Henry Packham

Barry Cohen has got it exactly right. Various lefties (not him) blah on about various elephants in the living room but this is the only real one. So many problems in the world relate back to overpopulation. Yet overpopulated countries seem to think that it is a great idea that Australia should become more populated so we can have their problems.
At least China has a population policy although it was only required because of the warlord Mao.
India and other countries are overpopulated and still they increase and migrate to the rest of the world as if it is some divine right.
Various commentators state that the world's resources are not used up and I agree with them. Are these commentators so short of friends that the only way they can get them is by breeding?
Anyway resources are like credit - you should keep some in reserve other wise you are likely to have the resource equivalent of a global financial crisis one day. You cannot just print money to get out of that one.

Henry Packham

Vivienne

Our Government is factoring in a population growth of 48 per cent between 1990 and 2020 to meet the 5% reduction of emissions by 2020. As one of the planet's highest per capita carbon emitters, surely our obligation to cut back means we should not be deliberately increasing our numbers? Businesses and land developers benefit from a continual demand for housing,goods are services but most of the population is disadvantaged and have their liveability reduced. More people means additional environmental impacts as more people demand and compete for natural resources. While people are encouraged to live sustainably, and become more conservative in their water and power usage, our government boasts of our high population growth rate! Surely these efforts are contradictory?
Isn’t time we realised that our high and artificial population growth rate is prohibiting our ability to reduce carbon emissions? Just because we have always had a heavy immigration program it doesn’t mean it has to continue! We are not a colony any more, or living in the 1950s. Our high population growth rate could easily be avoided by halting our skilled immigration program. When is the "political correctness" ending and the debate starting?

Eric Claus

Well done Barry Cohen. Another article on the people who are driving high immigration in Australia would be great. The average Aussie is worse off with high immigration, but Labour and Liberal keep pushing for higher immigration. Why?

Sheila Davis

Barry Cohen's article about Australia's immigration policy was spot on. It would be good if he investigated the links between the development lobby and our elected representatives.

Australia, with its poor soils and erratic water supply, being mostly desert, has little natural ability to sustain human life. Our economy is dependent upon the selling off of our non-renewable natural resources. The pressure of population growth on the coastal zones is destroying habitat for Australia's native wildlife - but no one seems to be able to control where developers destroy as long as there is the demand for more housing caused by artificially imposed population growth.

The Queensland government has recently legislated to ignore all environmental protection laws in the name of "affordable housing". The development lobby is in control of the proverbial hen house.

Paddy Weaver

Wonderful to see such an intelligent and well informed article. I would love to see more on this issue, for instance the large number of overseas students who can work up to 20 hours a week and many/ most do. Our University enrolments may have increased but to a large extent the increase is overseas students so we don't even educate our own in a time of skill shortage.
Add in short term visitors/tourists and this poor ancient land is truly overloaded.
The recently published book "Overloading Australia" by Mark O'Connor and William Lines is a good read on this topic.

Geoff

We need a new way of describing the immigration/population economic and social phenominen.

A simple model is needed so that people can readily understand it and recognise it.

It is a combination of mud volcano, souffle, balloon, car yard and subprime.

It is an economy that sits on top of the real economy and feeds of it. A parasite economy.

This economy requires a constant supply of new people fodder, and huge subsidies from the balance of the economy to sustain it. It is a huge and ultimately unsustainable.

It is also invisible and unmentionable. Politicians will not comment on it or refer to it

It financially benefits some groups, including householders, but disadvantages the population as a whole who one way or another support it.

Until there is simple way of getting this concept across to the electorate at large, then I am afraid that we will be stuck with the current shortsighted policies, until the mudflow envelopes us all , by which time it will be too late to do anything about it.

Maryland Wilson

2008 ends with too many people already in Australia,the driest,most fragile continent on earth. Heartbreaking loss of native species as their habitat is cleared for houses,leaving them fugitives in their own land, rivers running dry,roads clogged, ecosystems collapsing,water shortages. Wake up Aussie pollies to the catastrophe you are creating. It is pathetic that you can't see the nightmare unfolding, and the Armaddon that awaits.

Valda Cross

Just think of our native koala. They need gum trees to survive, and can only eat a certain type of eucalypt leaf. When all of these trees are gone, the koala will become extinct.

What's that got to do with Australia's population growth, well, it is elementary. To state the obvious, all animals will become extinct when their natural habitat or food source is gone or it becomes scarce.

As part of the animal world and credited with the highest intelligence of all other creatures on god's earth, why can't we recognize that "multiplication" is no longer the name of the game.

Whether Australia revisits our immigration policy or not, we are destined to have people coming here, and overloading our systems or natural resources especially if all other world countries can't sustain their own populations. When this will happen? I don't know, but I will be dead and gone as will my children, etc. Governments need to recognize this as China (one child policy) has done or suffer the consequences of not having enough food or water to sustain humanity.

If you think "climate change" is a problem, then think about "population growth". The latter is the bigger problem and the crux of everything.

Ian Castles

For the record, Australia's population in 1935 was 6.73 million, not five and a half million. So it's increased since then by a factor of 3, not 4. In 1935, 16.5 percent of trade unionists were unemployed. And the chances of a baby dying before reaching his/her first birthday were about six times greater than they are today.

Ian Castles

Correction. Australia's infant mortality rate in 2008 is estimated at 4.5 deaths per thousand live births. The corresponding figure in 1935 was 40 deaths per thousand live births So the chances of a baby dying before reaching his/her first birthday were NINE times greater (not six times greater) in 1935 than they are in 2008.

Edward

The sad reality is that Australia's immigration system remains captive to special interest groups. The interests and opinions of the majority of Australians are being totally ignored.

The only reason Australia should be running an immigration program at all is if it benefits the existing Australian population. Yet our current immigration program is inflicting nothing but pain on the Australian people. The costs of immigration are becoming painfully evident to an increasing number of Australians: rising house prices and rents, increased pressure on public services and infrastructure, more overcrowding and congestion in our cities, more pollution, more pressure on limited natural resources such as water, more crime, more aggrevied minorities playing identity politics, more ethnic conflict, more Australian neighbourhoods being transformed into colonies of foreign nations, more native-born citizens feeling like strangers in their own country, more "white flight", and, now, to top it all off, Australians are going to be directly competing with immigrants for jobs as unemployment rises. And that's without even considering the climate change issue!

When will this mass immigration madness end?

don Owers

Ian Castles appears to be relating population size to health care and employment. Health has improved because of science and has done better in those countries with zero population growth. Employment hasn't improved as much as he thinks, its just been presented differently. Currently there are about 1.8m on welfare and they don't show up on the "official" unemployed list.