To keep Australia a comfortable place to live in, is 20 million about enough people?

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Brent W

Australia is huge.But sounds like you have not been here.The place is mostly desert.The soil is not rich enough to clear all the timbered areas.
We have water troubles and the worst drought on record.We have big cities but in half an hour or so you are out in the bush.The jobs are on the coast as it is the most fertile area and close to the ports and other infrastructure.If you just built a city in the middle of nowhere you have to build a new travel corridor,dams etc,in marginal land.
Don't let the size of the country fool you.It is dry and hot out there!

fruitsalad

I don't think we need to grow the population - what for? Larger populations put our water and other resources under strain. Let's make it a great place for a population of 20 million.
The bulk of the interior is completely unusable desert.

Ergot W

In which places inland is there plenty of water? Yes, there is plenty of water in Tasmania but they don't have the infrastructure there. Which other places? Which industries will give the immigrants work? And you are wrong about the population density of Australian cities being high- in many parts of the world there are many more people per acre than in Sydney for example. Of course immigrants mostly go to the coast, for the same reson the rest of us do, as well as the additonal one of keeping in contact with others of the same culture. In places like Shepparton in Vic and Toowooomba in Q there are efforts to place numbers of immigrants near each other, but it takes time to organise that. Sadly, there are prejudiced people who do their best to scapegoat newcomers -- I hope you are not one of them, you seem quite ill-informed.

cc_of_0z

20 million is just a little too much in my opinion.

The federal government has for years encouraged immigration for economic reasons. What they fail to understand though is the country doesn't have enough resources to accommodate all these people.

Australia is the driest continent (excluding Antarctica). Currently most Australian cities are on permament water restrictions. The larger ones are now installing desalinisation plants to keep up with the water needs of the population we have now. Regional centres are seriously considering using recycled water for drinking. The country has been in the worst drought for more than 10 years. We do have the water resources in abundance in the far northern of the continent. The government however deems it too costly to dam rivers and transport that water to the south, and there is little infrastructure available to build new cities in the north.

Australia currently sources most of its energy from Coal power stations. In the summer these power stations are overloaded now. Adding more population is only going to make things worse. With climate change forcing movement away from fossil fuels, it is going to be costly making the switch to renewable energy.

Australia used to be known as the land of the 3/4 acre block. Not anymore. The cost of land and existing homes is skyrocketing to the point where new home buyers are being priced out of the market entirely. Local governments are jumping over themselves to turn old larger blocks into micro estate medium density and high density housing. Getting a property with beach access on the east coast is a pipe dream unless you have millions to spend.

I agree that the government should be upgrading infrastructure- big time- in regional Australia. For some reason they keep slamming all the big industrial projects into the ever more cramped state capitals. What they should be doing is putting in high speed rail corridors between the the regional cities (Dubbo, Wagga Wagga, Albury etc) and the capitals. They should get behind the Melbourne-Canberrra-Sydney-Brisbane VFT (very fast train) project and make it happen. Once this is in place, they should put Sydneys new international airport out at Goulburn in the southern Highlands. If Tokyo Narita can be 200kms from the Japanese capital, so can ours. 20 years ago or more the West Australian state government proposed damming the giant Fitzroy river in the north of that state and piping the water to Perth and then east the other states. During the wet season, there is enough water travelling though the Fitzroy to fill up the entire Sydney harbour every 3 minutes. This project got knocked on the head because of "cost". The original proposal was to put water and natural gas (from the huge gas fields in the region) in the same pipes and send the both to the same destinations. So of course the WA state government cans that and puts in a highly polluting desalinisation plant instead.

Australian governments are sorely lacking in vision and foresight. The sooner they start looking at future needs and expansion, the sooner we can take in more people as needed.

Rod Rye

We could handle many many times more without going into 'the desert'. We are NOT adequately handling the GROWTH in many places though, this has nothing to do with the extra population, but with the lag the infrastructure has behind it. There has been a huge lack of investment in most public works over the last 10 years.

FORKY

our population is enough-shut the doors now,invest in our youth instead of bringing in overseas labour and refugees that are only a burden on our economy,the government should invest more in getting our own youth skilled up.water is an issue and so are other resources-lets keep our little paradise to our selves and not turn it into Europe or Asia.

p.s please don't take this as a racist answer,immagration has made what we are but lets keep it that way for all of us

Ranjeeh D

We are close to the maximum that can be supported by the climate etc. already. To support more we would have to build numerous nuclear powered power plants just to drive the water desalination plants.

Roasted BumÂ©

Australia looks more like china when I went there for a vacation seriously.

Mick H

im confused. why would they build cities inland :S
there is no water or vegetation. its predominantly desert.
nevertheless Australia is the 6th largest country in the world. Has an extremely expansive coastline...and this notion that 'everyones packed into the coastline' is completely untrue. you have capital cities of with very small populations...and the other coastal towns are all desolate - particularly outside NSW and victoria..and even nsw towns rarely exceed a population of around 250,000...'the new china'. rofl
some of you aussies should see what nations such as brazil are like in terms of dense major cities (rainforest covers large quantities of brazils landspace)....here in london even....Just try thinking outside your little utopia before you continue moaning about immigration...you all need to pull those diggerydoos out of your buttocks

Australia could accomodate hundreds of milions of people. It's huge, this is a stupid question, people don't have to use the same cities, they can expand or build new ones.

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