In 2012 Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, examined Labor's views on population and environment in his book "Bigger or Better?" Lowe found Labor's stated and de facto population policies, like those of the Liberal Party, to be confused and inconsistent. Lowe argued that these were distorted by a pro-growth ideology that was in conflict with the evidence, and by a failure to understand the infrastructure costs of rapid population growth. By contrast he discussed and commended the arguments in four separate papers by Thomson, noting that collectively these proved that "Thomson is not a 'one-trick pony' obsessed with population to the exclusion of other important issues, but a politician who is thinking deeply about our security and ways to ensure a better future". Lowe also expressed surprise that so much had been made of "Thomson's anodyne reference" for Mokbel, given that Thomson had done "what most MP's do quite routinely, writing a reference for a constituent".