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  1. Very good analysis by previous writers.Was taken by Myles observations since I spent many years in the US.We could learn from California which is now on fire with 40million folks but used to have only 12 million when I went there.

  2. I’m a 53 yr old Australian native citizen, living as an ex-pat in the USA (have been since 1989). I return home once each year to see family, etc. I’ve done this for the past 5 years in a row. Normally we land in Sydney and then shuttle to a domestic connection to my home town of Adelaide. It gives me a strange perspective, because each trip is an A-B comparison of Australia current, with Australia 12 months ago.

    Our last trip was July 12th 2018 and we returned on July 29th 2018. When we arrived in Sydney, in the international terminal, the passenger representation was about 80% Asian. When we transferred to the domestic terminal, that ratio dropped to about 20%. Clearly there are a lot of Asian travelers coming into Sydney and staying in the Sydney area. The place was congested, and staff short tempered at airline transfer points, etc.

    When we arrived in Adelaide, we saw a city that had turned about 50% Asian. The entire western half of the city is dominated by the University of SA that is advertising everywhere for foreign students. The high-rise flat boom to provide housing is out of control – cranes everywhere. The streets are still narrow, congested and dangerous. But the number of Asian immigrants is startling. Businesses are accommodating this economic shift by their signs having Mandarin first, English second.

    Now I live in a country where I am an immigrant, and the USA is basically a land of immigrants. But the one thing that is pretty decent here is infrastructure. Roads are well designed, airports serve their populations pretty well, Internet is widely available and relatively fast. Sure, things could be better, but this place has risen to the challenge for population growth. Despite that, we have a pretty flat population growth right now, even for states like Arizona that border with Mexico. This is a far more integrated society, and despite what the press might have you believe, everyone here really does just get along and it works.

    But when we flew back out of Sydney, I was confronted by a situation where clearly it doesn’t work. Roads that had been supposedly “upgraded” for better transit, failed. The 1 mile trip from our hotel to the international terminal took 45 minutes and that is on a Sunday morning. When we got there, we were diverted to a parking garage to exit the taxi rather than curbside. Every person working there diverting traffic was of Indian decent. The cab driver who had lived in Sydney for 32 years, complained at the massive population epidemic he was seeing on a daily basis. He was specific about Indian immigration explosion in addition to the Chinese immigration increases. He stated that in his opinion Australian population census numbers were wrong, specifically because they didn’t include temporary or student VISAs in their numbers. He said he felt the numbers were more like about 32 million at the current time.

    It was clearly dysfunctional. No infrastructure has been properly planned out for this, nor are any upgrades addressing the problem. But first I believe the Australian leadership must admit that it is a problem. They appear to be scared to address the issue as they might be considered “racist” or something. This is nothing to do with racism. It’s about pure mismanagement of population growth, or even allowing the Australian people to have their vote or say in whether they want population growth. The reality is that the mining boom that sustained Australia through the GFC, stopped. And when that stopped, a country addicted to debt and borrowings, that is teetering on the brink of a housing market collapse with unsustainable housing prices will fail unless more growth can be sustained. The only growth appears to be based on increasing immigration numbers, but this isn’t going to work. Jobs don’t get created with more people when you have automation removing the number of jobs that a machine can do. No business leader will pay millions in salaries, deal with trade unions, etc. if they can have an army of robots to do the work. The capital investment is finite for machines, and maintenance is not that expensive when compared with hourly human labor rates.

    So if you have a country growing at what appears to me something more like 20% a year, no infrastructure to support it, and the threat of less employment because of automation, those that own the robots make the wealth and those that are subservient to the robots are the poor. A country of 50 million in poverty is more representative of the neighboring economies to Australia.

    The insanity of unsustainable population growth, coupled with no plan for infrastructure and no plan for re-educating existing citizens due to automation reducing the labor requirements, is a recipe for disaster and Australia will likely be the world’s canary in the coal mine with this. I feel for my country, because after this last trip, I don’t think I can ever come home again. At least not as a citizen living there. My hopes to do that in retirement have been dismembered and we are about to purchase property & land in Mexico because it offers a far better future for my family than my own home country.

    It is very sad to come to this realization, but I implore anyone who can do anything to stand up to this stupidity before it is too late. And I commend Dick Smith for making this a front & center issue and driving politicians to address it. Let’s get behind him on this and get some sanity back into the planning before it is too late.

    Myles

  3. But just listen to SBS. They keep on plugging the notion that we are a successful multicultural nation. They are all immigrants themselves who have self interest at heart under the guise of being inclusive and tolerant and accepting. They are deaf to the reality of the social problems you describe. As for infrastructural deficiencies I hope the cities all choke and grind to a standstill to highlight the dumb stupidity of all those who encourage the mass migration to this desert country. A country with a pretty fragile natural environment that is already groaning under the pressure of human encroachment.
    But overpopulation is a world problem. Australia is just taking up the overflow from the rest of the world who have completely messed up their own country’s social, environmental and economic structures. People just DO NOT KNOW HOW TO STOP MAKING BABIES all over the world. Australia and the world can expect much more trouble yet. Do not fear about that.

  4. Multiculturism is not an antidote for inane overpopulation

  5. Yes it should be an integrated society, not multicultural. We are having to supply more and more money for communities to celebrate their own cultures, while we are losing our Australian culture. It should just be, “we are one. “

  6. I am an immigrant of about 30+ years and whilst I like to believe that in the past Australia had genuine needs for immigrants, the current drivers seem to be based on pure economic desperation, void of any clear vision, and oblivious to the burden it has put on its existing population and environment.

    People might be interested to know that a percentage of the immigrants are what I call as “reluctant immigrants”. I am referring to Contributory Parent Immigrants who have paid large sums of money (as Visa Application Charge 2) to be close to their loved ones, but eventually many of these parents realise they prefer to return to their home country. Enshrined in Immigration Act is the regulation 2.12H (2) which is deliberately designed to reject any claim for VAC2 refund for those parents whom have decided to return to their home country.

    How do I know this? When I was purposing a similar case, this information was communicated to me in writing by the person second in charge of the contributory parent immigration program.

  7. consider this as a solution, put pressure on all party’s to bring into there election platform a 2 child limit for all. as most family’s here already don’t have, or plan to have more then that. according to the average. it will make Australia look far less attractive to immigrate to. so our population would over time start to fall with natural wastage . hell that would drop house prices and leave room for the odd endangered species or two, we go hundreds to pick from. and if you want 10 kids, emigrate to somewhere else.. so simple.

  8. What a reality check! I think this will become a major issue for the next Federal election, next year, though the major parties & The Greens would like it to go away! It won’t.

  9. Actually the article is quite worrying. Especially the part where it is stated that we are one of the safest countries in the world. Unfortunately we are seeing more organised crime than ever before and a lot of it is ethnically based. Another concern is that so many parts of Sydney have now become entrenched ethnic ghettoes from which many Anglo Australians are leaving because they no longer feel comfortable or safe in their own homes. Whilst this is referred to pejoratively as “white flight,” authorities can ignore the problems as racially based. But we are becoming a nation of tribes and multiculturalism encourages this instead of us all integrating as a community. And as our population increases virtually out of hand, we are only going to see the problems worsen, especially our lack of infrastructure and an ever increasing demand on housing, health services and welfare .

  10. You are totally on the money.
    Australia has been overrun by having no population policy other than BIG.
    I hope voters get the message. 70k max per year with an increase in refugees.
    The sustainable population party is closest to this in policy.

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