Answering those who imagine Labor could solve this problem by better planning or by allocating more funds, Thomson suggests they do not understand the crippling effect of the infrastructure costs imposed by population growth. On this, he cites the work of US economist Lester Thurow and University of Queensland agricultural economist Jane N. O'Sullivan. O'Sullivan has argued that these costs, amounting to some A$200,000 of infrastructure per extra Australian, dwarf the supposed economic advantages. Thomson believes this largely explains why Anna Bligh's seemingly competent Queensland State government suffered the worst defeat of a sitting government in Queensland history, when it was forced to alienate voters by selling off public assets even during an economic boom, and yet could not satisfy the population's demand for infrastructure. He suggests that, "Instead of talking about population size, we should examine the economic impacts of ... population "growth rate"."