Well, I came over to Australia in 1982 and the population was c19 million. 29 years later and the population is c22 million. That's an increase of c3 million in nearly 30 years.

So if history is anything to go by, Australia has no chance of doubling it's population in the next 30 years.

And Australia isn't the only seller...

I guess by c19 million you mean c15 million.

Not so:

From the ABS:
Population today: 22 583 791
Population 1982: 15 288 891
Growth: 7 294 900

Well I did say circa. I could've sworn it was a bit higher than 15 mil though.

Even so, a 7 million increase in population over a 30 year period is a far cry from a doubling of the population.

I thought it was a bit dodgy because it was c20m in 2004 when I arrived.

Who knows. From what I read on the ABS website, Australia's population is growing at about 350k per year at the moment. A rough calculation, and allowing for no compounding, shows that in 30 years this will be an extra 10.5m people, so 33m. If you start compounding then it could easily double. Saying that, it depends on government policies ie big Australia or not. If Australia wants high growth then immigration will have to increase.

I'm not getting into a shit fight over this BTW

Bob may well be right, the Bobs of this world should be listened to

Even though Australia's birth-rate is far higher than its death-rate the vast majority of the population increase comes from immigration. All the future projections of Australia's population assume that the immigration-rate will stay at the current rate. I think making those population projections to something like 50 years away in the future is a bit silly as anything can happen in the meantime. A political party which opposes immigration may come to power or for one reason or another Australia may lose its appeal as a destination of emigration.

I agree with this

The birth rate will need to increase also and Australia will need to find a way to retain people. One of Australias problems is that the "best and brightest" tend to move overseas for opportunities.

If Australia's economy goes belly up due to things such as a carbon tax/trading there will be a mass exodus of people and businesses.

Damn!

And it's the immigrants that have the highest birth rates, especially the muslim population.

Adding 50% to the population over 30 years is not unheard of in Aus. It's more like the norm.

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=...tion+australia

But they're less than 2% of the population. I think other groups have high birth rates as well.

2%... Not for long if they their birth rates remain consistently higher than other groups. Of course other groups do as well but I was just using muslims as an example.

That was the theory in Northern Ireland as well.

I wonder if there are any stats on this. It would be interesting to see if this is perception or reality.

Surely you must mean that every year an equivalent of 2% of the population of Australia moves to Australia; not that only 2% of the entire population would be immigrants, which in Australia's case is most certainly not true.