THE “you say Malaysia, I say Nauru” discourse that now represents political debate in Australia is indicative of just how out of touch our political parties are with the electorate.

While Labor navel gazes in a bid to attract more members and Tony Abbott rushes off to Nauru in search for another point of conflict, the electorate is left unheard and without a voice.

The asylum issue is being played for all its worth by both sides of politics determined to distract the electorate from the problem pouring in through the front door.

Despite two Labor governments, Anna Bligh in Queensland and Labor federally, holding summits and forums on the growth issue neither have done anything to address it.

Predictably Labor nationally has made much noise but allowed net annual overseas migration to stick at 180,000.

The real cost is apparent when it is understood that 60% of that number represents dependents of the skilled labour government says it wants to attract.

It is a level of growth that delivers on the projections being used in Queensland to justify planning decisions that will leave the South-East’s tourism industry and much-vaunted “lifestyle” further compromised.

It satisfies the needs of developers and big-box retailers but does not address community concern expressed in countless surveys on the subject.

Incredible angst can be generated by a proposed $20 a tonne carbon tax but nothing is said about former Productivity Commission member Professor Tor Hundloe’s findings that 20 cents in every dollar spent on goods and services in South-East Queensland is absorbed by the cost of congestion.

Now, there are two ways to look at that particular problem. One is that you slow population growth to within the economy’s capacity to fund infrastructure to support it.

The other is to borrow more to pay for sufficient of it in the hope the economy will grow to support the debt.

The electorate wants something of the first.

Both sides of politics, however, remain transfixed by the sector interests that want the easiest route to profit regardless of the real cost.

Of course smart nations, with solid investment in education, understand sustainable economic growth is possible without population growth.

The State Budget will blame the floods for its woes, ignore the simple fact that infrastructure that just keeps pace with population growth is recurrent expenditure and not investment, and hope for salvation via the resource sector.

That in turn is dependent on China which two weeks ago had to inject $465 billion into its economy to clean up bad local government debt.