oug

I question Belly's suggestion that overpopulation dehumanises people. I think that material wealth and compassion are separate entities, although it is obvious that greater material wealth allows one to be more compassionate if he so chooses.

Do you think that Australia would offer a better standard of living than the average Indian or Philippino were our population 10 times what it is today? I think that policy should be geared toward improving living standards, not propping up the sales for shoddy property developments or satisfying the self harming perversions of guilt stricken lefties.

Fester sorry but I am lost trying to work out want you are saying.
I believe a race driven only by money such as population growth and productivity is both folly,and takes the reasoning out of humanity.
To even consider joining those country's that give us our boat refugees, poor living standards and too many people, is silly.
Why must we over populate.
If the reason is defense the world is destroying its self.
If it is productivity to generate wealth what then, say after we run out of Iron and coal.
How many of us actually come in to contact with refuges.
How many of them spend near life times on our welfare.
Is self preservative still a human thing of benefit or do we not say enough.
Jewerly looks on maps for a green Australia.
I have seen it in my head lights and by walking over it, green today brown ,very brown tomorrow.
4 years ago people in the upper Hunter saw house dams run dry shot house cows and horses, washed in mud.
My village will not get sewage this century, too few houses to pay the cost and we must have more homes, that are not allowed without sewage to have sewage!
I wobble because while my recycle system is fine my neighbors floods my yard and my foot is poisoned.
Life out side the city's has reality's others do not and more people only magnifies them.

Belly

I dont support the concept of rapid population growth, if that helps. The high government debt in Australia is testament to the folly of that option. But I disagree with you that Australia would be dehumanised were her population much greater. Yes, there might be less to help the needy in society, but would that make us less human?

<Why must we over populate.>

I think that all people should have access to contraception if they want it. Were this the case the world's population would be stable, not growing. It is government policy that is responsible for the growing population, and this I am opposed to.

From 1999:

http://www.ruralplanning.com.au/library/papers/rapinat99.pdf

CONCLUSION

Australia’s agricultural land is a finite resource. The good land is located on the coastal fringe of the continent. This is where the population growth is occurring. The growth of population is coming into conflict with the agricultural practices, which is causing them to relocate. There is a need to manage the growth of our towns and cities so that we can achieve a balance between horizontal and vertical growth. We also need to recognise the importance of our agricultural land. There are various methods use for the preservation of agricultural land in use throughout the world. They should be evaluated and discussed to ascertain the benefits of using them for the Australian situation. There is a need to act now. If we do we can achieve the balance and be sustainable by growing food as well as growing houses. If we don’t we run the risk of loosing the good agricultural land and instead of rural Australia we will have rural residential Australia.

Map I stared at for awhile today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Australia-climate-map_MJC01.png

Jewely, the idea of "protecting" good agricultural land is a bit of a bad joke today.

Apart from industrial style farming, it is just not worth doing. Even Asian immigrants, who have always dreamed of their own small crop farm, find the the dream turns very sour in Oz. The old market garden type operation is no longer viable.

I am secretary of the irrigation committee for a near Brisbane rural area. In what I consider "useful" agriculture we have just one old dairy farmer, who is too set in his ways to stop. All the other food producers have given up, sick of subsidising the public's food.

We now have a few turf farmers, people supplying the nursery industry, some supplying "green chop" to the feed lots, others supplying green feed or lucerne to the horse racing or equestrian industry, even some florist suppliers, but no one grows food, or anything that we can't easily do without.

You can't even make a living raising beef, the rates on a big enough block are too high to allow that.

I did OK doing nothing more useful than grow advanced shrubs for instant gardens on the Gold Coast, or Ipswich.

Why should some 65 years old broken down farmer have to sit on his land living on less than the pension, [for which he is not eligible], instead of selling it to the highest bidder, & retiring in the comfort every public servant expects.

God I am sick of planners, & others, with little idea of which way is up, wanting to dictate to others.

If you want to "save" the farm land, what you have to do is find a way of paying a reasonable return to the farmers for their efforts.

I beleive that the only people that a growing population serves is the big boys at the top as it provides them with an ever growing consumer base so they can make bigger and bigger profits. Meanwhile, the rest of us are paying the price.

Our population is at best about right, at worst, too high. What we do need is a better way to distribute the wealth we have in this country - cut all subsidies to big business, reform the welfare system (at the very least scrap the baby bonus), reform the tax system, improve our education system... I could go on but there is too much to do...

We should have zero net migration with a balance which accepts a reasonable percentage of refugees however they arrive. There is a great mistrust of islamic refugees at present but i would wager that just reflects the political situations in their home countries (just as there were greater numbers of asian refugees in the wake of upheavals of the 1980's).

I dont agree with that there is a fair way to guage, as Belly said, 'those who will add to our country and do well here' - that seems to just be code for a return to the White Australia Policy. We need to be open minded about the potential of every human. We need to remember that in the 50's - 60's people had a similar concern about Italian and Greek migrants that they now hold about Islamic ones - it all sorts itself out within a generation or two.

But before we can make progress on the population issue we need more people to start to recognise the failues of capitalism and the failure of our democracy to represent the great majority of the Australian people becuase they answer only to thier masters, big business.