Now there is one of the main problems. People who think we are here to serve the environment, when it is up to us to make the environment serve us.

Hasbeen, whatever we do we're going to make the environment serve us. But it can serve us in a sustainable way or an unsustainable way. The latter makes future generations worse off.

And regarding your earlier post, the BLF is long gone and there haven't been any wages blowouts recently. The high dollar is the main cause of the decline in manufacturing (though in the case of the car industry it's more that they're no longer the high value items they once were).
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Bazz,

If the economy's not growing then it's likely to mean nobody's getting richer except if someone else is getting poorer. Is that really what you want?
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Shockadelic, if I had kids with a black woman, would you regard me as destroying our civilisation? What about if she was Chinese?

Yuyutsu's right to refer to "cultural-protectionist drivel". And I'd certainly say that to Tibetans and Basques. Although the former have been culturally suppressed to a significant degree, there is nothing to be gained by keeping immigrants out. As for Chechens, their culture was so strong that it withstood decades of Russian control and communism.
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Divergence, immigrants have never threatened Australia's borders. Unless of course if you count the British colonists!

Aiden, it is not a question of what I want, or what you want or what anyone wants.
I would love for business as usual to be an option; thats my druthers !
I am not going to get what I want.
To grow an economy you need additional energy each year.
As oil production declines transport will be reorganised onto rail and shipping.
The change to electrical transport systems puts pressure on the coal industry exports.
Nuclear will not be politically possible until the price and availability of coal makes electricity unaffordable.
World coal will peak in 2025->2035.
That early decline period, 2017->2025 will be a rather trying time of high unemployment
until in desperation the public will realise that nuclear is the only way out.

Our real problem will be to manage the decline and change to nuclear in such a way
that our economy adapts in a way that avoids contraction.
The adaption will require an expansion of local manufacturing as international
shipping declines.
No longer will you buy imported flat pack furniture but you will visit your local furniture maker.

Our political/financial structures do not give me confidence that they can understand
let alone administer such a difficult transition to the new energy regime.

Yuyutsu "but you need to prove yourself, you need to demonstrate that your culture is vibrant and worthwhile, you need to compete in the open with other cultures."

No need to prove anything.
Our culture could be the worst in world history and we'd still have the right to perpetuate it.

So, the Tibetans can just be shoved aside because the Chinese obviously have a superior society?

How many great empires/societies have vanished, not because they were worthless, but due to the invasion/infiltration of alien peoples?

If Third World cultures were so wonderful, why are they flocking to the West?
Why are their own homelands so damn pathetic?

Culture/ethnicity is not a marketplace commodity.
It is people's memories, identities, soul.

A society/people with no memory, no history, would be highly dysfunctional.
It could not maintain itself for long.

Migrants are coming here for purely economic reasons.
It has nothing to do with culture, but will have every effect on it.

Aidan, the choices of any one individual are not the issue.

It is the total *aggregate* effect of millions of people from thousands of ancestries/cultures.

"there is nothing to be gained by keeping immigrants out"

There is nothing to be gained by letting them in.

I'm not concerned about "immigrants", I'm concerned about this ludicrous, reckless, utopian fantasy parading as sensible policy, with all doubt and dissent mocked or censored.

20,000 immigrants per year from related people? Not much concern.
500 immigrants from unrelated people? Not much concern.
80,000 unrelated/dissimilar EVERY YEAR? PROBLEM!

The only realistic policies would be:
1. No immigration
2. White immigration
3. Advanced country/Very High development only

None of these are going to happen while the "lollipops and fluffy kittens for all" fairytale dominates ideological thinking in the West.

Goodbye Australia. Hello Hellhole.

Dear Shockadelic,

<<Our culture could be the worst in world history and we'd still have the right to perpetuate it.>>

Rights are always given by someone/something else: then who is it that gives you such a right to perpetuate a bad culture? God perhaps?

<<So, the Tibetans can just be shoved aside because the Chinese obviously have a superior society?>>

How can you possibly compare murder and robbery with peaceful immigration? No White-Australian has ever been killed by immigrants as they robbed away their farm or home.

<<How many great empires/societies have vanished, not because they were worthless, but due to the invasion/infiltration of alien peoples?>>

I look with pride at the brave defenders of Kobani: These Kurds have a great culture, so they are willing to fight for it, unlike the Iraqi army which fled at the first shot. When cultures wither, such as the Roman, the motivation to defend them dissipates and even minor enemies can take over. Tibet fell because of the traitor, Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme: his ability to climb the political ladder indicates corruptibility, which is a cultural weakness.

<<If Third World cultures were so wonderful, why are they flocking to the West?>>

It's not the culture, it's the people and so many of them adopt a Western lifestyle because their original cultures are even worse than the Western/Australian.

<<Culture/ethnicity is not a marketplace commodity. It is people's memories, identities, soul.>>

The subject is culture, not ethnicity: I've changed mine and so can anyone who finds a better culture.

<<A society/people with no memory, no history, would be highly dysfunctional.>>

Any proof?

In any case, that's not what I was suggesting: I suggested that better cultures shall win.

<<Migrants are coming here for purely economic reasons.>>

Then it's your own fault for giving them economic advantages (as opposed to simply allowing them to enter).

<<It has nothing to do with culture, but will have every effect on it.>>

And you are afraid of fair competition...

<<There is nothing to be gained by letting them in.>>

But lots to be lost by blocking them out by force.

Aidan,

You and Yuyutsu are assuming that there is no problem if there is no armed invasion.

This argument is about population, not about the character of the migrants or whether they are armed. There is no way to reduce population growth without reducing immigration. From ABS figures, it provides 60% of our population growth. About a third of the natural increase is also due to births to migrant mothers. With zero net immigration population growth would be about a quarter of what it is now and getting smaller every year, since the fertility rate has been slightly below replacement level since 1976.

Why should we care?

There are many scientists who have studied the environmental issues and believe that excessive population growth is causing serious damage. If you don't want to believe the Australian Academy of Science, perhaps you should take a look at the Australian Conservation Foundation's 2010 nomination of human population growth in Australia as a Key Threatening Process under the Environmental Protection Act.

http://www.acfonline.org.au/sites/default/files/resources/EPBC_nomination_22-3-10.pdf

There are also the resource issues that Bazz has raised, with absolutely vital resources that have to be imported getting scarcer and more expensive.

Here are the price trends for crude oil

http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

and phosphate rock, vital for our agriculture

http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/phosphate-rock/all/

There is an enormous infrastructure backlog, because the extra people need the full panoply of infrastructure immediately, but will need perhaps a generation before they will have contributed enough to pay for their share. Meanwhile, the people who are here already suffer from massive congestion on the roads and public transport, waiting for hours in hospital emergency rooms, overcrowded schools with demountable classrooms filling up the playground, etc., etc.

As the labour market is oversupplied, wages are depressed, and more and more wealth is syphoned up to the top, where it become a threat to our democracy, because the people who have the wealth can use it to buy our government.

You have to decide if the joys of diversity are worth it.