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Submission No:
Submission Template
Issues Paper on a Sustainable Population Strategy for Australia
Insert your comments in the text box that follows each question. You may answer as many or as few
questions as you like.
A Sustainable Population Strategy
Q1:
What issues do you think a Sustainable Population Strategy for Australia should address?
Our population growth (2.1%/a) is the highest for developed countries, e.g. compared with Canada
0.8%/a, due mainly to overseas migration which is mainly driven by economic rather than social
factors.
Opinion polls have consistently shown that the Australian public are strongly (c. 70%) in favour of
low immigration and, hence by implication, in favour of a population of much the present size.
This was has been shown by a significant minority (c. 10%) who voted for One Nation in the 1998
elections, possibly considered extremists by others, but still the view of Australians. It was also
shown by the success of the Australian Democrats and, more recently, by the growing popularity of
the Greens, who all favour a lower immigration intake.
Based on measures of water resources, of the yields available from arable land, from grazing lands,
of our marine resources; measures of our population trends, of our economy, of our need to export
to pay for our imports, many knowledgeable and concerned commentators argue that Australia
cannot sustain a population much greater than it already has, and perhaps cannot sustain its present
population indefinitely. Much of the damage already down is repairable.
Population and the Environment
Q2:
What do you think are the key indicators of an environmentally sustainable community?
Australians concerned at the prospect of an ever growing population point in evidence to
agricultural land already saline by over-irrigation, or eroded by clearing, to dwindling rain forests and
marine yields, to multiple forms of urban pollution and to the continuing loss of species.
Q3:
How have changes in the population impacted on your local environment?
Like Tim Flannery, I am worried about what effects a growing population will have on the
environment. We live in a fragile country with limited water availability, with a significant
biodiversity crisis, a limited capacity to feed ourselves because our agriculture is under increasing
stress from climate change and other climatic conditions. The increase in congestion and pollution,
due to population increase, in our cities are obvious.
Q4:
How might technological or governance improvements mitigate the environmental impacts of
population growth?
Australia is environmentally a very vulnerable country that requires very careful management by a
limited population, if that environment is not to be destroyed.
It is an item of faith to believe that science and technology will always be able to rectify the damage
caused by businesses and governments. That faith, held by non-scientists, is unjustified.
Q5:
How do population driven changes in your local economy affect your environment?
It is ironic that the increasing need for housing destroys some of the best agricultural land around
cities.
Existing land uses which get intensified under the demands of a larger regional populations include
areas of urban consolidation, transport corridors, sewerage system corridors, natural recreational
areas which cannot be duplicated (e.g. beaches) and higher order services (e.g. schools) which are
not immediately duplicated during population growth.
Q6:
What lessons have we learnt that will help us to better manage the impacts of population
change on the environment?
Probably none: Natural resources are continually being pushed to the breaking point. It must be
remembered that, in environmental terms, Australia is more like Africa than Europe or North
America. The physical size of Australia is largely irrelevant to discussions of the population growth
rate and, in turn, the optimum size of its population.
Population and the Economy
Q7:
What do you see as the defining characteristics of a flourishing and sustainable economy?
We need the wisdom to have economic growth with a steady-state population.
Graeme Hugo’s comment that: we need to have growth, no question about that ... growth with
sustainability, is not reassuring and shows bias on the committee which he chaired. The concept of
sustainability is at best vague, at worst vacuous. But he also stated that the ideal population would
be stable in overall number, which gives some hope for rationality.
It is assumed by many people that the economy will always need more people, business will always
need more customers, governments will always need more taxpayers. However, that is not a valid
argument for eternal growth. There are limits to growth and we need to work out how to grow our
population at the appropriate level over the appropriate time scale.
Sooner or later we must develop an economic system that can cope with zero population growth.
But will the fat cats like being put on a diet?
Q8:
Is your community, business or industry facing skills shortages or other immediate economic
pressures, and how are these best managed?
Skill our own workers to meet the demand: a lot of money is being wasted on universities, we need
more TAFE colleges.
According to a detailed, well argued, report on the Population-Immigration Policy in Australia by
Doug Cocks of the CSIRO: If Australia takes particularly skilled migrants, it may be greedily taking the
very people of most importance to source countries in their attempts to solve their problems of
achieving sustainable societies; effectively an argument against skilled migration and, hence, a
partial argument against population growth.
Q9:
In the decades to come, what challenges and opportunities will our economy face, and how
will they interact with changes in our population?
According to Doug Cocks: Official inquiries and professional economist’s writings, on the supposed
economic benefits of population growth in general, and immigration in particular, have claimed, at
best, minimal short to medium term economic benefits from immigration and have had little of an
analytical nature to say about the long term costs and benefits of population growth.
Unfortunately, economies are extremely complex systems, containing multiple links and feedbacks
between the various economic indicators and it is difficult to draw strong conclusions about the
population effects on them using either formal models or basic economic reasoning. The limited
evidence suggests that effects on most economic indicators lie between being slightly positive and
slightly negative. There is even less evidence as to the effects on economic indicators of long-term
population growth.
Altogether it is difficult to argue that population growth is a necessary condition for an efficiently
operating Australian economy with rising living standards.
Q10: How should we measure the sustainability of our local, regional and national economies?
Resources availability, water, natural resources, agriculture, etc; urban quality of life, land use,
community services, pollutions and congestion, life styles, cultural richness, ethnic antagonisms,
resource use conflicts, etc; and economic factors, interest rates, unemployment levels, wage-levels,
skills availability, city sizes, etc.
Population and Communities
Q11: What are the things that make your community a good place to live?
Social cohesiveness, genuine demonstrated tolerance of all (not just lip service), no ethnic ghettos or
‘no go areas’ were ‘old’ Australians feel alienated.
Q12: How have changes in the population changed the way you live your life?
Doug Cocks argues that for the foreseeable future, population growth is more rather than less likely
to lead to distressing losses in the quality of life for the majority of present and future Australians.
Under population pressures, residential, commercial and industrial land replaces farmland,
recreational land and natural land of high, medium and low productive, amenity or service value.
There is some agreement that Australia has benefitted enormously from past waves of immigrants in
terms of eating habits, the arts and face-to-face exposure to other cultures and world-views.
However, there is a common perception that further cultural benefits from immigration are likely to
be much smaller than in the past. In the future, cross cultural enrichment is more likely to between
in-situ authentic cultures, via travel and information technologies, rather than transplanted cultures.
Never the less population flows in and out of Australia would still continue even with zero net
migration.
I hasten to add that, as an anthropologist, I have visited many dozens of towns and cities on each of
the inhabited continents on earth, and experienced their cultures first hand.
Q13: What sustainability issues need to be addressed in order for your community to accommodate
a changing Australian population?
There are both benefits and disbenefits for immigration.
Ethnic antagonisms already occur, not only between immigrants and ‘old’ Australians, but between
different recent immigrant groups, sometimes between rival groups or tribes from the same
country. These rivalries are often deeply rooted historically and psychologically and are not
overcome simply by moving to another country. It is unpredictable whether the current level of
ethnic harmony would continue indefinitely under a program of continuing immigration.
The real marginal cost of supplying some important goods (e.g. clean domestic water) will rise with
population growth, and positional goods like wilderness and snowfields will probably have to be
rationed in the future. Australia will become a less pleasant country in which to live.
Q14: What are some useful indicators to help measure the liveability and sustainability of our
communities?
Ask them through a referendum on the rate of immigration and/or on a population limit for
Australia.
Certainly not on superficial things like cultural fairs, or the like.
Additional comments
It appears that both state and federal political leaders plan to almost double the population in the
coming decades despite calls from a growing number of academics and activists who question
whether the pace can be maintained. It is being driven entirely for illusionary economic reasons by
business leaders, especially but not only developers, so they can make enormous profits at the
expense of the rest of the community. Not surprisingly the Property Council of Australia is against
any limitation on population. According to them it is not about population numbers, but how we
manage the growth we expect to occur. The CEO of Business SA asserts population growth increases
vibrancy and innovation.
None of the arguments for a much larger population is terribly convincing while the environmental
argument against a much larger population is quite strong. Conversely, there do not seem to be any
strong arguments against stabilising the population at about the present size. So, on balance, a
policy of stabilising the population at about the present level suggests itself.
There exists a middle road through the population growth debate that should be satisfactory to all of
the main players. This middle road is to ‘permanently’ set annual net migration (including refugees)
somewhere below 50,000 and then the population will plateau within a generation or two.
I agree with the Anglican Church of Australia, which has warned of catastrophic consequences of
global over population and unsustainable levels of consumption of the rich. This is not rocket science
or brain surgery, but simple logic.
Thomas Malthus, in 1798, understood this logic, but like every attempt to predict a population limit
or date, his predictions did not occur. But he was ahead of his time and his basic thesis was ignored.
Derek Llewellyn-Jones in his 1975 book “People Populating” presented a thorough well argued case
for zero population growth for Australia, but distracters again confused the basic issue and again it
was ignored.
Although a different problem and a different time, Eileen Power writes in her 1924 book “Medieval
People”, about the attitudes of the intelligentsia and leadership in the Roman Empire over the time
of its demise based on the extant letters of some prominent Romans. “These were the men who
lived through the centuries of Roman fall and Barbarian triumph, and who by virtue of their elevated
position, their learning, and talents, should have seen, if not foretold, the course of events. Why
were they apparently so blind as to what was happening? The big country houses go on having their
luncheon and tennis parties, the little professors in the universities go on giving their lectures and
writing their books; games are increasingly popular and the theatres are always full. Why did they
not realize the magnitude of the disaster that was befalling them?”
According to Palaeontologists, human nature has not changed in tens of thousands of years. There is
a lesson here!
Submissions will be accepted until 5pm on Tuesday 1 March 2010.
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Mail to:
sustainablepopulation@environment.gov.au
02 6274 2505 or
Sustainable Population Strategy
GPO Box 787
Canberra, ACT, 2601