are already many studies showing that since the mid 70s there has been a growing divide between an increasing GDP and a falling quality of life but the Commission seems ignorant of this work. It is very likely that had the environmental penalties of increased population been properly costed by the Commission and subtracted from the predicted GNP, it would have discovered that this corrected GNP would fall and the economic effect would not be 'benign'", he says.

Daggett, the Coulter piece is very confusing. I'm not sure that he really disagrees with me - all I am saying is that increased immigration does not alter per capita GDP much, and in which direction is highly contestable. I'm not going to get side-tracked into an argument about whether GDP is a good measure or not.

The facts that matter here, and which presumably support what you are saying anyway, is that immigration is forcing the price of housing up contrary to government policy in other areas, which leads to a perverse situation where government policies to push demand for housing down and therefore prices can't have that effect because government policy in other areas is acting to push prices higher.

Graham, you wrote: "I'm not going to get side-tracked into an argument about whether GDP is a good measure or not."

But, clearly Pericles, echoing arguments put by Australia's growth lobby, does maintain that the GDP figures indicate "the process of absorption is at no cost in the broadest sense to us as individuals." (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=310#5400) This is illustrative of how the GDP figure, as well as our flawed measurement inflation which has not even included housing costs since 1999, is used as a trump card with which to dismiss any objection to immigration policies and to any other harmful government polices.

It is precisely because John Coulter anticipated such a misuse of these findings by the Productivity Commission that he made those statements (see, again, http://www.candobetter.org/population/spa-mediaRelease-19jan06.html).

Simon Kuznets, who originated the GDP measure, warned in 1934: "the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred by a measure of national income as defined above" (cited in "Economia" by Geoff Davies, p23). If we look at the evidence contained in the other posts of how immigration has harmed our standards of living, as well as our prospects for long term sustainability, it seems fairly clear why Kuznets made that warning.

I therefore doubt very much if Kuznets, if he were with us today, would accept Pericles' argument.

If we are to accurately assess the impact of immigration on our standard of living, including our access to decent affordable housing, we must come up with a better measure of prosperity than the GDP.

Until we do, we should stick with the facts, and with measures which do have some bearing on the questions at hand, such as that provided by divergence above (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=310#5395), that is, in terms of median wages, the cost of housing has risen by thre times in recent years.