As the Howard Government's record high immigration intake levels are essentially being dictated by big business, the nation's property developers, real estate agents, investment bankers, and construction companies must be licking their parasitic lips with glee. But what about the rest of us?

Thanks to these high immigration levels, the average Australian is already facing the prospect of water shortages and record low levels of housing affordability. Many argue that in terms of ecological sustainability, Australia has reached its human carrying capacity, and socially, if immigration continues as is, Australia will end up a broken nation, divided along ethnic and cultural lines. How does this benefit the majority of the population?

Aside from the obvious economic benefits for the above-mentioned vested interest groups, there is no economic rationale to justify this huge increase in the size of the foreign-born population. Last year's Productivity Commission report showed Australians’ per capita income would be only 0.06 per cent higher if we had 50 per cent higher skilled immigration over the next 20 years. This does not include the economic costs incurred by the environmental degradation associated with a larger population. In reality, merely growing bigger will not make us smarter. Innovation and productivity are the keys to global competitiveness, not supercharging the domestic property market by importing people en masse. Unsurprisingly, the World Economic Forum consistently rates nations with smaller populations than Australia, such as Finland, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark, amongst the most competitive in the world.

As for Peter Costello's aging population scare campaign, a 1999 parliamentary research paper entitled "Population Futures for Australia" tersely states: "It is demographic nonsense to believe that immigration can help to keep our population young."

Nevertheless, the Coalition seems intent on growing Australia's population at all cost through excessive immigration and tax churning "baby bonuses". Labor leader Kevin Rudd is yet to declare his stance on immigration and population. Can Labor wrong-step Howard's two-step on immigration? Or will Howard be able to once again convince the public he is tough on immigration while surreptitiously opening up the floodgates even more?

Australia's doing fine, compared to some of the countries people immigrate from. Isn't poverty, disease and famine across the globe a bigger concern than the economics of this one country? I'd like to think Australia can help out, even if its to our minor detriment - there's more important global considerations. To think any other way is...well, kinda selfish I reckon.

MELBOURNE's water is at 32% and each day it gets worse..and each day I go for a walk over Dandenong Creek which is NOT flowing..at all.

We need more people ?

yep..we do...like another unintended hole in the HEAD.

Water... will be the key to our sustainable population future.

Jesus said "Without me, you can do nothing" and we can apply this to Water.. without it.. we are nackered.

One sad aspect of Democracy, is how such crucial issues as water are politicized for points sake, rather than solved for OUR sakes.

I honestly wonder if the political number crunchers are weighing up how many votes they might lose by diverting some promised funding for a barrel of pork somewhere and into better water management.

There is a solution..and its a Christian one.. "REPENT" .. Its the only one I can offer, because the alternative is all based on greed,... filling the pocket or vote with some service or project and that is sure not going to have the result we need, though it might keep certain people in power for a bit longer.

grrrrr

Spendocrat, your concerns are not at odds with the stabilization of population and the achievement of sustainability in Australia.

In fact just the opposite is true. We won’t be able to contribute anything meaningful towards world poverty if our society becomes significantly more stressed or implodes, which is exactly where it is heading with high immigration.

A few things to consider:

For the migration issues, there may well be benefits to be had from reducing our migrant intake, I suppose that to me, Ludwig's sustainability arguments are much more compelling than the cultural ones so many posters are concerned with.

The problem I have with the initial post is thus:

Oligarch refers to 'big business' being one of the groups that need migrants - I'd say the needs of big business and small business largely fall into the same boat. They both need skilled employees.

Now while I suppose you can refer to business in Australia as a special interest group, I think that designation divorces it somewhat from the crucial reality, which is that pretty much everybody is reliant on business for their very livelihoods. If business fails, we're all screwed. And skill shortages are a very real threat to our economy.

So, in my view, cutting immigration simply because we think it's bad is a stupid idea - looking at ways to make the proportion of migrants be skilled workers however... well, that's a damn good idea.

And we can't necessarily discount the unskilled migrants, as many of them are from backgrounds with very strong work ethics - they'll take up the challenge of being trained and becoming productive members of society.

While there may be merit in revising migration amounts, to suggest that all will be fine and well if we cut it altogether... that's being disingenuous.

We have this skills shortage despite the high immigration amounts the author lays at the feet of the Howard government.
I can only imagine how acute it would be if we weren't taking migrants.

Australia's unemployment and underemployment rate is much higher than the published 5%. Australia doesn't have a shortage of workers, it has some very picky employers who want to employ people with exactly the mix of skills they are looking for, not the potential to learn new skills.

Australia's population should be limited to a level that the continent can feed and water.

At the moment the large supermarkets ship food all over Australia, so when you buy a mango in Cairns, it may have grown just up the road, but its been shipped to Melbourne through the Costas warehouse then taken the road trip back to Brisbane, cooled in the Queensland distribution warehouse before being sent up to Cairns.

That's madness! we don't have unlimited fuel and we are importing migrant truckies to drive at super cheap rates.

If we don't manage the water supply of the Murray Darling Basin the residents of Melbourne and Sydney will lose their meat, fruit vegtables and dairy product.

Meanwhile we force the rural poor to move to population centres to keep receiving their dole and farmers struggle to get pickers when the fruit and vegetables need harvesting. I am not sure how punishing it is now to move on and off the dole while you pick up seasonal work but I bet its really punitive.