Australia's immigration levels have been at unprecedented highs for some time, and we are reminded in the media of the problems this is causing, such as infrastructure not keeping up with growth, hospitals and schools not coping, constant environmental degradation, unaffordable housing for young people, and cities becoming less liveable. It also seems to have had a negative effect on the budget deficit. None of these arguments seems to have been explored. On the contrary, Triffitt implies that current immigration levels are far too low.

The social effects of mass immigration are not explored. As an emergency services worker who has worked for ten years in western Sydney, I have seen firsthand the problems caused by unsustainable population growth. In Liverpool, most of the houses on quarter-acre blocks have been replaced by hundreds of high rise blocks of units, which have created ethnic ghettos.

An anti-immigration argument (prompted in particular by ecological factors) is not an anti-immigrant argument, as Megalogenis and Triffitt appear to suggest. Australia has undoubtedly gained much from immigrants. Anyone who is not indigenous has benefited from immigration. But does this mean that we should slavishly pursue high immigration programs that are detrimental to the country. Scientists at the CSIRO have been saying for years that we have exceeded our sustainable population capabilities. Australia's environment is totally different from America's or Europe's.

It is highly simplistic to imply that we would become irrelevant if we took the dare I say it bold and innovative step of creating a sustainable population. Watching the lush dairy farming area I grew up in become a massive, ugly sprawl does nothing to incline me to Megalogenis's wrong-headed arguments. There must be more to the Australian culture and economy than the endless construction of new houses and apartment, and the influx of new people. The implication that current Australians are simply not vibrant, innovative, or secure enough is less bold, but rather more insulting.

Andrew Cronin, Robertson NSW

Poet in the family

Dear Editor,
Repeating the fate of Miles Franklin's original punctuation for My Brilliant Career, Susan Lever's review of my biography of Aileen Palmer (ABR, June–July 2016) omits the question mark from her book World Without Strangers? It is also a little ironic that, after more than three hundred pages of my attempting to show that Aileen was more than the woman dubbed by David Martin as 'the tragic daughter' of the Palmers, Dr Lever again reduces her to that with her final sentence: '[Sylvia] Martin has not retrieved a poet, only a suffering woman.'

While my biography does not seek to reclaim Aileen Palmer as a significant Australian poet, it does reveal a brilliant and resilient woman. David Martin, poet and contemporary of the Palmers, concludes his pen portrait of the family with the statement: 'Aileen was the poet'.

Sylvia Martin, Katoomba, NSW

Susan Lever replies:

My review of Sylvia Martin's detailed biography of Aileen Palmer tried to raise the question of what makes a person an appropriate subject for the public scrutiny of a biography. Palmer left plenty of draft novels and diaries behind, and her famous parents put her in a position of interest. Is that sufficient to justify making her sad life the centre of such intense inspection? It may be that biographers see all documented lives as worthy of their interest, but readers may want to know why they should take the trouble. Others may want to destroy any evidence while they can.