iiuvator,
I think Beatties a dropkick and so is Fraser, who advocated the same population some time back.

Even if we stopped agricultural use of water in the whole Murray/Darling basin we would still have a slight problem in getting the water where it is needed. We would need massive secondary industry to support that many people and that is not going to happen.

Don't even need to think about all the other infastructure that new cities would require. Clearly the man is mad.

Hello everybody
Well I am shocked Peter Beattie would be so stupid to be honest. I thought he was the best man to lead the party before this!
It was labour who started all this imagration and its clear its put up the prices of houses amoung other things.
I am just wondering if he has any plans to employ more police considering they police under labour cant respond now to urgent calls.
I opended a thread tagged- Labour can not supply police if anybody is interested.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=987

By the way I think it was James who told me the Government and labour have a MOU Not to discuss imagration at election time from the Keating days?
I think the Australian public are being insulted here.
Its our country and we pay them to represent usnot block us from being represented.
Time for an Government made up of ordinary Aussies.
No wonder why we can not get laws of a hundred years old regarding Animal Welfare brought into the 2007 era.

illuvatar - I'm well aware of Australia's low carrying capacity in most parts of the country.

However, in terms of an agricultural base and overall carrying capacity per head of population, we are indeed well below places such as Japan and Finland. Japan's population for a country of its size, even if it is a fertile location, means that it has to have low population growth policies.

It's disingenous to compare the two without acknowledging that - I agree to an extent with limiting population growth in Aust - but my point about that comparison remains valid.

For once I agree with Dresdener. Why is Australia suddenly trying to increase it's population when every other country has realised that lower populations are the key to higher standards of living?

http://www.ozpolitic.com/articles/population-sustainability.html

TurnRightThenLeft, Australia is not an empty land waiting to be populated. Its geographic size is highly deceptive. Only about 6% of Australia is arable land. Climate change-induced desertification will further reduce Australia's carrying capacity in the decades to come. That's why immigration-driven population growth confounds common sense.

"...carrying capacity per head of population, we are indeed well below places such as Japan and Finland."

The population of Australia is very unevenly distributed, with most of our population crammed into densely-populated coastal strips. Population growth will mean that more of the limited amount of arable land suitable for agriculture will be consumed by the urban sprawl of the swelling population centres. A rapidly growing population combined with a reduction in land available for agriculture is a recipe for calamity.

Besides, you seem to have missed the point. Knowledge-based, export-oriented economies such as Finland and Japan didn't transform themselves into internationally competitive wunderkinds through population growth. Australia, in contrast, has experienced significant population growth in recent decades, but has become less uncompetitive according to most indictators. For example, Australia produced 2.8% of the world's total exports in 1950 when the population was only 10 million. Australia now only supplies less than 1%, despite the fact our population has more than doubled to 21 million.

How is importing people en masse going to improve our woeful current account balance or reduce foreign debt levels? Considering most of our exports are primary goods, population growth simply means we are going to suck in more manufactured imports, and consume more domestic produce otherwise destined for foreign markets.

By the way, I meant "less competitive" rather than "less uncompetitive" in my previous post.

In response to PALEIF, I believe Bob Hawke admitted in the early 1990s that "the major parties had reached an implicit pact to keep immigration off the political agenda".

Respected historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote a well-argued book back in 1984, entitled "All For Australia", about the shambolic and undemocratic immigration policies of the Hawke-Keating Government. He wrote:

"Immigration is everyone's business: it is one of the most important national issues. The idea that it is too dangerous to be debated is a mockery of democracy. It is too important not to debate."

You can find a brief synopsis of Blainey's major points here:

http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=1667

Sadly, Australia's immigration policy continues to be formulated behind closed doors for the good of big business and ethnic lobbies and for the electoral benefit of a number of federal politicians. The wishes of the Australian people aren't really a consideration.