bcworld

True, but when Peter Beattie started praying for rain, the writing was on the wall - he left it too late to start building anyway...SE Qld was very lucky.

fish.01

I think we can always rely on our summer storms to come back to us like an old friend The flood indicators on the side of the regatta hotel make you wonder how lack of water could ever really be an issue here

Sherlock Holmes

With regard to water supply, which is, IMHO, the biggest factor in all this, there are many facets (or is that faucets) to consider.

I am told that sufficient water falls on the populated area of Sydney to meet its needs but insufficient water falls in the actual catchment areas.

There is still not enough disincentive to use water. Here in my little corner, the service charge for water is high but the metered rate is low. So even if you have rain water tanks and use them, you still get hammered by the service charge.

Catch 22 is that until there are enough people paying tax, the infrastructure won't be built. Without the infrastructure, water supply may fail.

The official population of Melbourne is about 4 million. It is considered in some quarters to be actually 4.5 million.

It'll be a sad day when Geelong and Melbourne become the same place.

Someone here stated quite correctly that Australians like their space. However, if left to people already living here to increase the population, it will only grow very slowly, if history is anything to go by. Some increase in population is necessary to sustain demand in a western style economy and to provide for pension income. Without population increase there will be an inverted triangle with retirees outnumbering those in work. This implies that some immigration is going to have to happen. I dont wish to be rude but a lot of those immigrants will be prepared to live in humbler surroundings.

There is no federal approach to the water problem. My $900.00 rebate from the water company for putting in another tank was very nice but it won't exactly stop Adelaide from running dry.

As well as the catchments in Sydney not being sufficient, water in the top end is allowed to just run off in the wet season, when it does rain a lot in South Australia, excess water just runs over the cliffs into the sea.

Personally, being very selfish, I don't want to see a huge increase in population but the fact is, there is sufficient rainfall over Australia to support a higher population if the water were to be managed properly.

Lastly, as no one has mentioned it (before I started typing anyway) the middle east / arabia has done very nicely out of desalination plants (paid for from oil revenue) - maybe the resources taxes could be funnelled into doing something about water supply Unlikely........

Coryate

There is also the Climate change problem, no one can be sure how it will affect the rainfall, and probable rise in the sea level.

29palms

Melbourne could easily become a city of 7 million how:

Look at the land area for starters Melbournes urban footprint is bigger than Londons with half the population~ The reason, no density outside of the CBD, with traditional plot housing spreading out through the suburbs

Melbourne could grow quite easliy providing its planned correctly by the state and federal gov'ts! Of which they are now accepting is the only acceptable solution
By
1. Building up alreday established areas within the metro area where infrastructure exists! Especially around existing transport~
That means allowing controlled density....Just like any other major city in the world
2. Not continuing the urban sprawal of crap houses in areas with no infrastructre!

THR

30 years is a long time and anything can happen. Most probably the emphasis of the world economy will have shifted permanently in the Asia-Pacific region and even countries of the region which today are poor by any standards such as Vietnam or Indonesia will be prosperous countries in 30 years time. Cities like Sydney and Melbourne will be in a pivotal role in the future so perhaps the idea of both cities having more than 7m people by the time is not as unrealistic after all. However, as the combined population of both cities is curretly 1/3 of the population of all of Australia, they must grow much faster than the population of Australia as a whole because I doubt it that in 30 years time the population of Australia is going to be 45m.

ABCDiamond

TV program on Lizards in the Australian Great Victoria Desert mentioned that last night.
The desert areas are shrinking, while the green areas, around the deserts, are increasing, due to the increase in water, following climate change.

ozzieeagle

Thats strange, my sons freinds father, works in Quantum Physics at Melbourne Uni, Apparently Australia is currently leading the field at building creating Biological expandable Computer Memory out of Bacteria. He also gets a spell on the LHC in Switzerland at some point in the future. Plenty of research here. In fact both of this Kids Parents are Scientists in research facilities here in Melbourne and spend plenty of time around the world swapping research.

Then there is this Organisation....

CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, is Australia's national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world.

http://www.csiro.au/

iamthecreaturefromuranus

There's a thread on here about Canadians moving to Australia.. start one on the Maple Leaf about Australians moving to Canada and see how it goes.
Not very scientific but could be interesting.

ABCDiamond

Canada does have a larger total migration intake, maybe a less strict immigration regime than Australia ?

Canada gets about 7,000 British migrants each year
Australia gets about 21,000 British migrants each year

Some details:
In 2006, Canada received 236,756 immigrants.
The top twelve source countries were
28,896 China
28,520 India
19,718 Philippines
9,808 Pakistan
8,750 United States
7,324 United Kingdom
7,195 Iran
5,909 South Korea
5,382 Colombia
4,068 Sri Lanka
4,026 France
4,025 Morocco

In 2007/08 Australia received 158,021 immigrants
The top twelve source countries were

25,578 New Zealand
21,545 United Kingdom
17,283 India
15,803 China
7,201 South Africa
5,942 Philippines
4,130 Iraq
4,078 Sri Lanka
3,324 Malaysia
2,898 Vietnam
2,805 Korea
2,559 Thailand

Mr Grumpy

The figures for Australia dont include onshore PR grants. Easily add another 50,000-60,000 on top of that.

ABCDiamond

2008-09 Total was 171,318

• 63,389 Onshore
• 107,929 Offshore

Where did you find the 2007-08 to total up to 208,000 ? I haven't been able to locate a split for that year.

But if correct, offshore immigration is dropping, by a big number, about 50,000. !

2007 158,021
2008 107,929