Successive Australian Governments have pushed the immigration barrow as an economical necessity. This claim is baseless.
There is no evidence that Australia’s current immigration policy is doing anything for the economic growth of this country.
In 1907, with a population of less than four million, Australians were the wealthiest people on earth. Now we don’t even rate in the world’s top ten.
Since the early 50’s, Australia’s population has increased by fifteen million people, an unsustainable figure in view of the problems that have developed in the Murray/Darling basin.
The withholding of water to irrigate crops in that area, in the Governments own words, will be devastating for consumers, farmers and the Australian economy.
This development should act as a warning for all Australians as we begin to pay for pushing our fragile country beyond its limits.
Australia is an arid, mostly semi-desert country with poor soils and an unreliable climate.
A United Nations report on sustainable land usage stated that Australia could adequately support a population of no more than fifteen million people.
In total disregard for this report, politicians are boasting that Australia’s population is expected to reach thirty-five million by 2050.
With our capital cities turning into congested ghettoes, and our Nation’s food bowl ruined by over production, droughts and ever increasing water shortages, how can we support a population increase of this magnitude?
The only way Australia will avert a potential calamity is to cap her population at the current twenty-one million people and implement a policy of zero population growth.
We must significantly improve our education facilities and job training programs so we can maintain an adequate skilled labour force and, we must introduce genuine incentives that will reduce this country’s brain drain.
We should also put an end to the one-way, open door policy with our near neighbours.
On the world scene an alarming report from the United Nations states that the world’s population could double to a staggering, twelve billion in fifty years.
This is a frightening statistic when you consider that in 2008, an estimated one billion people go hungry every day.
It’s inevitable, therefore, that unless we control our rampant population growth, our world as we know it today, will not survive beyond the next millennium.
The Discussion Forums became a real life soap opera this week when we discovered we had a couple of drama queens and a spy from another forum in our midst!
It all began two weeks ago when several members of a popular Australian women's forum defected to the AWO Discussion Forums in protest when two of them were banned for life. Suddenly our quiet little forum was over run by forum junkies who spent hours posting messages on topics such as, 'what did you have for dinner?' and 'what's the last thing you brought?' Not really the kind of thing we were use to discussing. But I have to admit that initially we were thrilled to have such an influx of new members in the forums. We had been struggling to attract new members to the Discussion Forums since it opened in May and even though the topic threads were lacking in substance, there was a lot of activity going on and it was quite exciting to see the message boards finally coming to life.
But right from the start I had my reservations about this group of women. Firstly, they all knew each other from another forum and often talked amongst themselves to the exclusion of others. Secondly, it soon became apparent that a few of them were carrying a lot of emotional baggage from what had transpired on the other forum. Thirdly, the group wanted to make some major changes to the AWO Discussion Forums which were contrary to our existing policy of running an open forum where there is no hierarchy of membership. And last but certainly not least, the ring leader was a major drama queen!
Shortly after their arrival another woman joined the forums who said she was from a non English speaking background. My AWO business partner and co-administrator of the forums, Danielle Hutchinson was the first to notice something wasn't quite right there. This woman claimed to be from a non English speaking background and yet the messages she posted on the forum were not consistent with her story. Danielle suspected she was from the other forum sent to spy on our new members, but I told her to just monitor the situation because we didn't want to make this type of accusation unless we were sure.
As I said the ring leader of the new members was a drama queen and when I moved some of the chat threads out of the Members Only Area to the General Chat, she threw a huge tantrum which culminated in her and two others setting up a new forum on their own. I had no problem with that until they used the private message feature on the AWO Discussion Forums to recruit members for their new forum, including one of our moderators. It was at this point the 'spy' decided to blow her own cover posting a message on the forums that only antagonised the whole situation even further. It was really quite ridiculous, a group of grown women throwing tantrums and personally attacking each other on the message boards.
Danielle and myself were finally able to calm everybody down and a few of the new members did decide to leave us. Unfortunately, the drama queen wasn't one of them and when she returned to the forums after an absence of one week, most of the remaining members deserted us - now it's more like a ghost town than a lively discussion forum.
In the middle of all of this, a few men who had objected to what I had to say on the issue of ISP filtering joined the forums just so they could argue with me about it. At one point I had to lock all new member registrations just to keep these guys out because I feared the Discussion Forums would become the battle ground for the debate on ISP filtering. Between these guys and the dramas queens previously mentioned, I tell you the soap operas on TV have nothing on the melodrama that is played out in online forums!
