Steve

Coping with a growing population has brought about the infrastructure crisis in the first instance. Funding for transport infrastructure desperately needed to facilitate mineral exports, Australia's major income source, is severely hampered because of this.

Steve, I have never argued that our population should reduced but rather, that we should get off the continuous growth spiral and head directly towards a stable level….which we could very easily do by simply reducing immigration down to about net zero or less, while just accepting our fertility rate as a very good thing that doesn’t need to be increased by the stupid baby bonus, or reduced by anti-natalist policies.

“Australia had more rainfall last year than the 30 year average, so its not lack of rain, its lack of water infrastructure.”

We actually had more than the average when considering the whole country! Great. But it certainly wasn’t where it was needed. Yes part of the problem is a lack of infrastructure….in conjunction with population overload on the water resources in most of our major cities and high-population regions. Yes it is drought, but more significantly it is the lack of preparedness for inevitable drought events.

Two things count here; resource and infrastructure planning and the absurdity of allowing the demand to continuously increase in regions with poor resource provision and infrastructure….and the screaming lunatic level of absurdity of continuing to allow this demand to increase now, during times of crisis!!

It is all very well to say that there is plenty of water. But it’s meaningless if it is not where it is needed, and if it takes many years and huge economic cost to either pipe it to the populace or to move the people to the water.

So when considering resource scarcity, we have to think about where the resources are, where the people are and the whole economics of resource utilisation. In fact, you can hardly consider it to be a real resource if it is not readily utilisable, can you? A potential resource at best.

“Australia is a net energy exporter...” and “…exports more agricultural produce than is consumed domestically…”

Yes, and we could and should be using this huge energy reserve and ‘excess’ food production to gear ourselves onto a sustainable footing. But instead we are using them to take us directly into crisis, by way of allowing it to facilitate continuous rapid population growth, and allowing our economy to become dependent on this degree of export.

“ ‘why the hell would we want another 10 million people’ My answer to this question is so we can pay for the infrastucture that is desparately needed and that is limited by our tiny population”

With respect, this sounds like classic dog-chasing-its-tail thinking. You think that more people will produce and pay for the infrastructure shortfall that exists with the current population, but you don’t even consider the extra cost and infrastructure that will automatically be needed to cater for this extra 10 million!!

So the question remains effectively unanswered.

“…but in my view we cannot afford not to increase our population.”

Why? Surely you would have to have a really good reason for wanting a population significantly larger than the level that we could easily stabilise it at. This is surely has got to sit right at the core of your argument. As old zygote suggests; the onus must be on you to explain why Australia should have a larger population, not the other way around, yes?

Fester you are correct, my stating that London's avarage rainfall was 55 mm was obviously wrong. I mistook monthly totals for yearly totals, I apologise.

We have a chicken and egg argument, but when was the last "world class civil engineering project" started in Australia? 1949. Almost sixty years of doing SFA.

Given the current wisdom that we have to have user pays for everything we will never have the infrastructure we need.

Guess when this headline was from "Federal Cabinet today moved a step closer to a major overhaul of the nation's water policies. Irrigation could be cut and water rights suspended"? 5/11/2002, nearly five years ago what happened?

Australia could easily have a much larger population that could reinvigourate our regional centers, but we are content to sit on our collective backsides and do nothing.

More people, more taxes, more infrastructure, more wealth, economies of scale, regional centers booming.

Look outside the conventional wisdom that has let us down for 60 years.

Was it Steve that said we had 600 years of coal ?

Well, a German group has recently completed a study of world coal reserves.
The world will reach peak coal in 2025.

http://www.energywatchgroup.org/files/Coalreport.pdf

It will be worth a read.
Another peak that not many have considered is copper.
Some reports in resource financial papers have mentioned
the shortage of copper to explain the rising price on the LME.
It seems that all the easy copper has been mined, sound familar ?
So I have read about oil, gas, copper, uranium, & coal peaking;
Any others ?

Just for starters these materials will limit what can be done for
an expanding population.
I am not an "end of the world as we know it" ist I am a pessimist
as far as peak oil is concerned but an optimist in the longer term.
I believe we will muddle through, but with a smaller world population.

Oh one more thing that tie our hands in even considering a larger
population, besides water that is;

We import 45% and increasing about 5% a year, of our oil.
All of our oil companies are subsiduries of the large European and
US companies. What do you think those companies will tell their
Australian offices when they have trouble placing bid orders for oil
to satisfy US and European countries ?

What we need will be a drop in their bucket and we will have to
survive on an immediate 50% cut if it happened tomorrow,
or a 55% cut if next year.
That would be our worse case scenario as it would give no time
to implement mitigation procedures.