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Our current immigration rate is too high

It used to be that only xenophobes and economic nationalists opposed increased immigration.

Today, caution is being urged by environmentalists who argue that our ancient continent has already been settled beyond its carrying capacity.

Could Australia increase its population while reducing its footprint?

Can our society cope with the pace of change that increasing numbers of immigrants will force – larger cities, change on change on change?

Discuss this topic

Speakers

For:

• John Sutton is National Secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (the CFMEU) and Vice-President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). He is also a current member of the Australian Department of Immigration Skilled Migration Consultative Panel. He has written articles on immigration published in newspapers such as The Age and submitted papers to government inquiries on the issue.
• Professor Tim Flannery is a world-renowned scientist, author, explorer and was Australian of the Year in 2007.
• Professor Bob Birrell is director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research, Arts at Monash University.

Against:

• Professor Helen Hughes is senior fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies. She is also an economist and former Director of the National Centre for Development Studies at ANU and former member Fitzgerald Committee on Immigration.
• Tom Keneally won the Booker Prize in 1982 with Schindler's Ark, later made
  into the Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg. He
  has written ten works of non-fiction, including his recent memoir
  Searching for Schindler and the histories The Commonwealth of Thieves, The Great Shame and American Scoundrel, and twenty-seven works of fiction, including The Widow and Her Hero (shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award), An Angel in Australia and Bettany's Book. His novels The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest and Confederates were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while Bring Larks and Heroes and Three Cheers for the Paraclete won the Miles Franklin Award.
• Tanveer Ahmed is a psychiatry registrar and opinion columnist for The
  Sydney Morning Herald. His writings often relate to multiculturalism and social affairs. He is an appointee to the Advertising Standards Board, the advisory council to the Smith Family Board and is a previous national representative for junior doctors with the Australian Medical Association. He was recently was chosen as one of the most influential men under the age of forty by Men's Style magazine and by a PM's committee as one of a hundred future leaders of Australia. He has previously performed comedy and co-hosted a prime time gameshow. Tanveer was born in Bangladesh and arrived in Australia aged five. He was raised in western Sydney and was educated in Sydney Grammar School and Sydney University, where he studied arts and medicine.

Chair:

Dr Simon Longstaff is Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre. Simon spent five years studying and working as a member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Having won scholarships to study at Cambridge, he read for the degrees of Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy. He was inaugural President of The Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics and is a Director of a number of companies. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Foreign Policy Association, based in New York. Simon has been Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre since shortly after it was founded.