Opinion & Commentary
Population growth is not all about immigration
It is a result of Australians being healthier, living longer, and having more children. It is because people from around the world want to come here to work, travel, live and study.
Population growth is neither an impending disaster nor something we should blindly strive for—it is simply happening as a result of our economic progress and the collective desires of millions of people.
Certainly, a growing population brings challenges—economic, social and environmental. But pretending that population growth is not happening, or attempting to thwart it, will not solve the challenges. Instead, we need to focus on how to make population growth work.
Few, if any, discussions provoke such heated debate in Australia as the question of population growth and its composition: from anxiety about Chinese migrants coming to Australia during the Gold Rush to post-War concerns that we should ‘populate or perish’ at the hands of foreign invaders, it has always been a controversial topic.
The population debate has tapped into a range of public concerns. Commentators and advocates as diverse as entrepreneur Dick Smith, former NSW Premier Bob Carr, and Monash University Professor Bob Birrell questioned how the environment, urban infrastructure, and social cohesion would be affected by an ever expanding and increasingly diverse population.
Proponents of population growth such as Australian National University Professor Peter McDonald and KPMG partner Bernard Salt argued that continued population growth and migration would be necessary to fill skills shortages and fuel economic development.
Australia’s population is growing. It’s how we deal with it that matters. No matter whether we want a Big Australia or Small Australia, we are going to get a growing Australia—for the next few decades at least.
The birth rate, the death rate, and the rate of net overseas migration all combine to determine the size and age of our population. While most of the public debate about population has concentrated on immigration, in many ways it is natural increase—births minus deaths—that will have a bigger impact on our population size. Unfortunately for those who want to set population targets for Australia, natural increase is very difficult to predict—and almost impossible to control.
Because of this, much of the debate about population has focused on migration. After all, this is the one major contributor to population growth that the federal government has direct policy control over. But even migration—at least as it is currently configured—is difficult to exert too much control over. This is because about two-thirds of our inward migration is skilled, and much of it is demand driven.
Government has even less control over net overseas migration, which is a measure of all inbound minus all outbound migration. Emigration from Australia is at record levels.
There is now a globalised workforce that has multiple citizenships and travels around the world. No government could (or would want to) stop Australian citizens or permanent residents from leaving, or conversely force them to leave. It is even difficult to predict when temporary residents will leave Australia.
Over the past year, we have had a public debate that has been widely criticised as being shallow and not focused honestly on the real issues. A significant reason for this is that the population debate is happening at the federal level, while most of the costs of population growth—new roads, buses, suburbs and schools—must be met by the states.
Our heavily centralised tax system means that most of the tax revenue generated by population growth flows to Canberra, while most of the cost is borne in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. Until we change the balance, there will be little incentive for state governments to put the infrastructure needed to support population growth in place.
But as anyone sitting in traffic on Melbourne’s Monash Freeway or battling crowds at Sydney’s Town Hall station can tell you, population growth is happening now. We don’t have time to wait around.
Jessica Brown is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
