Gerard Henderson, a steady stayer and let a thousand fields bloom with happy migrants

How did the big betting plunge go?

Sadly I missed out, only by a length, but enough to spoil the day.

What's that you say, the monstrosity known as the Melbourne Cup has yet to run?

Well here in the heartland we keep a sense of priority, an awareness of more important and significant competitions.

And there's Gerard Henderson in The Sydney Morning Herald proving yet again that the tried and true stayer is always the most reliable competitor, with Big is beautiful in a land that thrives on foreign affairs.

First mention of John Howard in the column: 4th paragraph

Number of mentions of John Howard in column: five.

Yep, all I needed was the first mention to fall in the third paragraph, and it was off to the Bahamas with me. Well that's the way it goes, such is life as that reprobate Ned Kelly might say, but it does give a clue to the kind of competitor you need for the other cup - nothing flash, but tried and true, dull repetitious plodding, a lifting and lowering of hooves until you hit the finish line.

Henderson also offers a bonus for the wild card gamblers willing to stake everything on the pace of a pair of blowflies racing up the window pane, by throwing in three mentions of Bob Menzies, and for diehard leftists who refuse to gamble on the right, even manages to weave Arthur - two wongs don't make a white - Calwell into his opening narrative. As well as Ben Chifley and Doc Evatt, as if a history of the nineteen fifties is a safe guide to the journey Australia will be on by twenty fifty.

The theme for the week? How immigration is a good thing, and how beneficial it will be to have thirty five million in the country.

Well good luck with selling that proposition to the heartland.

At a time when the NSW Labor government couldn't organise a chook raffle, let alone public infrastructure, the notion that millions more will be embedded in the landscape without seriously impacting both the landscape and infrastructure is an interesting proposition, but the mantra of growth has always been deeply rooted in certain economic savant psyches.

Henderson admits to one minor tremor, regarding the availability of housin

This can best be resolved by opening up more land for development, easing development restrictions and reducing the power of public sector unions over transport. Greater competition in transport should increase supply.

This is such transparent nonsense that Henderson immediately veers off into an attack on the Greens for their fear of greater numbers affecting the land in ways that will exceed what we've already achieved in the Murray Darling basin.

It would at least have been more honest if Henderson had said that in places like Sydney we need to pack people into smaller areas - like rats in high development housing - and that all areas, like the folks squawking away on the North Shore about the sanctity of their luxury, will feel the heat. Instead of trying to provide endless rolling quarter acre blocks of suburban housing, apartment living New York style will be the way it will go.

And the notion that making public transport "competitive" will solve current problems is so fanciful that I've taken to wandering around Harry Potter style pointing a wand, and saying "Abracadabra competition hocus pocus", and things are transformed right before my eyes.

But if Henderson falls at the first hurdle - stayers shouldn't try the jumps - by declaring population growth is a good thing, and it will make us all the richer, by not bothering to examine the implications or how this might be managed, he's in good company. Every politician in the country ducks and weaves the issue, understandable as they are currently failing so dismally at handling the current patterns of urban growth. Nathan Rees as a futurist? Surrealist more like it.

But Henderson does at least make one remark that will get him in trouble with the commentariat columnist brigade, and which you should try out by ringing in to a shock jock when the opportunity presents itself. Here's what you say:

The overwhelming majority of migrants are bright, hard working and make a positive contribution to society and the economy. Ethnic crime is relatively low and ethnic intermarriage relatively high.

Said by a John Howard lover who earlier in his column notes that John Howard ran a high non-discriminatory immigration program during his time in office.

Score one for the prattling Polonious, but see if you get out of talkback land skin intact without being flayed alive, as the hysteria mounts over a few boat people.


Now, with a blithe wave of the hands, the winner of the infrastructure cup for NSW is ...