Comments

The population statistics have little meaning to the mainstream population when expressed as a national aggregate. A figure of 35 million or 50 million for the whole of Australia may sound small or large. This is reflected in the contradictory results of The Age/Nielson poll.

It is important to first appreciate the inherent weaknesses of statistics and of survey sampling of quantitative data.

Australia’s population size has a comparable meaning as world population being about 6.7 Billion. The mainstream will ask, so how does that impact on me? How do people evaluate whether a figure is acceptable or too large?

Well, when that figure is expressed as a relative change or is translated to the scale of the person being surveyed. For instance, If Australia’s population in November 2009 is about 22 million, then 50 million represents a doubling of the current figure. In order to objectively guage public opinion about projected population growth and immigration, the Age/Nielson poll ought to ask is: Is the doubling of Australia’s population from what it is now to what it may be in forty years time an acceptable level of population growth? This allows the respondent to a survey assess the figure relative to what they know now. It is important to be aware that population growth and immigration, while related, are different statistics.

Further, the national figure should be translated into a likely proportion on a State basis (which in Australia would in the main be the same as the Capital City of that State. For instance, NSW (or Sydney) may typically have a third the population of Australia (see ABS statistics below). So another survey question could ask: Is an increase of Sydney’s population by 13 million (1/3 of 40 million) an acceptable level of population growth?

MARCH KEY FIGURES

Population at end Mar qtr 2009
PRELIMINARY DATA '000
________________________________________
New South Wales 7 076.5
Victoria 5 402.6
Queensland 4 380.4
South Australia 1 618.2
Western Australia 2 224.3
Tasmania 501.8
Northern Territory 223.1
Australian Capital Territory 349.9
Australia(a) 21 779.1
________________________________________
(a) Includes Other Territories comprising Jervis Bay Territory, Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

SOURCE: Australian Bureau of Statistics

Yes, we must question the validity of the poll – the collection, analysis and interpretation of the population data. The statistical method used by Age/Neilson should be independently peer scrutinised, to ensure best practice is followed and so the public and federal policy makers alike are not mislead with inappropriate findings. “Statistics is the science of making effective use of numerical data relating to groups of individuals or experiments. It deals with all aspects of this, including not only the collection, analysis and interpretation of such data, but also the planning of the collection of data, in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.”
[SOURCE: Wikipedia citing Dodge, Y. (2003) The Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms, OUP]

I question whether in this poll whether indeed effective use has been made of the numerical data.

Mr Rudd needs to decide whether he will continue to serve the interests of the property sector or whether he will provide ordinary Australians with affordable housing, but he cannot do both.

Some good points have been made here and above, but I think they fall into the trap of crediting the growth pushers with far less nefarious motives than they deserve to be.

That population growth could possibly be good is self-evidently ridiculous.

Once, decades ago, before Australia reached its population size, maybe.

And just maybe, theoretically, in the future, if we can somehow fix up the land, our forests and our waterways, take proper care of all our endangered fauna and flora and all agree to live in a far less materially profligate fashion, we may be able to squeeze a few more millions into our now largely barren and dry continent.

But, today, amidst the ecological crises and crises of resource scarctiy, on top of the chaos and waste caused by extreme laissez faire free market capitalism, it is insane from the point of view of our society as a whole, and these economists who pretend otherwise are lying through their teeth.

They are lying on behalf of a cynical parasitic elite amongst us, who have calculated that by trashing our environment with more people and making us all, on average, necessarily poorer and by wasting enormous resources coping with the diseconomies of scale you refer to, they can profit at an even further cost to the rest of us.

All the economic activity of the population-growth-pushing sector adds nothing to the overall wealth of this nation[1] but takes a good deal away.

The people pushing population growth are the moral equivalent of those who would burn a house to the ground in order to destroy any possible evidence linking them to the burglary of that house.

The only thing more stupid than 'growing' an economy through population growth is 'growing' and economy through war.

For further information, please read "How the growth lobby threatens Australia's future" of 24 Jan 09.

Footnotes

1. Arguably, wealth brought in by immigrating overseas elites, and to a smaller degree, some of those with skills trained by other, often poorer societies, could be considered in some sensed as exceptions to this as it would add to the overall wealth of this nation, but at the expense of the overall wealth of the nation from which they come. Of course almost none of this wealth would end up in the hands of ordinary Australians.

The following is from an article, "'A Parcel of Rogues' Musical Interlude" on the blog Mild Colonial Boy, which includes an excerpt from this article.

The Corries — Such a Parcel Of Rogues in the Nation

The Corries sing a poem of Robert Burns written in 1791 to protest the Acts of Union 1707. Some Scots, such as Robert Burns, saw it as an act of betrayal by a traitorous Political Elite handing over Scotland to alien masters.

Some Readers may see parallels to the Australia of today with it’s Political Elites’ handing Australia over to the whims of foreigners through the bipartisan policies of high Immigration and Multiculturalism at the expense of traditional Australia.

Such a Parcel Of Rogues in the Nation

by Robert Burns

Fareweel to a’ our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory!
Fareweel ev’n to the Scottish name.
Sae famed in martial story!
Now Sark rins over Salway sands,
An’ Tweed rins to the ocean,
To mark where England’s province stands --
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

What force or guile could not subdue
Thro’ many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor’s wages.
The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in valour’s station;
But English gold has been our bane --
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

O, would, or I had seen the day
That Treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay
Wi’ Bruce and loyal Wallace!
But pith and power, till my last hour
I’ll mak this declaration :-
‘We’re bought and sold for English gold’--
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

Great article, Sheila.

You wrote:

Clearly the Murdoch Press is pleased with Kevin Rudd's performance to date and they don't regret the departure of Howard, although they know that some of their readers still do.

My own view is that the Murdoch press would have preferred that Howard win the 2007 election. Of course, they make much of their editiorials immediately prior to the election (Thursday in the Courier Mail as I recollect), after much ostensible weighing up of the relative merits of the two supposedly 'worthy candidates', calling for a vote for Mr. Rudd

Clearly, to maintain their value as propaganda organs, the Australian the Courier-Mail and other Murdoch papers have to, on occasions, tell the truth and appear to take the side of the people.

They did the latter prior to the 2007 elections.

If they had not, and had overtly supported, yet again, the lying, incompetent, and malevolent Howard Government, their ability to subsequenlty fool public opinion and to corral the Rudd Government into accepting its agenda would have been far more limited.

It seems more than likely than not that they judged that they could not save Howard's miserable hide, yet again, in 2007. In fact, to me, it seems more likely that overt support for Howard by the Murdoch Press in the 2007 elections may actually have worked against him.

So, instead they hedged their bets.

In fact, given the mountain of scandals against the Howard Government, the Murdoch press was indeed heavily biased in favour of Howard Government. As one of many examples I could give: remember the AWB scandal, in which the Howard Governmnt allowed AU$296 of bribe money to be paid to the same regime of Saddam Hussein that, in 2003, it insisted was such a mortal threat to world peace, that we were left with no choice but to immediately invade Iraq then and there? Like most Australians, I believe that Howard and Downer knew precisely what was going on all along and, therefore, belong behind bars. However the Australian, feigning astonishing gullibility, insisted that it was all the fault of the AWB bosses and that Howard and Downer had truly been kept in the dark.

Even if the Australian could possibly have accepted such a tall story, at the very least it owed to its readers to remind them, and repeatedly remind them, until election day that it was unfit to hold office. Given its role in bringing about the early election that resulted in the removal of the Whitlam Government in 1975 for alleged incompetence of a far smaller magnitude, why didn't it demand new elections then and there?

The fact that the Howard Government ever stood a chance of being re-elected after the essential truth of the AWB scandal became known is an indication of the media's, and in particular, the Murdoch media's, blatant bias in favour of John Howard that continued right up to election day in 2007. (Some may be interested in a post I wrote arguing essentially the same on an Online Opinion disscussion forum in response to the article "Judging Howard" by Chris Lewis of 7 Sep 09.)

The fact that the Australian's strategy of hedging its bets now seems to have paid off shouldn't therefore be taken as proof that they prefer Labor over the Coalition. However rotten Federal Labor in Government may be, it still appears to be subject to more constraints from their grass roots membership and trade union base, from behaving like the tyrannical feudal despots that the Coalition in Government has shown itself to be.

So, even though a Federal Labor Government may not be ideal for Murdoch, it's a damn good consolation prize.

Given a few more months of Federal Labor incompetence and trampling on its own support base, having them thrown out and replaced by the more trusty Coalition Federal Government should not pose an inordinately difficult challenge to the Murdoch Press, that is unless, we remain vigilant against it.

It's important that we do what we can to prevent the Murdoch Press orchestrating political events to suit its own agenda as it has many times in the past. However much we rightly feel revulsion at the Rudd Government we should not allow ourselves to automatically fall into line behind any future demands by the Mrudoch press for its removal.

Of course, what has to be done is to build a viable political alternative to both the Coalition and Labor. The Greens still appear, in spite of havinn almost countless opportunities handed to them on platters in recent decades, incapable of becoming that alternative. So it seems that that alternative will have to come from elsewhere.