22 Million Australians Can't Be Wrong | BTalk Australia

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  1

  barrydv

  08/03/09 | Report as spam

  RE: 22 Million Australians Can't Be Wrong | BTalk Australia

  We need to cut immigration yesterday.I don't want to live in such a crowded place and the dryest continent with the oldest geological structure on the planet can't take it.

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  2

  Howard Chapman

  08/03/09 | Report as spam

  RE: 22 Million Australians Can't Be Wrong | BTalk Australia

  Apparently, at the end of 2008 there was an 80.4% penetration of the Internet into the total number of Australian households and businesses. Do people who aren't on and using the Internet understand the importance of this one statistic? (Assuming that it's true..........maybe the BNET Team know different)

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  3

  xQx

  08/04/09 | Report as spam

  Not counting the Australians living in the UK...

  I love hearing that argument that immigration needs to be
  cut.
  
  We've got some of the most fertile country in the world north
  of Cairns, and nobody is there.
  
  We average 2.6 people per square km across our dry land,
  and we are telling people to go away.
  
  Sure, we don't want more people in Melbourne and Sydney,
  but why are we getting so protective of the NT and Cape
  York where most Australians never tread...
  
  The logic is simple, we were born here, so it's ours. We did
  nothing to earn it, but that doesn't matter. You were born in
  Asia or Europe, so it's not yours. I don't care if I'm not using
  it, you can't have it. It's mine, go away.
  
  Nothing like a good bit of 'patriotism' to incite fear and two-
  year-old ownership logic. ... It was a round world last time I
  looked.
  
  Australia wants free trade with other countries for everything
  except people.

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  4

  gtveloce

  08/04/09 | Report as spam

  RE: 22 Million Australians Can't Be Wrong | BTalk Australia

  I'm not sure that Australia - the landmass, not the human population - can support 40 or 50 million people - not without reducing the average standard of living, anyway. That's not 'patriotism' or an attempt to "incite fear", that's just an expressed doubt - and it can't hurt to raise a few reasonable questions, surely?
  
  It's interesting that "xQx" makes a philosophical case for opening our borders, with which I can't really disagree, without seriously critiquing the ability of the country itself to provide for these immigrants. I guess they'd all choose to come and live in Sydney or Melbourne unless we somehow sponsor/subsidise them to live in NT or FNQ as "xQx" suggested. They wouldn't all choose to live in the far north with the tempting prospect of little infrastructure and few jobs. Or should we build the infrastructure (roads, rail, airports, services, houses) and hope they'll come? That'd be an interesting business case! I'm also not sure the soil is suitable for agriculture, given local agricultural diseases and pests in the region and the highly seasonal rainfall, coupled with generally thin soil and the prospect of massive erosion and plague pests if we get it wrong. If the Ord Scheme taught us something, it surely is to be careful about assuming it'll just work. And clearing the land for agriculture - or cities - without due planning will destroy the balance of what's already there - probably just repeating mistakes made further south. So promoting the idea that (as xQx wrote) "our dry land" can support more people without asking and answering some questions first doesn't make a lot of sense, even if we do agree with the philosophical 'open border' stance.
  
  How would we solve issues of water collection, storage and distribution? Or food production? Jobs? How do we fund the building of massive infrastructure from scratch? How do we avoid incurring serious land use degradation and loss of native species in what appears to be a finely-balanced environment?
  
  If we get good answers to these and other pertinent questions, great. If after analysis we drop the idea that the far north is our panacea, what can we do in our current>/i> population centres to minimise the negative impact of this population growth?