The UK doesn't actually recieve a whole lot of rain. What matters with rainfall is not the quantity, but the difference between rainfall and evaporation. Say, if you left a bucket in the backyard whether it would be full or empty most of the time. In that regard, the UK is far better off, which is of course why it is so green.

Have any of you been to the UK? If so, why would you want Australia to be anything like that? Who says the UK is living sustainably?

The UK is also largely recently glaciated, which renewed soil fertility, in stark contrast to the very stable highly leached defertilised soils sitting above a concentrated salt zone over much of Australia.

OK

You don't like my analogy of the fact that 30 million people could easily fit into an area the size of Victoria.

How about this little known fact "Australia's average rainfall of 490mm last year was slightly more than the long-term average of 472mm, but it fell unevenly across the continent."

This is in contrast to London's 30 year average of 55mm. The 30 year average for Melbourne is 350mm.

So although many areas are in severe drought our continent is not. The problem is that successive governments for over 50 years have done relatively little to drought proof Australia.

Our challenge in the next 50 years is to do what should have already been done. Then a population of 100,000,000 will be quite feasible.

Peak oil is another furphy, there is plenty of oil. What we are running out of is cheap oil (can someone explain why the cost of oil imports went down 8% last qtr but the bowser price went up 5%).

Oil sands and shale oil in Canada and Venezuela have greater oil reserves than all of the middle east. This is economic to extract at $40 per barrel.

Remember Australia is a net energy exporter.

TurnRightThenLeft, history has demonstrated time and again that multicultural states eventually fail. Then again, history is apparently not your forte.

You see a society that has less conflict than other nations, but where are you looking? Australia and Canada are often hailed as multicultural success stories, but in reality, both countries suffer from a weak sense of national identity. As demographic changes occur in favour of immigrant minorities, problems of social cohesion will only be compounded. How can Australia meet the challenges of the future without a sense of collective identity? Whether or not one loves traditional Australia, one only has to do the math and observe the trends to understand that the Australia of the future will in no way resemble the Australia of today.

ATSE outlined the problem of social cohesion associated with high immigration. Peter Costello has warned the same. This is not merely some "conspiracy" imagined by myself. Furthermore, I have posted numerous times on the relationship between population growth and water shortages. The fact that you still support the high immigration paradigm in this day and age does cause me to question your rationality. Unlike yourself, I am more concerned with the well-being of the people already here.

Its easy Steve,
EROEI are the magic letters.
The tar sands will never be more than marginal supply.
They expect to reach 2 Million b/d by 2020 approx.
The energy required to produce a barrel is just about a barrel's worth.
It will get harder as they have to dig deeper.
There is a polution problem as well.
Canadian gas is in depletion now and North America is on the verge
of very serious gas shortages. They use the gas to melt the tar.

Oil will go up & down in price as costs bight and a demand destruction sets in.
The poorer countries cut back because they could not afford the price.
No matter how you look at it, where you grow it is where you will eat it.
The energy required to fit out 10 million or in your latest suggestion
100,000,000 is just out of the question in the longer term.
We may have no time at all or if the optimists are correct we have 10 years.
Problem is the governments are betting on the optimists.
Have you wondered at Costello's gift of $2000 for gas in your car ?

Steve Madden, your comparison between Victoria and the UK completely overlooks Australia's high evaporation rate. Almost 90% of all rainfall and snowfall in Australia evaporates, compared to the world average of approximately 65%. In fact, out of all of the continents, Australia has the lowest percentage of rainfall which actually reaches storages or streams. Now combine this with declining rainfall in the southern, less arid parts of the continent, and water scarcity becomes an ongoing problem. In these circumstances, why the hell would we want another 10 million people?