Statistically boat people are insignificant - a few thousand in a growth
measured in the hundreds of thousands. There are I think three issues that
need to be thought about:
Firstly what is our ideal population - those in favour of growth point to
the "fact" that our whole economic system is based on growth and without an
ever expanding population this is difficult to achieve. There is indeed some
basis to this - but we cannot grow exponentially for ever. Where do you stop
- 35 million? 100 million? 1 billion? Proponents of growth should either
state the limit they think we should reach - and how we will tackle the
problems that - according to them - only growth can solve when we reach that
limit, or else adopt the approach that we can grow without any limit ever.
Having determine our ideal population how do we reach that figure? If we
need to grow do we do it by encouraging the existing population to breed
more or do we encourage more migrants?
Finally if we are to increase by migration then we can have the debate on
skilled migrants (which tend to such skills from less well off countries) or
family reunion or refugees.....
On 10 August 2010 10:59, Greg Little <> wrote:
> Dave
>
> Should be a good film. I'm for a smaller population, and no boat people.
>
> Greg Little
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> On Behalf Of Dave Torr
> Sent: Tuesday, 10 August 2010 8:46 AM
> To: birding-aus
> Subject: [Birding-Aus] Dick Smith's Population Puzzle
>
> I had the good fortune last night to attend the launch of Dick Smith's film
> "Population Puzzle". The event was hosted by Kelvin Thomson - the only
> Federal MP who has been prepared to speak out consistently against a "Big
> Australia" and Dick himself was in attendance at the end to answer
> questions. The film is wide ranging, looking at development issues, why we
> need to import skilled labour (and the effect this has on developing
> countries), food resources (if we keep paying farmers to stop growing
> things
> what does the future hold) and greenhouse gases (hard to take from someone
> travelling around by helicopter and large 4WD!). Inevitably the film is
> simplistic in places and one-sided, but hopefully will stimulate debate. As
> birders we should surely be concerned about how much space will be left for
> birds in a country of 35million!
>
> The film shows on ABC1 on Thu 12th 8:30pm.
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