Ok Desmond,
After you've returned to earth again could you give us some examples of those bad things from the Joh era that made people flock to Qld. To start with how can you even begin to compare Qld to Vic. Totally different logistics & climate for a start.
If you feel you must bag Joe for the sake of bagging then at least have the decency to pick on on a stuff-up, not just a perpetual, baseless bad Joh ranting. I don't mean to say he was a Saint, not by a long shot but all this ignorant waffle about Qld being backward due to Joh does nothing more than put crap on peoples blood, sweat & tears for the sake of making the vulnerable believe this ignorant leftie nonsense.
I was in Qld during the last 11 Joh years & believe me there wasn't even a fraction of this "suffering" lefties ramble on about. The suffering started when they so unceremoniously dumped Joh. Did you know that Qld used to have a health service under Joh ? No death duty either. The indigenous were making progress. I bet that's news to you !

Yes the High Court has tied itself in knots over the past 100 years trying to figure out what those words are supposed to mean.

You could try the website of the Bar Society in your state. It would probably list barristers and senior counsel by areas of practice. Some might give you a freebie.

In Victoria the bush incentive is 4000 and works well,
I bet it does Desmond, especially for those disrupting functional rural communities & investing the easily procured funds away from the community. Yes, it does indeed work well if you're a proponent for destroying social & economic harmony. It's a scary parallel to the national socialists of 1930's Germany. I recall people telling me that there & then it all started with restricting freedom of speech with a similar tactic as political correctness. Just keep in mind that if you don't act by the time the wannabe dictators are on step 12 it's almost too late to stop them from reaching the top of a 20 step stairway. Communities do not object to newcomers, they object to soul-less newcomers dictating to them. To entice someone to disrupt a community for 3 or 4 thousand Dollars is soul-less & reeks of utter incompetence & contempt considering that the right people are denied the opportunity of priority of lifestyle over money.

It does seem odd that governments who tout the benefits of unfettered population growth in economic terms will then act differently in terms of the reality of what population growth might mean. These Bligh incentives indicate the hyprocrisy.

Offering incentives to move to rural areas won't work unless there are jobs there to keep people in the town. If they change their minds will they have to refund their incentive?

To avoid high population growth one has to provide disincentives to large families (baby bonuses) and curb immigration to one in one out as Ludwig proposes.

Moving people to country areas to stop towns from dying is a good idea but has to be done in conjuction with encouraging business to country areas and ensuring transport, health and education infrastructure standards are high.

If that is achieved the benefits will have a snowball effect with less need for greater cash incentives from governments.

From the front page of today’s Courier Mail:

Shut the gate. Residents want cap on population.

Most Queenslanders want the Bligh Government to cap rampant population growth in the state’s southeast.

60 percent of Queenslanders want the government to take steps to limit the region’s population growth explosion. A similar proportion say forecasts of six million southeast Queenslanders by 2050 would be too many.

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So there is indeed a very large level of concern out there, which would make measures to cap the population or at least slow it right down quite politically tenable, and indeed politically dangerous for the government to do nothing about.

dear Desmond,
You have got to be kidding. Victoria would fit in the SE corner of Qld . I live 20 hours north of Brisbane and 12 hours south of the top. 5 hours would put you in N S W from the bottom of Vic. It is called distance old son.