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Australia's Population

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.... and the best part of all is.... the joke is on us.

Gotta love the punch line....

 
The actual number is not as important as the make up of that number or the place of settlement. Why import the problems of the countries they want to leave.
The NIMBY in me says it is okay to double the numbers in Sydney or Melbourne as long as I don't cop the cost of their water desalination, their road congestion or their power generation. ( I dont intend to go there). However keep the coastal population down elsewhere as it would spoil my fishing. (except in the Northern Territory or the north of West Aust. I don"t intend to go there again either.)

Or just delay the program for a few years and it will be someone elses problem. Bring them all from Tibet maybe. Aren't they a peace loving mob of hard workers. Settle them near Canberra and rename it "Little Tibet". Maybe not. That would give the Chinese a takeover target.

Maybe I'll have to follow Pauline and go to the home of my ancestors.

Hard decisions are best not made on the weekend. Back to the garden.
 
Wysiwyg said:
I think these forward lookers aren't looking at what is needed if people are going to be living longer. They need more of their own money.
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Though I do not want to live longer than I can physically look after myself. When I see people that can't look after themselves it brings sad emotion to me.
 
No chance of changing the status quo where all things religous and political depend on growth - jobs, paypackets, production etc etc and the easiest way to get growth is population increase - so we pay low socio-economic single mothers to encourage them to pump out six more.
A wee problem with all this is that the largest contributor to climate change is population growth. But this is not on the agenda and won't be because too many votes would be lost.
16 September 2009 – A senior United Nations adviser has called on world governments to reduce population growth and work together to keep climate change from causing an immense human catastrophe, starkly warning: “We’re on a trajectory that is absolutely unsustainable and profoundly dangerous.”
Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Special Adviser to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that seek to slash a host of social ills by 2015, said the rich world should pay for much of the necessary mitigating steps.
“We’re in the age of this planet where human activity dominates the earth's processes. Humanity has become so large in absolute number and in economic activity that we have overtaken earth processes in vital ways to the point of changing the climate, the hydrologic cycle,” he told the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva yesterday. - emphasis mine!
 
Wysiwyg said:
Australia also imported 64.9% food in agricultural products in 2007.
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I thought everyone knew the amount of food Australian farmers produce? Australia grows enough food for 60 million westerners, or 100's of millions on a developing world diet.

Australian farmers can't help it if consumers feel the need to import highly processed small good's, chocolate, french wine etc.



Australia produces on average 40 million tonnes of grain a year, or nearly 2 tonnes per person. This compares with a global average of just 350 kgs per person. The US, regarded as the food bowl of the world produces 1230 kgs per person, China, 325 kgs per person, and just 90 kg's per person in Zimbabwe.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5539


Australia is the worlds second largest exporter of beef behind Brazil, and exports 65% of it's beef production.

Australia exports half it's dairy production. Accounts for 16% of global dairy exports and is the third biggest exporter.

Australia exports wool, cotton, lamb, sugar, and almost every food type.

Other info here,.....

http://www.dfat.gov.au/facts/affaoverview.html


Everyone should know these facts. Especially since agriculture in Australia is also not subsidised, where as in most other places in the world, the food produced costs the poor tax payer an absolute fortune in farm subsidies.
 
Once-ler, you'd have to admit that on your list there are things Australia shouldn't produce because they are unsustainable here eg. cotton and rice take heaps of water.

Also no-one could look at the state of rivers, groundwater and spreading salinity and say that our agricultural practices are sustainable. A kiwi originally, I travelled around Aus prospecting wind farms for a couple of years and the state of the poor sheep and cattle I saw was deplorable. Us kiwis like our sheep, but believe they should eat grass in a country suited to growing them. White sheep so much more attractive...

Quite simply, other than some crops eg. wheat, Australia is very unsuited to agriculture on the current scale.
 
Knoxy said:
Quite simply, other than some crops eg. wheat, Australia is very unsuited to agriculture on the current scale.
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How is agriculture unsuited when Australia produces so much excess? I'd think Australia's excess food production per capita would be second only to New Zealands. However it is much more diversified than New Zealands. Did you realise New Zealand is a big grain importer, and it mostly comes from Australia?

I've had a fair look about New Zealand too. The amount of water being pumped from underground aquifers in places like the Canterbury Plains is frightening. There is no controls over it, no limitations, and the bores are going down as fast as the drills will drill. Remember, the Canterbury Plains is really very dry from 500 to 600 mills average rainfall. Much dryer than the part of northern NSW I'm from, and without irrigation it would be a very poor producer of food. Lets hope those aquifers can hold up eh? The West coast of the south island is so wet it's basically useless agriculturally, and does produce not much. North Island is very nice.

I've also seen droughts in New Zealand. New Zealand is certainly very productive agriculturally. But that just means a drought hits harder and faster too. New Zealand will be in drought in a month, where in a low stocking, low producing area in Australia a drought might not take effect for 3 months.

It sounds like you have made your views on Australian agriculture from a trip through the desert. The production figures are all there for anyone to see. The food crisis of 2 years ago was partly triggered from the drought here. Australia is a major food exporter, just like New Zealand, and I don't see why any of that production is unsustainable, except for, as you mentioned, cotton and rice, which really are fairly small crops.

There will be a lot of countries in trouble if Australia stopped exporting food. It's another reason why we should keep our population low, because once we are eating it all ourselves, who does the other places get their food from?
 
the more people we add the more efficient we will need to be to maintain current lifestyle levels. without more efficiencies (and capital) things will just gradually descend into a gridlocked, ecologically ravaged pit of suck and make everyone miserable.

with sensible urban planning, water management, and common sense farming practices we could comfortably support a much larger population, but the tasks required are huge and beyond the capacity of our current socio-political system. as long as people are paid to be useless and punished for productivity the system will continue to degrade.
 
The Once-ler said:
Remember, the Canterbury Plains is really very dry from 500 to 600 mills average rainfall.

I've also seen droughts in New Zealand.

It sounds like you have made your views on Australian agriculture from a trip through the desert.
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Once-ler, appreciate your comments, I wasn't holding NZ up as the answer, too small and I'm proud to be an Aussie. Orig from Canterbury and yes the annual rainfall is about 650mm. However, the artesian supplies come from the Southern Alps, not rainfall over Canterbury. There are places with 10 - 15 m rainfall and NZ's snow is very reliable.

I listen a bit to talkback radio and in last year or two have been hearing about the high farmer depression and suicide rate, the farmers sons walking off the land and the significant problems with the Murray River system. Yes that's drought, but drought may be normal.

With the wind farms, I've designed/built in Tassie, Eyre Peninsula, West Vic and Hunter Valley. Poorest condition sheep I've seen were outside Queanbeyan. All the landowners find the $6k per turbine pa to be gold given the drought. I'm also involved with Vic's desalination project. So have seen a few of the problems.

Anyway, off target. I think there has to be a limit to desirable population, 6.5 B seems too much for Earth maybe 50 M too much for Aus.
 

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Gringotts Bank said:
Greed. You have to join a few dots. Go ahead and join them.
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It's not greed if the government has to fork out more welfare for the migrants who can't get a job, it's stoopidity. The business lobby says they need more consumers, but they don't want to give them jobs, and governments fall for it.

Stoopid.
 
SirRumpole said:
It's not greed if the government has to fork out more welfare for the migrants who can't get a job, it's stoopidity. The business lobby says they need more consumers, but they don't want to give them jobs, and governments fall for it.

Stoopid.
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As you know, the business lobby represents the ruling class. They have an enormous amount to gain from a big Australia. And yeh, governments do whatever the ruling class tells them to do. It doesn't bother the ruling class one bit if there's a massive underclass of non-English speaking migrants who have no interest in assimilating or working.

When problems arise - as they have, big time - the ruling class tells the governments to crack down on any and all forms of rorting. Everything from welfare fraud to international tax avoidance. Usually they don't like 'crack downs', because sometimes even they have to pay, as in the case of the banks recently. Easy solution though, offset it. Make the consumer carry it.

Australia's living standards have dropped significantly, and it's all due to greed. Out of control breeding in China and India makes it many times more problematic. Unsustainable rabbit-like breeding, enough to choke the planet.
 
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Just until recently, China have a one child policy. So only their very rich would have two children. The poor will either have to drown their daughters or have the second pregnancy forced out of them. i.e. What breeding problem in China?

Well, they do need to breed at least one kid. Who's going to take care of them when they're old? The State?

Poverty has never been caused by over-population. It's always caused by the rich being stupid and greedy that they want more and more, extracting all the wealth and life out of the working poor among them and among their colonies. Then after a being crapped on for too much and too long that there's nothing to lose, the poor and stupid masses just rise up, chop heads, take all properties and form of gov't... then their rebel leaders soon enough replace the former ruling elite with themselves and their princelings.

Circle of life. The non-Disney version.
 
SirRumpole said:
It's not greed if the government has to fork out more welfare for the migrants who can't get a job, it's stoopidity. The business lobby says they need more consumers, but they don't want to give them jobs, and governments fall for it.

Stoopid.
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I heard that 95% of Australians are "unnecessary". It costs money to breed, feed and educate... why bother when you can just import an instant "skilled" immigrant who will also need to bring in cash, cannot receive welfare for the first couple of years, and will work for cheap.

So it is only stupid if you look at it from a sensible, all we Aussies are brothers of a different mother kind of way. If you look at people as dollar and cents, it makes more money and gain more political points if you privatise the prisons, then pass laws to lock up those "surplus" population.

That or send them off to foreign wars to die for their country, freedom this and other stuff.

There's a lot of things wrong with the country when the gov't somehow thought businesses should be paid to take on free labour.

I mean, here... take this useless piece of trash we haven't bothered to train or educate, get them to do whatever crap you like for three months and we'll pay you for your kindness and patriotism.

What happen after three months? If 3 months isn't enough time to learn a lifelong skill, and it won't... then just kick them out, get a new coolie and we'll give you another bonus.

You can't make these stuff up.
 

We do seem to have a bit of a problem, getting the younger generation motivated, also they don't seem to want to have kids bothering them.
That may explain, why we have 1600/week, coming into the Country.
 
sptrawler said:
We do seem to have a bit of a problem, getting the younger generation motivated, also they don't seem to want to have kids bothering them.
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Because they can't afford to have kids perhaps ? If they can't afford a mortgage then why add to debt woes by having children ?

The same will apply to migrants coming here, that's why a lot of them end up on welfare.
 
Gringotts Bank said:
Out of control breeding in China and India makes it many times more problematic.
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Do not mix China and India: there is no and has not been any out of control breeding in China for the last 50 years and I do not worry at all about Chinese natality, but have a look at Egypt and the whole of Africa, indonesia, Pakistan , philippines etc etc and be scared..with also common trait: religion
 

Regional population, 2023-24 financial year

Statistics about the population and components of change (births, deaths, migration) for Australia's capital cities and regions
www.abs.gov.au

Key statistics​

  • The 8 capitals grew by 517,200 people (3.0%) in 2022-23.
  • Capital city growth comprised overseas migration (454,900), natural increase (89,200) and internal migration (-26,900).
  • Melbourne had the largest increase (167,500), Perth had the highest growth rate (3.6%).
  • Regional Australia grew by 117,300 (1.4%)
 
Dona Ferentes said:
Melbourne had the largest increase
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Perhaps the biggest change of the lot is that, depending on whose figures you look at, Sydney is either no longer the nation's largest city or is only just holding onto that title. Regardless of which is correct, given the growth rates Melbourne is clearly on track to become the largest if it isn't already.

I ponder the long term implications of that?

Will we see a shift in focus from Sydney being the "must" location for a company to have an office to Melbourne becoming that "must" location for example?

Will Melbourne housing end up more costly than Sydney?

Will we see a shift in politics from Sydney being the real hub of influence to one where Melbourne dominates?

Etc.

Personally of the two I much prefer Sydney but clearly a great many disagree.
 
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