Australia & Population

[Toff]

your an idiot.

 

[INTENSE DHER]

Where, exactly? Australia has the highest rate of extinctions in the world, due mainly to habitat loss. "Space" is not the issue, environmental sustainability is (as is the lack of resources). I for one, thoroughly enjoy being able to drive half an hour from the centre of Brisbane and not be able to see or hear a single sign of civilisation.

good man.



.

 

[WillR]

your an idiot.

its not about space its about not wanting my nice australia crowded with people, has any one been to clayton melbourne theres more asians and Indians then there are whites, if i wanted to live in a crowded country with asians i'd move to china.

QUOTE]

Racist much?
It's not about ethnicity, it's about the carrying capacity of an ecosystem.
Maybe you should move to china, and develop an appreciation of another people/ culture while you're at it.

 

[thecat]

good man.



.

Just because we are arguing against ROCH's statement doesn't mean we agree with the pile of dribble that spouted from your key board....

 

[Rider_of_Fast]

Yeah I dug that DS doco, however didn't like the way he advocated for Kath from Kath and Kim in the end, bit disappointing to hear.

It would be good if people could start having "quality" children (ie. by that I mean 1 or 2 kids max but providing them with decent parenting, education and living stardards).

Because it is of my understanding that we do need an increasing population to be a productive nation.

Currently a lot of nationalities (eg. African nations/Mussies and/or including other religious folk) are having babies by the "quantity" (ie. more and more kids that they themselves cant provide adequate care to and bring up properly_ due to customary/traditions of the family order).

Then these same people wanna come to Australia by the boat load and we have problems of poor contributions to society by margins of the population which need social welfare and other payouts which in fact cripple the nation.

 

[Bodin]

your an idiot.

its not about space its about not wanting my nice australia crowded with people, has any one been to clayton melbourne theres more asians and Indians then there are whites, if i wanted to live in a crowded country with asians i'd move to china.

if dick smith was running for pm id vote for him.

In this day and age, racism will not be tolerated. You've copped a week's holiday and the next racist statement that you type will be the last thing you ever post on this website.

I would very much appreciate it if you did move to China, because you might get the education you so obviously need.

Could somebody please get this thread back on topic? I was enjoying it until this knob piped up.

 

[Bodin]

Then these same people wanna come to Australia by the boat load and we have problems of poor contributions to society by margins of the population which need social welfare and other payouts which in fact cripple the nation.

Is this statement about crippling the nation your opinion, or do you have some facts and figures around this?

For instance, can you tell me what the ratio of welfare beneficiaries is between people that have escaped certain death by risking their lives to get here versus, say, lazy white middle-class people that think the world owes them a living?

 

[adman]

Yeah I dug that DS doco, however didn't like the way he advocated for Kath from Kath and Kim in the end, bit disappointing to hear.

It would be good if people could start having "quality" children (ie. by that I mean 1 or 2 kids max but providing them with decent parenting, education and living stardards).

Because it is of my understanding that we do need an increasing population to be a productive nation.

Currently a lot of nationalities (eg. African nations/Mussies and/or including other religious folk) are having babies by the "quantity" (ie. more and more kids that they themselves cant provide adequate care to and bring up properly_ due to customary/traditions of the family order).

Then these same people wanna come to Australia by the boat load and we have problems of poor contributions to society by margins of the population which need social welfare and other payouts which in fact cripple the nation.

Somethings there are true, others are not, and some is just crap.

Granted - African countries are having babies "by the quantity" as you call it. You clearly have no idea why they are doing this - or at least you haven't shown it in your post.

These 3rd world countries have incredibly high infant mortality rates - most children in poor African countries die before the age of 4. This is one reason they have many children - in the hope that of the 10 + children they have, 1 of them might live past 12 and be able to provide a living for themselves, and hence, their parents.

Another issue which SO many people look past in these countries is Catholicism - most of the countries are Catholic Christian based and you SHOULD know that Catholics ban contraception - so every time a couple have sex the chances are they'll have a baby.

Following this - the access to contraception in these countries is poor also - so even if they wanted to cut down their birth rates, they couldn't unless they never get close to each other.

This is off topic - but a lot of the stuff that people are literally wringing out of their brains is utter crap and un-supported bulls**t. These people are not just having babies by the dozen because they want to - there is simple little option for them to do otherwise.

 

[skivi]

can you tell me what the ratio of welfare beneficiaries is between people that have escaped certain death by risking their lives to get here versus, say, lazy white middle-class people that think the world owes them a living?

+1

the epic period of change in which the world/Australia is currently entering should emphasise the obligations, responsibilities and duties we have to our fellow human beings but instead many seem to adopt the mindset of 'fuck the rest, I'm not giving up what I've got' rather then standing up to the challenge and pushing for the ways in which we design construct & maintain our homes/workplaces/community's/public infrastructure etc to be re-engineered around core values of ingenuity, responsibility, resourcefulness & sustainability so that we can see positive growth for the good of the whole.

[/rant]


yeh i know it's poorly worded but i tried.

 

[Arete]

to quote myself in the Oil Spill thread:

What I'm cynical about is the whole "you give a shit now?" attitude of the public, that and the - Get rid of all your old stuff to buy new marginally more efficient stuff at huge environmental cost during production, then act more "environmentally conscious" than people who just kept their old stuff - which was actually the more environmentally responsible thing to do. Your 5l/100km car needs new lithium batteries every 5-7 years. Your recyclable computer was CNC'ed out a block of solid aluminum. The last thing a world facing global food shortages needs is prime agricultural land being turned over to low productivity, low volume, high cost per unit boutique produce. Planting a tree doesn't offset any carbon that was in the ground for 250 million years, pulled out and burnt, unless you find a way to make that tree into coal.

The problem comes down to incredible rates of human population expansion - it was back int he 90's that there were more people alive than dead - think about it. Significantly more people walking around, eating, burning fuel, shitting in the ocean this second than ever in the history of the planet - and they all live for twice as long as they did 100 years ago. We're also not content to use less than our forebears did - with all this "technological advancement" we actually expect to be able to use more, per capita than ever before. Screw off the buzzword overuse of "sustainable" and look at it in a pure logical sense.

In biological terms, exponential population growth, without an increase in absolute resources is called a population spike. It ain't called that because it goes up exponentially and stays there. Plenty of species actually limit population growth with respect for future capacity and resource consumption in order to prevent unnecessary mortality caused by environmentally enforced upper limits on population levels. Are we doing it?

Earth was and will be alive without us, or at least the majority of us and we were never going to be here forever. Enjoy it while you can.

According to the Australian Government, people granted refugee status are financially independent of the government in an average of 5.5 years.

Overpopulation is a global problem. Trying to look at it nationalistically is myopic and useless - and as shown in this thread quickly degenerates into prejudice and racism.

In Australia, the issue is not food (we're the world's largest exporter of both wheat and beef) or space. However water is an issue.

 

[scuba05]

snip

This is unfortunately the case. We had a bit of a discussion on this at uni (in an electrical engineering subject, but none the less), and came up with the answer of educating women in the developing world. If you educate women, they can then go to work, which will 'prevent', for lack of a better word, them from staying at home and having more children. This is another discussion for another day though.

Unfortunately, due to the brainwash...i mean religious views of those in the catholic church, the refusal to use contraception is doing absolutely sweet fuck all for the control of the worlds population. Again, another discussion for another day.

Back home, the doco covered unemployment figures, but i cant remember the figures. I will agree with Rider_of_fast that people need to have 'quality' children so to say. If this was to happen, not only does it control population increase, but it will also *hopefully* reduce unemployment in the way that less dumbshits wont be sitting at home unemployed using my bloody tax money to buy a big tv and fully sick commo. Will this happen? It would be hard to tell.

When DS went to an adult education place(not uni, were talking primary school for adults), many said they would like to have the education to work. I will admit that this is not only a small sample size, but could have been(and prob was) set up for the doco. Call me naive, but i do believe the large majority of doll bludgers would get a job if they had the required education levels. If our pop was to grow to a much larger figure, would this percentage grow or shrink? IMO, it would grow, as larger popn means more students at school, and again in my opinion would lead to more and more people falling through the cracks.

Another thing about skilled migration that DS brought up. Many of these will come from developing countries, who need as many of these skilled people to help to build their countries and economies. Is this fair? I severly doubt it.

At the end of the day, it is going to be hard for Australia to get the popn under control without information like that contained in the doco out to the public to decide on their viewpoint. It is not just Aus that needs to look at popn control, but the entire world. Unfortunatly, everyone is worried about growth, growth, growth.

I must say i have no background in economics or the like, so this is a bit speculative.

PS-Arete, has that figure been checked by a 3rd party about refugees being independent in 5.5yrs? Just seems a bit low to me, and we know what the govnt is going to do during the election, make the figures smaller to seem better than the other party. The stuff you quoted is precisely correct in my opinion. If only more people held this view/have the brainpower to understand it

 

[floody]

Unfortunately, due to the brainwash...i mean religious views of those in the catholic church, the refusal to use contraception is doing absolutely sweet fuck all for the control of the worlds population. Again, another discussion for another day.

I gather you're talking about Adman's scapegoating African catholicism.

While there are a handful of predominantly Catholic countries within the continent I think you will find that in most of Africa the proportion of Catholics to population is well below 25%, mostly below 10%.

I'd like to see the numbers but I don't think this argument stacks up to paint the one church as such a strong factor in population problems.

 

[scuba05]

I gather you're talking about Adman's scapegoating African catholicism.

While there are a handful of predominantly Catholic countries within the continent I think you will find that in most of Africa the proportion of Catholics to population is well below 25%, mostly below 10%.

I'd like to see the numbers but I don't think this argument stacks up to paint the one church as such a strong factor in population problems.

I know what you mean, but those little percentages all add up. I Don't souly put the blame on the catholic church by no means. It does play a significant part in the developed world though.

In Africa and developing nations, it is not so much the refusal to use contraception, but the unavailability/ lack of education of such measures.

It probably pretty obvious of my atheism. I do think religion, not just catholicism, plays a large part of the worlds problems.

 

[Mattydv]

Meh, a good war will happen sooner or later and unfortunately (or fortunately if you're looking at it from many angles) will probably wipe out most of the worlds population.

As for the cost to our environment, well we'll see I guess. Not exactly something you can predict.

 

[dunndog]

to quote myself in the Oil Spill thread:

According to the Australian Government, people granted refugee status are financially independent of the government in an average of 5.5 years.

Overpopulation is a global problem. Trying to look at it nationalistically is myopic and useless - and as shown in this thread quickly degenerates into prejudice and racism.

In Australia, the issue is not food (we're the world's largest exporter of both wheat and beef) or space. However water is an issue.

Absolutely spot on Arete. Very intelligent words and i agree with everything stated here - except the food not being an issue. Partly due to rates of production and drought but also partly due to our wastefulness. All the sums can be done on this issue, and maybe numbers could have us reach a point where population x could be supported by infrastructure, resources and space y but at the end of the day this strict set of living criteria would have to be embraced by or enforced upon every individual, and that simply could never happen. So obviously, and possibly selfishly, avoiding this would be the ideal outcome for australia, but more broadly the same number of people would still exist globally so who bears the brunt of our unwillingness to sacrifice our standards of living? Saying that, i most definately love Australia the way it is and would personally rather not sacrifice the beautiful areas we have to mass development to support out of control population increase that cannot be supported by our resources and infrastructure. i'd say if australia's pop. didn't increase by 1 person over the next 10 years our public transport sytems, roads, schools etc would still be struggling to catch up. It's not an issue of race or religion, it's an issue of quality of life for those who live here or come here. but it's pitted against the quality of life for those elsewhere in the world too, so are we to be the selfish kid in class or do we lend a hand to mates in need in the true Aussie spirit?

 

[Bodin]

I do think religion, not just catholicism, plays a large part of the worlds problems.

Well... given that at least 90% of the world's population follows one belief or another that can be defined as a religion, law of averages says you're probably right.

 

[scuba05]

Meh, a good war will happen sooner or later and unfortunately (or fortunately if you're looking at it from many angles) will probably wipe out most of the worlds population.

As for the cost to our environment, well we'll see I guess. Not exactly something you can predict.

Albert Einstein said "World war 3 will be fought with nuclear missiles. World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones"

 

[floody]

I know what you mean, but those little percentages all add up. I Don't souly put the blame on the catholic church by no means. It does play a significant part in the developed world though.

16% of Africans are Catholic. Ergo 84% are not.

In Africa and developing nations, it is not so much the refusal to use contraception, but the unavailability/ lack of education of such measures.

It probably pretty obvious of my atheism. I do think religion, not just catholicism, plays a large part of the worlds problems.

So why pull the Catholicism card then?

If you wish to call yourself an Atheist and puff your chest about it, at least look at all the factors and consider your assertions.

In no way am I suggesting that any Church or other influence group suggesting anything other than safe and open sexual practices is correct, but needlessly scapegoating groups isn't a strong way to make a case.

 

[sockman]

Couldn't really care what Dick Smith thinks....but certainly our major cities don't have the infrastructure or plans in place to cope with increased population.

Catching a peak hour train in Sydney in Melbourne is a nightmare, every time I've driven around Sydney it was awful, and Melbourne's eastern suburbs are pretty woeful in the car as well. Some areas really are on the brink of being totally crippled.

I plan to live in Melbourne in the future, the thought of population increasing a lot more concerns me a fair bit actually, I guess as long as the suburbs I like stay the same and I have an easy commute to work/places I like, the rest won't worry me too much.

I've been to Melbourne 5 or 6 times in the last 8 or so years. Compared to Sydney, the public transport halls ASS!! Cheaper, easier to navigate, and above all, more convenient! I've also been driven around melbourne a bit, and while my experience is pretty limited, Sydney is miles behind in terms of convenience & infrastructure IMO.

There are more people in LA than in Australia. Hell, the UK has 60 odd million people in a land mass the size of Victoria.

I think Australia can handle a few more people.

I'm not going to claim to know much about urban planning and all that (especially at this hout, and in my current state), but the UK, as you suggested, has been around a long while.
Sydney (Australia's most populated city) on the other hand started out as at least 2 separate settlements (Sydney city & Parramatta(a bit later)), which eventually turned into a pretty big city (in terms of geograpy) There's no doubtin gAustralia can handle a much larger population, however when you look HERE Australia comes in at the 8th (Pit Cairn island is a bit of an exemption) most sparsely populated country (given, those above us have a much smaller land mass) in the world. This surely shows a lack of planning (infrastructure etc), compared to europe or america. (I'm not an idiot... immigration rates are different, and in the past Australia has trailed by miles, but is now growing at a considerable rate! but we can't really compare Australia and England directly without any bias, one way or another)

People are seriously misled by the size of countries in comparison to their population.

Are you suggesting for one second that Victoria could hold the 60 million people that the UK has? I'm English, and I know for a fact that if there were 60 million people in Victoria it would be shredded - the compactness of the UK is only possible because of the climate.

Many times on the documentary they said that bangladesh had the same size as Tasmania - remember that Tasmania is about 70% protected and so you're actually looking at an area that is 30% the size of Tasmania - to make the statement correct you'd have to compare 30% of the population of Bangladesh.

Also, lets say Victoria COULD hold the 60million that the UK has. Would you want that? Would you want Melbourne to sprawl over an entire state?

Australia is unique because of the space we have - why not keep it that way?

That is kind of what I was getting at above. I probably wasn't too clear, but what I'm getting at was that Comparing England and Australia isn't fair. The UK has been around MUCH MUCH longer than Australia. Comparing our population growth to England's confuses things. When you also take into account the percentage of Australia which is habitable, we seem to be doing pretty well for oursleves.

Australia is a racist country, saying stopping the boats makes most of the population think that this is a great way to get rid of Asians or muslims or whta ever other "foreigners" they can associate with them. Just saying were going to stop the planes won't do shit for abbott to get a vote.

That's a seriously narrow minded view. Are you familiar with the concept of globilisation? Muslim, Asian, "foreign" really doesn't mean shit. Sure our cultures are VASTLY different, but we're all human, and it's inevitable that we'll find a way to sort our shit and be one big happy family eventually. I'm not denying Australia is an inherently racist, bigoted, fucked up place (a big generalisation) but if this is the only view you have (I might be interpreting your view incorrectly, so don't take this offensively) then you're not looking at the big picture!

Wow, there are some strange comments in this thread so far.

For those who think we can afford to further grow our population, did you actually take the time to watch the 1h6m documentary? If so, please point out what Dick Smith said that wasn't factual or further-discussion focussed?

I didn't see it at all. I gave up reading the thread about half way through, so I'm probably missing a few relevant points (go easy, can't be bothered reading at this hour!) Care to give us a general idea of the debate? (If I missed it?)

Precisely.
We live in a country, as previously stated, that has large deserts, which are unsuitable for habitation(with exceptions of Alice Springs etc). This means our land mass is greatly reduced. From what is left, we have large areas of protected areas(National Parks etc.), which can't(and hope) dont get touched by developers. From this remaining area(as someone already said), we have agriculture.
Unfortunately, as DS showed in the film, SOME farmers are being given $200k to stop growing and shut up shop to make way for more people. Now is it just me, or is this absolutely fucking wrong? Without farmers, where in hell do we get food from? Admittedly this may only be a few farmers, but where will it stop? This will soon snowball outta control, and before we know it, all the suitable agricultural land has got concrete over it, and is ruined forever, along with our local food supplies.
The reason we need all this land? Population growth. As DS showed in the doco, Aust population grew by 480 000 in 09. 480 000!!!!!! Thats almost 1/2 a million!!!!!!! It is the highest popn growth in the world(2.1%), BY FARFROM WIKIPEDIA nternational comparison
For the year ended 30 June 2008, Australia's population growth rate was 1.7 percent per year, almost 50 percent higher than the world average of 1.2 percent per year.[9]
0.1% Japan
0.3% Greece and Sweden
0.6% China, Thailand and France
0.8% Canada
0.9% United States
1.0% New Zealand
1.2% World Average
1.6% India
1.7% Australia
2.2% Papua New Guinea
Might be out of date though.... Of this, 1/3 where born here. I have no problem of this. I do not believe in telling people not to have children. It is the other 2/3 that have migrated here. Approx 333 000 people!!!! I believe this has to be drastically reduced in order to sustain our current lifestyle and levels of wealth.

This was one (summarised) part of the doco. There were many other arguements put forward by DS, but none that are against, apart from those who directly benefit from popn growth.

Our country cannot continue the way we are going, otherwise before we know it, we will end up becoming almost a developing country

PS Well said flamshmizer. exactly what im on about

As per my above quote, there's almost certainly lots of holes in my inebriated views/arguments, but don't hate!

If you look at the advancement in agricultural technology in the past 2 decades, the majority of farming has become far more intensive. (I have immediate family running large scale agricultural enterprises (crops & stock), so im not totally ignorant to what's going on!). Agricultural accounts for about 4% or our GDP (from memory, could well be wrong). Australia has excelled in (and in may cases, pioneered) dry land wheat and cotton production (to suit our climate obviously). We produce enormous amounts of wine, so much so that vineyards are often losing money from annual crops due to competition (I grew up on a vineyard and witnessed the increasing competition, so much so we had to sell off our farm). In many respects, Europe has the technological lead in dairy farming, as they have integrated robotic milking due to their much smaller herd sizes (although we consume vast amounts of fresh dairy produce!).

Saying we're concreting paddocks is down right wrong. While we're losing some land (viability, etc.) because of changes in water/irrigation policy, farmers often sell land back to the government (murray darling basin, for example) because they can produce similar yields through new methods of farming; CSIRO are continually researching new methods to increase productivity & profitability.

Saying we will end up as a developing country is so fucking retarded, I'm not going to go there. (again no offense, but what did you expect with that comment?)


probably missed everyone's points, so let me know if im on some stupid tangent!

 

[hifiandmtb]

Saying we're concreting paddocks is down right wrong.

Um, you are wrong. Productive, viable, prime farmland inside the Sydney basin is being developed for housing every day. It seems criminal that we should allow this to happen.