All this is rather naïve.

Yes to me Sydney, so the rest of the country, was overpopulated when I could no longer drive it to the city, park in Pit or Castlereagh St. & take my girl to the pictures.

However to believe we would not descend into chaos if we caused a major slowdown in the building & building materials industries is kidding ourselves.

Much as I hate it, I don't think governments of either persuasion have any other way of maintaining an ordered society, than to maintain a requirement for new housing, & the other activity this brings in train. We climbed on the growth band wagon, & I'm not sure we can get off without a crash.

I moved out here to get as far as possible away from a city, & still commute. When I was the first rural watch coordinator for our dead end road, we had eleven houses on our 2 & 1/2 mile road. Now there are 56, & more on new side streets. Just 8 kilometres away is a 50,000 satellite city growing rapidly in what was a pine forest.

A really huge workforce is dependent on this growth. If anyone has a realistic answer on how to replace those jobs I'd love to hear it, as I am sure our politicians would too.

Well Hasbeen, thats the rub.
We are going into a slowdown, low growth, call it what you will.
Europe is there already, Germany is in recession, Greece, Italy & Spain are moribund
the US is losing its grip on the boost it got from tight oil & gas.
Japan has been pretending all is well as it faces the cost of 10 oil tankers arriving every
day from the Middle East, hence the restarting of nuclear power.
China facing local government bankruptcy and slowing growth.

In Aussie, thousands demonstrate in the street because of belt tightening on their pet
TV station. How out of touch with reality can you get ?
Really really one day the ground will open up and swallow them !

Hazzer, I think you may possibly be being naive yourself in sticking to the worn-out fallacy that we need eternal growth to maintain our nation.
There's a finite limit to everything, and a slow down in building won't be as much of a disaster as all the other job losses we've suffered with the demented and almost treasonous destruction of our manufacturing sector that successive governments have caused.
Build a defence industry, embrace the green change that's sweeping the rest of the world, begin some major infrastructure projects, recreate our automotive sector, the spin-offs in employment and wealth creation would quickly absorb any losses in the building industry, if there were any, all of those industries would create a massive need for buildings and builders.
The problems we now face, and will face, are the result of our politicians total lack of real vision and their determination to feather their own nests rather than work for the betterment of our nation and citizens.
Without that vision and drive we face a bleak future, and without an income who's going to be able to buy all those new houses you want built?
As the FTA's our governments are so fond of kick us in the face our unemployment will soar and the building industry will implode and die anyway.
Importing endless numbers of migrants and refugees will only exacerbate the situation rather than solve it, more costs, less access to the necessities of life, less taxpayers, more social disorder, what sort of Australia would YOU like to see? One with drive and wealth, employment and a future, or a miserable decaying society swamped with strife and poverty?
It's a stark choice we face, and building endless rows of unaffordable houses will not solve or prevent that collapse.

Hasbeen wrote, "... However to believe we would NOT descend into chaos if we caused a major slowdown in the building & building materials industries is kidding ourselves."

"... We climbed on the growth band wagon, & I'm not sure we can get off without a crash."

The sooner we 'crash' the less catastrophic the crash will be.

In previous times, Australia was able to confront:

1. the threats posed to us by Nazi Germany, imperial Japan during the Second World War;
2. the Great Depression; and
3. the First World War.[1]

The challenge of building industries not dependent upon the perpetual importation of new home occupants would surely be easy in comparison.

But our governments won't make the effort to create ways for us to earn our livelihoods that do not depend on high immigration.

They won't because they represent a small minority of vested interests who perversely gain from the degradation of our natural environment and the impoverishment of our society as a whole. They gain by, amongst other effects:

1. the driving up the cost of housing because more people need a roof over their head; and

2. lower wages as a result of a larger pool of unemployed people.

FOOTNOTE[S]

[1] Douglas the author of "Hell-Bent - Australia's leap into the Great War" (2014) might not agree.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it appears Malthusista suggests in the previous post that Australia needs an economic crash; one reason being to bring about an increase in the low wages suffered by our impoverished society.

The so called low wages are a mirage created by the Labor Party and Unions. The 'low wages' in Australia have destroyed productivity and manufacturing competitiveness as well as taking a toll on small business. Get real - Australia has some of the highest wage rates in the world and unfortunately a working culture of laziness that expects perks and penalty rates just for showing up. Add on the super contributions and loading for casual workers and you get people like Malthusita still complaining. When a housekeeper, waiter or dish washer's base rate is over $20/hour, the wages are not low.

Reality Check (from 2012, it's worse now):

“Out of the 20 or so countries listed on The Economist’s Big Mac Index (countries that also have minimum wages — Italy and Germany do not, for example) from 2012, the U.S. has the 7th highest minimum wage on an absolute basis, about the median number,” say the strategists. “The absolute lowest federal minimum wage is in Sierra Leone, where workers can expect just $US0.03/hour. India is the lowest among larger economies with a $US0.28/hour rate. Australia is at the opposite end of the spectrum, with a whopping $US16.88 hourly mandated wage.”

ConHip, do minimum wages really matter ?
Everything will become local anyway. Globalisation is ending, which shows how out
of touch the FTA seeking politicians have become.
The cost of container shipping will rise further because expensive 25knot ships are
running at 15knots to save fuel, and it goes on and on.
China is stockpiling copper instead of gold.
All these little signals and no one to put them all together to ring a loud bell.

I think I will go back to bed.