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THERE is a permanent battle in Australia over the country's intake of migrants, with business pushing for a sharp increase and trade unions, academics and environmentalists pushing for virtually zero-growth policy.
But both the Liberal Government and the Labor Opposition are now looking at ways to accept more migrants, mainly those with badly-needed skills.
If Australia's current birth rate and immigration intake stays the same, the country's population will stabilise at slightly more than $20 million by 2020 and then start to fall.
Academic estimates set the fall at about three-quarters of a per cent each year by the middle of this century.
This no-change policy contrasts with calls by business leaders and some public figures for a population target of 50 million by 2050.
Most people who advocate such a dramatic population increase usually cite immigration as the vehicle for growth. However, such a policy shift would shock Australian society.
Professor Peter McDonald, head of the Australian National University's demography programme and author of Family Trends and Structure in Australia, says that a 250 per cent increase in Australia's population by 2050 would require a rise in annual net migration of about 500,000.
But the reality is that with Australia's fertility rate falling - it is now about 1.7 children for each woman and decreasing - the country needs to boost migration just to maintain zero population growth.
This is one reason the Government and Opposition are talking about such a boost, with Prime Minister John Howard restating his view that there should be a more comprehensive debate.
Placing it in the context of "nation building", he said he was against a fixed population target but open to argument for migration growth.
"If I could be persuaded there are immediate-term dividends for a lift in the immigration target, well, I'd be in favour of it," Mr Howard said.
He is not the only politician talking about immigration - his deputy, National Party leader John Anderson, regularly warns his rural constituency that the decline of the bush will worsen if the population keeps falling.
And Labor's population spokesman Martin Ferguson reinforced his party's commitment to a higher migrant intake.
And now new Bureau of Statistics numbers point to an increase in net migration of 14 per cent from July to November last year, after a 22 per cent jump in 1998-99.
These new figures show that, when arrivals from New Zealand and other visitors who work or study are added to the official statistics, the monthly intake has risen from 6600 in 1998 to 9100 by the end of last year.