Comments

"Think Tank" is a euphemism for people who push an agenda by putting out ideas in support of it. Maybe there were real think tanks before, but few if any today. Lowy Insitute should therefore be referred to as a pro growth lobby group seeking to engineer Australia, not a think tank. Why does the Lowy Institute even produce information? Because they are paid to produce it. Whoever is paying them, is wanting a return, as anyone who pays to produce information wants. Who is paying them? People who personally profit in the short term from undermining democracy and engineering the nations demographics.

Thanks for responding, Sheila. "Existence has a point if you can enjoy life. That seems to go for every animal and plant." Sheila, I'm saying Life has no 'intrinsic' purpose or function. From cosmic perspective, it becomes evident that Life is not on a rescue mission and when it is all said and done, nothing will have been accomplished. Unfortunately, sentient life has an associated cost or waste or friction to it, called suffering. Creating beings who experience joy or happiness is not necessary nor a reasonable justification for the creation of new centres of suffering. Statistically, we know a percentage of the populace (the victims) WILL suffer severely. "When we have room and a place, reasonable health and access to sunlight etc, we live enthusiastically." Sure, let's do what we can for the folks and our non-human animal friends who are already here, but let's not endorse the creation of new victims. "Doesn't sound as if you are having much fun, POTA. Hope things improve." Thank you for your concern but I'm just the messenger, I believe this is primarily a philosophical argument.

"Most of the population will not be the existing population or their descendants, but be fillers from overseas!"

So what? We all share the misfortune of having been brought into existence. Death and extinction are inevitable, we (and your descendants if any) are all going to die in the end anyway, it will be as if the human organism had never existed.

"There's nothing organic, evolutionary or natural about this growth being forced onto us."

It is existence which is forced onto us!!! LIFE, the product of unintelligent biological evolutionary design, is an insidious and pointless game of winners and losers where everyone loses in the end.

AUSTRALIANS should have the chance to vote on slowing down the nation’s population growth, says a political leader. A campaign calling for a referendum or plebiscite on the issue is expected to be launched in Melbourne today by a coalition of grassroots groups. The Melbourne population could almost double by 2050 to about 8 million given current high immigration and fertility rates, according to the latest projections. Sustainable Population Party president William Bourke said he would propose a referendum question calling for a cap on annual net overseas migration of 70,000, down from the current 250,000. “The aim would be stabilising Australia’s population by 2040 at around 26 million,” he said. Today’s meeting is being held by Sustainable Population Australia and new group Victoria First, which is led by Melbourne-based federal Labor MP Kelvin Thomson.SPA state president Jill Quirk said Melburnians should be concerned about the effect of huge population growth on the city.

Sydney will get a second harbour rail crossing, and billions will be pumped into roads, schools and hospitals under the NSW government's controversial plan to sell electricity networks.

To fund population growth, forty nine per cent of the state's poles and wires will be sold on 99-year leases under a policy approved by Liberal and Nationals.
At least $6 billion of the sale proceeds would be spent in regional NSW, including roads funding and $2 billion would go to schools and hospitals.

Read more: Power sale to fund Sydney harbour crossing at http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2014/06/10/13/36/power-sale-could-lead-to-job-cuts-labor

A prominent energy economist says consumers lose and prices rise under electricity privatisation, despite the NSW government citing another report as evidence to the contrary.
An Ernst and Young report examined the long-term trend in prices charged by the network businesses, which are passed on to residents and businesses as part of their electricity bill. Unions believe privatisation will lead to higher power bills, and more jobs will be lost.

Found this interesting record here: http://suzymchale.com/journal/2004-11.html#d25

"US democracy warriors drive protests

By Ian Traynor
November 27, 2004

Washington has exported a new battle-hardened style of revolution to Kiev.

With their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy guerillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory – whatever the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev.

Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by the young democracy activists. It will never be the same again.

But while the gains of the orange-bedecked “chestnut revolution” are Ukraine’s, the campaign is a United States creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US Government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big US parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the polls.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. Last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.

Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat Belarus hard man Alexander Lukashenko. That one failed.

Experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat Leonid Kuchma’s regime in Kiev.

The operation – engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience – is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections.

Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful. In the centre of Belgrade is a dingy office staffed by computer-literate youngsters who call themselves the Centre for Non-Violent Resistance.

If you want to know how to beat a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations, the young Belgrade activists are for hire.

They emerged from the anti-Milosevic student movement, Otpor, meaning resistance.

The catchy, single-word branding is important. In Georgia last year, the parallel student movement was Khmara. In Belarus, it was Zubr. In Ukraine, it is Pora, meaning high time.

Stickers, spray paint and websites are the young activists’ weapons. Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful.

The Democratic Party’s National Democratic Institute, the Republican Party’s International Republican Institute, the US State Department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

If the events in Kiev vindicate the US in its strategies for helping other people win elections and take power from anti-democratic regimes, it is certain to try to repeat the exercise.

The places to watch are Moldova and the authoritarian countries of central Asia."

Comment from blog owner in 2004:

Surprise, surprise! This is all a cynical ploy by the USA to spread its influence and power through the former Soviet Union countries. (The CIA was doing this sort of thing in the 1960s, in South America, and look what happened to countries like Chile.) The U.S. wants to turn these countries into free-market economies so U.S. corporations have new markets in which to expand. Don’t believe the bullsh*t they espouse about “democracy” and “freedom.”

The Swedish Government is so desperate for newly arrived Muslim immigrants to be motivated enough to look for work, they will continue to pay them the same benefits they are getting for not working, in addition to the income they will get if they find a job. Sweden is corrupt and clearly their government is supporting Islam, and the terror against women by gagging anyone who speaks out! Is prosecuting rapists prohibited in Sweden as “hate talk”? Julian Assange’s “rape” in Sweden was no more than a scam to catch a fugitive from the USA for whistle-blowing. Their gagging of open debate and discussion on non-Western immigration is about turning their country into a third-world nation - with lower living standards and wages. Without freedom of speech, there can be no democracy. It won’t be long until freedom of speech will be a thing of the past in Germany as well. The country is in the hands of left-wing fascists who are clearly being bribed by muslim organizations. The police can no longer patrol the neighbourhoods. Jews are increasingly under attack by the muslims, so they are fleeing Sweden. Once the welfare system is broken due to costly and dysfunctional immigration, there will be a great multitude of willing and cheap workers, and the economic benefits of third world employers.

Sweden Democrat Party politician Michael Hess of Karlskrona was sentenced May 8, 2014 to a fine for hate speech after having connected the religion of Islam with rape. The judgement was made on the basis that it doesn't matter if what he says is true or factual or not. Facts aren't allowed to get in the way of opinions in Sweden Hess wrote next to an article in Aftonbladet, which was about women who were raped in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Hess, who has lived in the Middle East for eleven years, argued that the comment is a fact that it's deeply ingrained in Islamic culture to rape and mistreat those women who do not abide by the teachings of Islam. He wanted to initiate a debate and persuade journalists to examine the phenomenon more deeply. Studies show that that men with ancestry from Muslim countries are very much overrepresented in Swedish rape statistics. Hess was fined 32,000 krona ($4,900 US) for “hate speech”. On a personal level, this would be the same as criminal complaining about being "persecuted" or "defamed" for revealing or commenting on their crimes? See Swedish Politician Fined for ‘Hate Speech’ Against Islam at http://chersonandmolschky.com/2014/05/11/swedish-politician-fined-hate-s....

Australia already has some of the most expensive housing in the world, propped up largely by high immigration. Now, there's a slow-down in buying due to unaffordable prices, so foreign investors are now invited into Australia, to invade the market, to keep the property bubble inflated! What other reason, except high prices and a flow of foreign money? Australian household debt has hit a record 177 per cent of disposable income, with residential property prices equating to 4.3 times annual incomes and 28 times annual rent. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/is-it-a-bubble-16-key-housing-market-ques... We've become slaves to the banks, and money lenders, through long and heavy mortgages. It's the ideal and non-violent way of draining salaries and earnings from the pockets of families and individuals into the already over-flowing banks. The skew in the immigration intake towards skilled migrants is accentuating the impact on the housing market. Skilled migrants are typically cashed up when they arrive and quickly add to housing demand. The so-called "skills shortages" is more about luring more people into the housing bubble than any real skills shortages - not with our rising unemployment rates, the trashing of TAFE courses and apprenticeships, and the massive increases predicted by university fees! With little diversity in our economy, and the mining boom going off the boil, housing has become a real, no-brainer, government money-spinner. Just import people, and they buy into housing! It's easy to recognise a Ponzi scheme! The costs of population growth are solved by importing more people and thus we end up with an addiction to growth! And, if housing continues to fail, the next step is invite more foreign investors, and keep building apartments and towers to confine the "fillers" who'll need somewhere to live. (ignore the homeless)

New Immigration Department statistics reveal just one in three of the work visas granted last year was subject to "labour market testing" to prove no Australian could do the job.

How did they actually prove that "no Australian could do the job"? Yet again, Australians are being discriminated against in our own workforce, in preference to foreigners.

The figures also show half of Australia's migrant workers are recruited onshore, with one in every 20 backpackers last year are receiving a 457 visa to stay working here for four more years.

Under the Abbott government's changes to Newstart many poor unemployed people under 25 will have the choice of starving, begging, crime, or prostitution while they wait six months to be eligible for benefits. At the same time, there are plans to deregulate Universities to charge the fees they want, of up to $120,000 per degree. The odds are increasingly stacked against domestic students gaining skills, and competing with some third world nations that give their young people more access to tertiary education than in Australia.

Monash University demographer Bob Birrell, of the Centre for Population and Urban Research, said the 457 program was increasingly a "back door" for foreign workers desperate to get into Australia's labour market, rather than as a program allowing employers to meet skills vacancies.

The success of Europe's anti-immigration parties must end the rorts happening in our own country and the blatant discriminatory policies against our work force.

Whitehaven is spending $767 million developing Maules Creek mine in Leard State Forest and is progressively demolishing around 1660 hectares of native woodland to extract coal by early 2015. Whitehaven's plans include using machinery to shake inhabited trees to "encourage" creatures to leave before "gently" bulldozing and leaving them overnight to allow remaining animals to escape. Species include critically endangered regent honeyeater bird, which the NSW government says faces an "extremely high risk of extinction in NSW in the immediate future" as well as the endangered swift parrot and vulnerable greater long-eared bat. The EBPC Act, and other policies and laws that protect wildlife, are easily negotiated away to be immune from the power of mining corporations, and easily moveable "Environment" Departments. In the face of economic benefits, and votes, moving the goal-posts of environmental protection and conservation is as easy as manipulating language, and using the correct vocabulary! Threatened species mine plan delusional Jonathan Moylan, 26, who was responsible for sending out the fake release which purported to be from ANZ that claimed the bank had withdrawn a$1.2 billion loan to help develop the Maules Creek project, has pleaded guilty! This lesser offence pales into insignificance compared the the broad-acre destruction of significant environmental forest assets. More than 160 activists have been arrested in 2014. Big corporations, and their mega environmental crimes, are protected by our government who can't see the value of forests because of $$$$ Earlier this morning, a 24-year-old woman was reported to be suspended from a platform that attached by cable to some of the threatened trees, preventing bulldozers for Whitehaven Coal from clearing part of the forest for an open-cut coal pit. A Whitehaven Coal spokesman reiterated: ‘‘Whitehaven offers great value for investors, but we accept that ­investors will buy and sell shares as they see fit.’’ In a nation famous for extinctions, the destruction of species continues with impunity, and our land is incrementally being emptied of wildlife.

The Iranian policies that have been well regarded by the world community. One rare example, though, was the birth control policy that Iran implemented in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War. Until about two years ago, Iranian men who wanted them were provided with free vasectomies as a means of family planning. The policy was actually lauded by family planning advocates, and it helped to keep Iran’s birthrate under two percent and prevented many families from being overburdened by large families in a nation with a legacy of sanctions and a reputation for severe economic mismanagement and corruption. Today, not only has the policy been revoked, but the leaders of Iran have actually returned to encouraging citizens to have babies at the highest rate possible. Throughout the country, education programs and government facilities have changed to accommodate the renewed conservative outlook on family planning. “We don’t accept less than five,” Ayatollah Mohammad Hosseini Ghazvini said on Velayat TV, encouraging the audience to have “five, eight, 12, and 14” babies, and to reverse the population control trend of the previous three decades. (Iran news update)

- avoiding the traps of tweedledum and tweedledee membership, socialist alliance detours, and ANF management facilitation. Thats mostly why political activity goes nowhere. The standard way of expressing disinterest in a party, is to vote for the other half of the duopoly. LibLab have an arrangement where they compete and alternate, but ensure they remain the only political options. Despite the heated arguments between the two, they are in an alliance to ensure Australia politics remains within their ideological sphere (of which there is a LOT more overlap that most Labor/Liberal supporters would want to admit). They both unite to maintain hegemony when their duopoly is threatened. The Socialists are also aproblem. They are young people who have free time (due to being at Uni/unemployed/low level public sector positions) who are able to be 'first on the scene' and hijack issues. Because of the time they can commit, they can become the 'face' of any issue they choose for their agenda. Palestine is a classic example. Thier ability to organise rallies for Palestine mean that it is they, not the Palestinians who then control public demonstrations and activists, and can therefore use the cause to further their own. "Occupy" is another example. The people most hit by financial greed and corporate rule are too busy working as debt slaves.

Poor old Melbourne just cant do Rail. Developing Webb Dock for containers but with the freight rail line sold off (thanks Jeff). Sydney has toilets on all stations. But with 30-min services and no toilets, is it "Worlds Most Livable" for the old and the young to soil our pants with no toilets on Melbourne suburban stations? Melbourne can't electrify the 40 kms between Werribee and Geelong. Sydney has electric trains to Kiama, 120 kms to the south; to Lithgow 100kms to the west; to Newcastle 200kms to the north; and even 250 kms to Telarah deep in the Hunter Valley to the north-west. The entire 1000 km electric network available to pensioners all-day for only $2.50. Freight Rail is joke. Dandenong Line - the busiest - has 9 NINE freight trains a week. While Corio Geelong has eight railtracks wide, Hastings and Crib Point (selected for development) has a single track. Broad gauge in all cases. In NSW, rough average of 25 freight trains roar thru Wollongong EVERY DAY. Coal. Steel. Copper. Zinc. Wheat. Starch. Ethanol. Crushed rock for road and rail ballast, cement. diesel and petrol tankers. containers to and fro Port Kembla wharf. Melbourne spent billions tarting up Spencer St station. Diesels fill the trendy space with pollution, and only 1.5 platforms are standard gauge! And how quaint, to spend billions building 90km of new rail in the Regional Rail Link using 19th century broad gauge! Isolating rural exporters and the rest of Australia from the Port of Melbourne. Cars and trucks will go on eating Melbourne. And politicians of all parties will go on lying.

Living in Australia (according to the recruitment website) “Australia is officially named the world’s number one nation brand”, according to the Anholt Nation Brands Index (NBI) Link: http://www.nationbrandindex.com/nbi_q2-australia-press-release.phtml Australia has topped the charts in tourism, investment and immigration, as well as the most popular nationality. Among the key findings of the Anholt Nation Brands Index are: Other countries surveyed found Australians the: •Friendliest •Most honest and •Hospitable nationality •Employers prefer to hire Australians •Australia is the world’s favourite place to invest and live • Kevin Rud’s (!)government is seen as trustworthy Yes, thanks to Kevin Rudd's "big Australia" policy, doors are open wide to foreigners to work here, and despite the "skills shortages" being a blatant lie, the people in Australia are so "friendly", "hospitable" and politically-correct that anyone who's experienced and trained in nursing, and many other professions, can apply to enjoy our lifestyle! This is despite an ABS survey showing that unemployment of migrants is higher than that of Australian-born. The Australian Bureau of Statistics analysed the employment success of people who were born in a country where English is not the main language. Of those who can speak English proficiently, 47 per cent are in full-time jobs. Of those who can’t, the proportion drops to just 19 per cent. Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/managing/blogs/work-in-progress/... Unemployment among skilled migrants and their families is 30% higher than for the population as a whole, but those who do have a job are more likely to be in a professional role. At the last census, 7.3 per cent of skilled migrants were unemployed compared with 5.2 per cent of the population as a whole. Just 32 per cent of secondary applicants, family renunions, of working age were employed full-time compared with 68 per cent of so-called ”primary applicants”. In the past, there was little questioning of our immigration rates, which traditionally in the 1980s and 1990s were lower than now. There were jobs, cheap housing, and Australia was relatively wealthy and blessed with good education and universities were free! Now, it's robbing jobs from Australians, and disadvantaging the existing population. As in Europe, the anti-immigration political parties can only gain swelling support once the public become willing to speak out for their sovereign rights!

I clicked on the picture in question and read the small print on this ad which says "Welcome to Nursing Careers Australia. A global recruitment firm that specialises in helping overseas nurses work and live in Australia. We will show you how to experience financial freedom , unlimited career opportunities and an exciting life in one of the most beautiful places on Earth" The face on the ad IS the face of this recruitment process. The website goes on to say that Australia has an aging population and nurses are badly needed etc. That's OK if Australian nurses are being employed in Australia but it certainly is not if they are missing out on jobs they trained and qualified for.

Instead of the skills shortages our politicians say to justify open-doors to free immigration to our country, we are in skills overload! If graduate nurses and the experienced can't get jobs because of immigrants, then they are being bizarrely discriminated against in their own country. The number of 457 workers coming into our workforce is higher than the rate of jobs growth. The only reason that our government would allow this is to push down wages and living conditions. Up to 3,000 graduate nurses haven’t managed to get jobs in hospitals and unions are blaming a rise in the number of foreign nurses being brought into the country on 457 working visas. There have been reports that China has demanded to be allowed to import workers into Australia for projects funded by Chinese investors as part of the FTA being negotiated between Canberra and Beijing. FTA should be about trading goods and services, not about the one way direction of allowing foreigners have access to jobs created by country. Where are the reciprocal jobs created in China that Australians can apply for? Migration Council Australia chief executive Carla Wilshire said Chinese workers could already access 457 visas for Australian projects, allowing them to work here if a job could not be filled locally. There was a danger in changing this system, she said. Read more: Free trade agreement push to import Chinese workers criticised at http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/free-trade-agreeme... How are we in "short supply" of skills if nurses, and other trades and professions, can't find employment? The "skills shortage" on the contrary is great scam, and if there are any genuine skills shortages, it reflect on our privatisation program and the inadequacy of our technical and academic training schemes.

There is a saying which says that China is both overestimated and underestimated. My prediction is that China *may* reach roughly the US level, then peak, and from there, at best, stagnate. If China overtakes the US, it will only be because the USA is on the way down. (ie, China will become the power by default, due to the USA giving it up, rather than through Chinese effort). I remember in the late 80's the same things being said about Japan and China. We just assumed that they would take over everything and continue their rise. Then Japan declined and stayed there. I'm highly skeptical of China's success. It is a large kleptocracy, reliant of foriegn markets, offshoring of jobs from those markets, manipulation and speculation. Even now, many of the managers of industrial production in China are from the nations the jobs moved from. There are many ethnic groups, and such 'diverse' societies are reliant on success to keep together. Chinese have admitted that part of the push for growth, growth, growth is to maintain social stability. If that growth stalls, the unity ends. As I mentioned in a previous comment, Westerners just assume that a rising power will take over the world, but this comes from our own internal prejudice, that that is what people who have the power to do so, do. China will remain dominant in the region, but it is an inwards looking country. Any chinese involvement outside of China will solely be for China to acquire hard resources, and not for 'empire' or 'hegemony'. This will create a situation where a falling Europe and USA are expecting Asia to lead the way, only to be dissapointed as China remains insular and inward looking. More likely we'll enter a political vaccuum with smaller regional powers exercising muscle due to a lack of a controlling superpower.

You talk of developing the center of Australia. At the moment, we have a couple of hundred thousand people moving to Australia. Where do they go? Mostly to the few cities. Even in Melbourne, competition for space is fierce. Infrastructure cannot keep up. I barely have internet, despite being in an establshed suburb. Land release is limited to keep prices high. Instead of developing regional towns, our government is pushing subdivision, which puts house prices further up. Real Estate is seen as nothing more than a cash cow, with land being used for speculation and quick sell-offs, instead of national development. Lets say Tony Abbott tomorrow decided to develop central Australia. What would happen? The same crap as in the cities. Poor infrastructure, crowding (despite the space), more speculation. Those selling the land wouldn't give a rat's ass about developing Australia or its viability, only making a quick buck and getting out. The houses would probably fall apart (as ones in Melbournes west already are). Maybe you could bring in migrants to fill the space. Look how that's worked in Europe.... Or anywhere where there has been mass immigration to bolster numbers.... That's the point of sites like this, I believe. If you want grand visions, you need leadership which can make it happen. Because implementation is just as critical as the idea, and at the moment, we neither have the political or business leadership, nor the support or inclination to make any the implementation successful. I'm not criticising against the basic idea of solar power (it's reasonable enough), but that as it is now, I can't see our business and political leaders pulling it off. We can't just rely on ideas, we must have the means and will, and ability to implement them.

The simple-minded reply from Michael S. invokes the old crotchet of Socratic simple-mindedness in that "the opposite of truth is [merely] error". Not so, since error is merely corrected by correct information! The opposite of truth is not error but deceit & fraud - and the supposed 'open debate' over population includes deceit & fraud hidden in the presumptions and parameters of such debate. For example, the inviolability of national sovereignty, the belief in the superiority of Anglo-American (read 'Australian') culture are issues that obscure past situations e.g. the dispossession of Aborigines (still ongoing, as exemplified in imprisonment & low life expectancy) and the Anglo-American belief in egalitarian democracy as the fundamental solution to mankind's problems (despite the fact that it operates only under imposed artificial political units). This latter issue is vital, since PNG bureaucrats in the late 1960s, seeing the disasters that hit newly-independent African countries, were horrified. While Whites tend to regard Black Africa as backward, people in PNG regard Africans as educated since half of PNG didn't know the outside world existed until 1931! Hence the PNG bureaucrats REQUESTED THAT PNG BE MADE ONE OR TWO STATES OF AUSTRALIA. Australia refused, forcing independence on the country in the mid-1970s, since after all, 5,000,000 PNG people could significantly alter the egalitarian democratic political outcomes of Australians generally. In other words, what you are calling 'open debate' is merely a limited & misdirected debate subject to hidden mostly conventional prejudices which predetermine the ultimate outcome(s).

PNG would be more than happy for Australia to use their water ("grabbing" is your invention), because that nation produces a vast excess of water in the Fly & Kikori Rivers for example. Were they offered say 10 or 20% of the crops produced in Australia by PNG water this would prevent starvation in that country and prepare for a stabilization of population which occurs when the standard of living rises - and this recompense for water usage will be the very reason that PNG's standard of living will rise. Anonymous does not realize that southern PNG is the wettest place in the world e.g. Mt. Bosavi rains 330 days a year, with 600" a year on the south-east slopes. You admit we "have scarcities of potable water" and "excessive heat" yet flatly repudiate the solution here i.e. bringing water from PNG. Much water storage here will be replenishment of underground resources, while the ultimate sheer volume of water piped from PNG will have a dividend in the form of increased rainfall. The production of grass & forest from the water will also improve soil fertility & water-holding capacity from increased humus! Your claim to "address [the world's problems] with intelligence" fails to show a coherent understanding of the situation. Merely moralizing at the poor with a "global family planning program" hasn't worked before & won't work now; e.g. 'freeing' East Timor from Indonesia only gave the Catholic Church a free hand in a new nation had formerly had to import food from the rest of Indonesia. You forget that moralizing about Australia's dry & global-warming overheated centre as something that should be left alone while billions outside Australia starve will only aggravate the situation further. Population control in Indonesia is for them to decide, we can only assist, but ignoring Australia's vast centre as an energy source & irrigated cropland is ultimately not something HUNGRY others are going to tolerate in the face of your family planning moralizing.

The idea of a "right of invasion" is interesting. Are you suggesting that national sovreignty is subject to conditions? That a nation has the 'right', if it is in its best interest to do so? You could justify every invasion this manner. Germans needed living space they could better utilise than the Russians...... But what strikes me odd, is the idea that Bangladesh, or the Phillipines would invade Australia. They neither have the inclination, nor capacity to do so. What would make one thing they would? This view comes from a world model based on assumptions, than observation. The idea of not having a ceiling on population, or not stopping mass growth through importing of people seems to work, on paper, and only on paper. In fact, if you just look at numbers, the Liberals recent budget is fair. After all if someone is poor, why don't they just do 5 years of law school? Even with the new HECS arrangements, the additional income from being a lawyer will cover the cost! If they don't do it, it must be their choice and failing. I've done the numbers, it works. What could I be missing. Hmm.... Of course, in reality this is subject to ability and job availablity. Its easy for a technocrat to first assume everything works according to a model, and show how the process works and is profitable. But things don't works according to models, never do, and it is critical, utterly critical to account for this. This is perhaps the difference between growth optimists of the past century and hard headed realists. Growth optimists make assumptions, and based on these assumptions, the numbers make sense. But the assumptions are wrong, or subject to conditions, or ignores exceptions and good governance MUST take these into account. I'm not sure what you're thinking, but your view of the world is based on a model which defies what actually happens. This has been a common mistake in all of the failed, barbourous ideologies of the 19th and 20th century.. Political ideology is a relatively recent phenomenon, existing after the French Revolution. This system of politics is that ideas, ideology, or what ones internal model is, is what should direct policy and governance. So if in your model of the world, things work neatly according to assumptions, and every country is the same, and you can put solar panels in the Middle East without worrying about the religious and political problems, then you'll work according to that model. The probem is, it doesn't accord with reality. The future, which is actually a return to the past, before "poltical ideology" took off, will be based on a more pragmatic approach. Our solutions and proposals are no longer based on ideals, which ignore that we cant explain (but do observe), ignore that which is not "PC" or just inconvienient and assume a model based on how we like the world to be, but based on how things are, discovered through observation and hard headed realism. Subtle differences will be recognised as critically important, as they often are. This is what we need more than anything. Materially, we are well off. But what we don't have, and what there is MOST a need for, is a better approach to politics. Politics based on hard headed realism, taking into account inconvienent and non-PC/heretical facts, taking into account limitations and based on acceptance of how things are, the truth, rather than how we think things should be. The population ceiling isn't based on ideology, it is based on observation. It is those who push for growth, going against the natural inclination, who are bending Australia to ideology.

What right of conquest do other neighbouring nations have over Australia? None at all. Australia is still a sovereignty, besides recent efforts to privatise public assets and globalise our industries, land, housing, population and natural resources. While there were great patterns of human migration in the past, these are not sustainable or desirable for the long term. Our futures hang in the balance, on a dying planet. We have over-population, scarcities of potable water, food, arable land, species extinctions, ecological destruction, and "peaks" of just about everything - including energy sources. PNG's water resources are their sovereign right to manage, and preserve, for vital biodiversity, climatic and ecological functions. We can't just grab what's not ours, and the cost of piping water would be inefficient and can't be justified. Even with water, Australia has ancient poor soils, and excessive heat. Evaporation would prohibit mass water storage. We can't just manipulate landscapes and wreck what's there, for anthropocentric greed. It's foolish to imagine that Australia's population explosion is inevitable, and will happen either by "projecting" our growth through mass immigration, or by foreign invasion! What is needed urgently is a global family planning program, to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and encourage sustainable population sizes world-wide. If there are problems in our world, the solution to them is to address them with intelligence, and policies, not simply admit defeat and accept a laissez faire attitude that we can't stop aggressive human fertility and destructive over population.

Unhappy about cuts to health, education or pensions in the Abbott government's budget? You should get some perspective and visit Asia before you complain, according to a government backbencher. “Aussies should do a tour of Asia & live like locals to put these 1st world complaints re budget in perspective,” he wrote. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-mp-george-... Most of us are aware of the poverty and overpopulation in many countries, now, and that's actually what we want to avoid! From being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, for decades after the war, we are now under the pressure from "the Asian Century" to accept lower living standards, lower pay, high rates of poverty, unemployment, homelessness and masses of people! It's formula that's welcomed by big corporations and the wealthy elite. We become a human resource, that's compliable, silent, impoverished and denied of democratic rights and ownership of land. Welfare safety-nets are being removed, and people are being disconnected and cut free from the economy. Pensioners, the unemployed, the uneducated, the homeless and the dispossessed are a fund of wealth for the elite - to exploit and use cheaply with little investment needed. The attack on universities, and the globalisation of our land, housing, industries, infrastructure etc is making us slaves to the Ponzi growth being forced into Australians. Eventually we will feel grateful for any crumbs future governments have the grace and charity to give us - and be grateful! Welcome to the "Asian Century" were we import of the worst of Asia. Their wealthy can buy citizenship to Australia, but there's few opportunities likewise being offered to Australians.

Back in the 70s and 80s people used to opt out of society becoming hippies in places like Nimbin. This was a real alternative in Australia if you could acquire or rent some land, achieve some self sufficiency in food and not participate in the consumer society. I wonder if this is till possible. I have a terrble feeling that somehow you would still get caught in the net of capitalism when you open the envelope and read the letter telling you that your land, planted with this winter's food was required for fracking for coal seam gas. There goes your peace and quiet, there goes your self sufficiency!

UKIP is a party that’s dismissed as racist, xenophobic and a bit loony by London sophisticates suddenly is steering the national debate with its calls for Britain to close down borders and leave the European Union. The party’s message has resonated particularly well in struggling small towns and decaying industrial centers, where any benefits of a recovering economy are scarcely felt. Mainstream politicians are seen as out of touch with constituents furious over a massive influx of foreign workers into the UK. Overall, the data showed there had been an increase of 292,000 foreign workers in the last year, 168,000 of them from the EU, UKIP said. The party has traditionally done well in European elections, which are held every five years to select the 751 members of the European Parliament. UKIP, which advocates controlled immigration and a British exit from the European Union, has come under mounting pressure from other parties and local media which have criticised outspoken comments by some of its candidates. The UK's Coalition government has promised to reduce net annual immigration to below 100,000 by 2015. Opinion polls show that a majority of the UK population believes that immigration is too high. The latest figures showed that, in the year to September 2013, the net immigration figure is back above 200,000. Experts predict that the figure may well climb back up to 2010 levels making Mr Cameron 'a failure' on immigration. The criticism of racism has done little to dampen enthusiasm for the party, and indeed may be feeding it by confirming for many alienated Brits that the elites are out of touch.

“One cannot complete this discussion without some mention of the real shortcomings associated with the use of GDP as the key indicator of economic progress. GDP measures everything and nothing that matters. It counts as positive the costs of automobile accidents, divorce, treating type II diabetes and any other negative welfare event that requires expenditure to correct. It does not recognize enormous disparities in wealth and income and it absolutely loves inefficient economic activities—the more money that needs to be spent to deliver the same outcome the better. Despite these obvious deficiencies both governments and the market place enormous value on this perverse metric.

In the last two years, the U.S. State of Vermont has decided to stop using GDP as an economic measure and replaced it with a new standard known as the Genuine Progress Indicator or simply GPI. The Governor then ordered the State’s economic data to be revised back to 1950 using GPI instead of GDP. The result is absolutely shocking—the State of Vermont announced it stopped growing in 1978. The State of Maryland has passed similar legislation and 7 other States are considering doing the same. Using the same approach and applying the GPI to 17 of the G20 countries, a group of ecological economists reached the same conclusion last year—all of these large economies stopped growing decades ago”.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/de-carbonizing-for-growth/5436190

It's a matter of treaters borders as a law, or as a game. If people can cross illegally, and be settled, or otherwise 'make it', then the border is not a law, it is a risk, part of a game. In the USA they are considering amnesty for illegal immigrants. The USA border is therefore no longer is anything legal, it is merely a place where people play hide and seek. You may win, you may lose and get to try again, but its no longer law, its just a game, a competition. Likewise in Europe, national borders are merely a game to play a competition.

Latest Russian reports allow viewers to document what is happening: http://www.rt.com/bulletin-board/157876-rtnews-may-10msk/ This is the side that the US/NATO/Australia is supporting. Note 'special troops' launched to deal with citizens' protests. Citizens were marching at a day of commemoration of 2nd World War when they heard that their self-defense people were under attack. The crowd rushed from the parade to their aid and Kiev militia shot to kill - unarmed citizens. The US foreign affairs woman mis-represented what was happening as Kiev putting down violence initiated by the townspeople of Mariupol, but it was tanks against little old people and unarmed citizens and someone had set fire to the building where the self-defence forces had occupied. Even an unarmed camera man for a news crew was shot in the stomach by Kiev snipers it seems.

I have read your article, "Environment, population and the state – ethical considerations - by Jill Quirk" and noted down some thoughts more or less at random as I went along. If they are of any use in the future please use them. I don't feel any need to have them acknowledged. This is in no way a criticism of your speech – I just wanted to send my thoughts as I read it for what they are worth.

"So ethics is to do with acting in right and wrong ways – which is usually a decision to be made with respect to others, how we treat them and how we affect them. I will say that at the its most minimal it is about not doing harm or causing suffering and at its most elevated, it is about doing good for others and improving a situation for them or righting a wrong if it is within our powers."

I like to think of it as being useful to others.

"The furthest habitable continent, a largely arid and infertile place now called Australia was at this time, home to up to 3 million people (The Australian Aborigines) and had been for between 40-60 thousand years."

I do not believe in mass murder for purposes of self enrichment, but that's what was done. I have a book that says "it's best forgotten". I don’t agree.

"Australia’s rapid population growth is very much influenced by government policies, especially immigration. 60% of Australia’s population growth is from this source."

The reasons are because: 1. An increasing population keeps wages down due to competition for jobs. Business owners can therefore manufacture goods more cheaply in bulk and make greater profits. To accomplish this, a continuously created excess of potential workers is required. 2. Employees who try to claim a more equitable share of the profits can be more easily dismissed if there is maximum competition for jobs due to unnatural population growth. Unions can be rendered powerless more easily. 3. Business owners make more profits from selling their wares because an increasing population means there are more people to buy them. Notice that it is always big business people who are in the media claiming that population increase is needed for economic growth. Well the only thing that grows is their wealth. Their only true aim is personal enrichment.

"In Australia, it seems that the citizens’ sphere of influence is small."

It is by now non-existent in all Western societies. They whole system has become fraudulent. Media items about politics, economics, war, population and related topics are propaganda. People vote for those who are presented to them by the media. I do not. Here is one article I received today - there are many others online of varying qualities:

"wild life".

Most humans fail to understand that they are part of nature. Many think their food comes from a supermarket! The world's religions have failed to convince some political leaders that "Thou shalt not kill".

"No sane, sensitive person would want to leave a poorer environment for their descendants than that which they inherited and have enjoyed, surely?"

How true! But many voters are not so sensitive and simply don't care. In my opinion, a new philosophy of living is needed. I like the pictures - beautiful. As Alice said "what's the use of a book without pictures?"

"Why wasn’t the State of the Environment Report 2008 trumpeted in headlines? I bet most people in this room have not heard of it."

One of the most effective propaganda techniques used by the media is OMISSION! People can't act against something they don't know about - unless they are psychic - and not many of us have that ability! Internet has become the vehicle of information transmission - but one needs to be wary as the quality varies. Modern propaganda techniques were developed by Edward Bernays, double nephew of Sigmund Freud. There are many online articles about him and his techniques. At one time he persuaded the women of America to start smoking cigarettes, and at a later time persuaded them to stop smoking! He spent his 104 years on the planet teaching big businesspeople, bankers and politicians how to fool us for their own enrichment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEVFOzMLLlI http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/481391-propaganda

"Consider also that each additional person in Australia requires $200,000 to $300,000 of infrastructure and services."

The money is borrowed from bankers who create it from nothing. We then pay the interest and principal through taxation. The bankers sit back and collect this as pure profit. There are many descriptions of the fraudulent system online - of varying qualities of course. The idea that taxes pay for everything is propaganda. I realise that I have written a simplification of the facts, but if the above statement is fundamentally untrue, how come we have a massive and increasing national debt? How come other countries that are bigger than ours have unbelievably astronomical debts? I will add that mortgage and credit card money are also created by bankers from nothing while we work to pay the interest and principal - but even bank managers may be in blissful ignorance of this! The intelligent enquiry of an Australian woman into these issues is mentioned at the end of this article: http://www.michaeljournal.org/plenty24.htm Other articles: http://www.positivemoney.org/2013/06/banks-dont-lend-money-guest-post-by-michael-reiss/ http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/banks-dont-lend-their-reserves-even-if.html http://www.michaeljournal.org/moneytrick.htm http://www.michaeljournal.org/plenty40.htm http://www.thrivemovement.com/tips-how-follow-money

"Chairman Mao decided to grow the population"

Perhaps that's because by then he'd slaughtered so many of his own countrymen. Thanks for the great speech and beautiful pictures. In my opinion we need a new philosophy of living.