we weren't paying off some of the most expensive mortgages in the world due to this artifically distorted dysfunctional housing market? Only the most dimwitted could believe the growth of the economy due to a bigger population base makes up for all these economic costs. Mitor the Bold : 22 Dec 2010 6:52:16pm I'm not convinced 'Autralians' can have a meaningful discussion about population, any more than they can have a meaningful discussion about particle physics. All we're really hearing is fear about change. I doubt when Australia's population was 10m "Australians' felt any differently about it, but the decision wasn't in their hands. Population policy shouldn't be built from the ground up - focus groups are the last place anyone should start. The average person seems to react as though we've got a pie of fixed size that we'll have to divvy-up with more people. Their reactions are consistent with that. Yet when you look at other New World countries with larger populations you see that each arrival has added more than their share to the pie. If America had had this debate 200 years ago they'd only have a population of 50m and be like us. Even with their large population they still admit more than 2 million immigrants per year which is more than Australia has admitted over the last two decades. I agree with Rudd about a big Australia. Bring the people and the infrastructure will follow - America wasn't a bunch of empty roads and