Letters to the editor
Letters to the editor from SPA members, supporters and others are a rich source of community insights and concerns about population issues. The SPA web site maintains an archive of published letters.
Participation rate will lift us, not population
In their article about the 2021 Intergenerational Report, Peter McDonald and Jeromey Temple argue for a strong permanent immigration rate to avoid having three million temporary migrants in the country in 2061 (‘‘ IGR’s population forecasts rest on ‘brave’ migration assumptions’’ , June 29), because the latter would be “politically unsustainable” .
What is likely to be politically unsustainable is another 13 million people in the country, irrespective of whether they are native born, temporary migrant or permanent migrant. Rapid population growth brings a raft of problems such as housing unaffordability, high youth unemployment, congestion, pollution, loss of natural habitat and difficulty in achieving greenhouse reduction targets. Total GDP will rise with a bigger population but there is no guarantee it will translate into bigger GDP per capita, a better measure than total GDP of living standards.
Of the three Ps (population, productivity, participation), McDonald and Temple argue that the greatest of these is productivity. They correctly note that as we move to a more service-based economy it is difficult to achieve productivity increases, unlike manufacturing, where robotics can make a huge difference. What they fail to acknowledge, however, is that productivity falls in cities that grow past a certain size and, rest assured, our major cities will be the ones that absorb most of the extra 13 million people.
Recent research by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) has found that traffic jams and unaffordable housing are the cause of an apparent decline in economic growth and productivity in the capital cities. The report says that when workers confront growing housing expenses, households may be unable to relocate to where they can earn a better salary. At the same time, some businesses have difficulty obtaining employees or contractors they want at rates that allow them to remain competitive in a global market. Endless growth of our cities may not be such a good idea after all.
And let us not forget participation. As the percentage of people of working age declines from 6 to 2.7 people compared to people over 65 (as the IGR projected), wages will rise and people will be more inclined to join or rejoin the workforce – to participate. Perhaps in the end, of the three Ps, the greatest will be participation.
Crowds not required
Full marks to Ross Gittins for explaining some basic economics that dispel the ill-founded panic about our decreased immigration and population growth and the increased ageing of Australia’s population (SMH 30 June). Some basic ecological demography is also relevant; no population can grow forever. Once the carrying capacity is exceeded, our life-support systems decline to the detriment of future generations and nature in general. This is happening now and yet senior politicians and bureaucrats cling to the populate or perish, growth at all costs dogma.
A hopeful sign arises from the lived experience of Aussies who suffer the unsustainable socio-ecological costs of excessive growth. A large majority now believes we don’t need more people. To this end we can see reduced immigration as a silver lining to the dreadful Covid pandemic rather than impending doom.
Letter to the Herald Sun: Building a fair society
(27/06/2021)
Building a fair society
Housing policy is a mess but it mostly comes down to supply and demand (“‘Hold on to that hatred’: Boomers aren’t to blame for Australia’s property mismatch”, June 20). Negative gearing has to go to help potential owners enter the market, rather than investors. And no doubt many empty nesters could convert their homes into dual occupancy. However, the more people there are, the more demand for housing.
In 2018, Australia’s population grew by 404,000. At an average household of 2.7 people, that equates to a need for nearly 150,000 new dwellings – just in one year. If we are to solve the housing crisis, addressing the supply side alone is not enough: demand counts too.
Jenny Goldie, Cooma
“This is a good thing” – population growth drops to its lowest rate since WW1
Congratulations to active Victoria SPA member Jennie Epstein for her published letter in The Age today
This is a good thing
We should be celebrating our near-zero population growth rather than disparaging it (“Population growth drops to lowest rate since WWI”, The Age, 18/6).
The sooner we can stabilise our population, the greater the chance of a sustainable future. Not only does it provide a window of opportunity for our environment to recover, but our economy is doing well, and employment levels and wages are finally increasing.
Jennie Epstein, Little River
Of mice and Marie
The thought of Marie Low (“Australia, we can’t just keep on building outwards forever”, canberratimes.com.au, May 23) having a live mouse in the toe of her boot will stay with me for a long time.
Nevertheless, her sentiments on the need to rein in population growth were admirable.
Similarly, Nicholas Stuart (“When what we “know” turns out to be wrong”, canberratimes.com.au, May 22) questions the long held assumption that we need a “big Australia”. He notes that, with immigration collapsing because of border closures, overall employment has risen.
He rightly acknowledges the contributions that immigration has brought us but now questions whether we need to return to the huge levels of immigration on this fragile land.
There’s a lovely ad on TV about a boy and a koala and the need to “protect all homes”. Yes, we do, koalas’ homes included. We cannot do this, however, under a scenario of endless human population growth. We have to stop somewhere, preferably now. We need to do it for our own sakes before, as Marie Low noted with the mouse plague, we turn on each other.
Equally, we need to stop growing for sake of other species that inhabit this fragile land.
We’re doing just fine the way things are now
(Property Council of Australia CEO) Ken Morrison (“We need a dose of quarantine to open borders”, April 16) wants our vast number of immigrants, students and tourists back asap.
Never mind that, pre-COVID, our rampant population-fed, greed-and-growth economic model was rapidly destroying the livability of our major cites and, in all respects, was environmentally unsustainable.
Despite his influence, it is just possible that Morrison will be denied his wish. The vast majority of Australians seem not to share his prescription for what is best for them. They have had a whiff of sustainability and like the way it smells!
High rise history
Since the 1960s, residents of the North Coast/ Sunshine Coast have said they don’t want the area to become like the Gold Coast. This call continues today despite the moving goal posts.
In the 1990s, Maroochy Shire had one of Australia’s highest rates of population growth and many residents called for a population cap. Property developers and Maroochy councillors involved in the industry claimed that this would drive up property prices. Therefore, we got both, almost uncontrolled growth as well as ridiculously high property prices. Some residents marched for ‘no high rise’ and lower densities. Developers, and many councillors, claimed higher densities were needed to prevent urban sprawl and loss of native habitat. Many replied we’d end up with both. We now have higher density infill as well as higher density urban sprawl (including on floodplains). However, ‘local government’ is a creation of state governments and they must comply with state government legislation (including parking regulations) so, it is state governments that drive the population growth and loss of native species.
Is there a solution? No, not with our materialistic society and governments that cling to an economic model that dictates unsustainable constant growth and a distorted distribution of wealth.
This is unsustainable
The loss of thousands of trees due to massive infrastructure projects as reported in Monday’s Age is yet another reason our high levels of population growth and consumption are unsustainable. Tree planting projects in other places do not compensate for the habitat loss of mature trees.
Our cumulative footprint erases those of many other species, unbalancing ecosystems, which will inevitably lead to our own demise, eventually.
Learn by rote
Bob McDonald (Letters, January 4) doesn’t like repetition and criticises Mr Mackenzie for so doing on climate change.
Yes, repetition does wear one down, but might Bob’s real motive be disbelief in anthropogenic climate change, in common with those governing Australia?
And if so, when ScoMo et al continue repeatedly to evade balanced debate on the subject, and repeatedly promote fossil fuel energy, does Mr McDonald object to that repetition?
Do those with contrary views, and there are many, have any alternative but to emulate ScoMo’s repetition?
Another area of repetition is opinion on Australia’s human numbers and their rate of growth. Debate on that at the political level is selectively confined to the short term supposed economic benefits of growth, all social and environmental impacts ignored. Why?
Because full debate would offend big money interests and the property and construction industries, all beneficiaries of rapid growth. No surprise they are so influential in shaping immigration fuelled “big Australia” government policies. How they must be hating COVID-19.
Those with longer term, more balanced, views embracing society and looming water shortages, have no alternative but to promote them by repetition.
There’s a growing need for a federal population minister
John Quiggin is one of Australia’s finest economists whom I have admired for a long time. His article (“Can’t we just keep families together?”, December 31, p26), however, exposed that divide between economist and ecologists that he has sometimes bridged, but not on this occasion. Quiggin looks at immigration with his economist blinkers on but fails to see the overarching issue of population, and how many people this nation can sustainably support.
Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic complicates things, closing borders that might otherwise be open. Nevertheless, immigration policy must be set in the context of a broader population policy. Quiggin is simply wrong to assert that the “number of people that actually want to migrate for personal and family reasons is limited”. The number of people on the spouse waiting list is in the tens of thousands. And no doubt a lot of the 26 million refugees in the world and 79.5 million “forcibly displaced” would like to come here to have a better life.
This is not an argument to keep our borders closed once the pandemic has passed. Any nation, however, has a responsibility to control its borders, not only to protect its existing citizens from excessive competition in the labour market, but also to protect the habitat of other species from being destroyed for urban expansion, a corollary of rapid population growth. Most of us who support controlled borders are neither xenophobes nor racists, rather, citizens who see the social and environmental downsides of the kind of rapid population growth that has characterised Australia since John Howard’s government.
Immigration is a mere subset of population – the other half is natural increase that can be affected by such social policies as baby bonuses, for instance.
It is thus a pity that, in the recently announced Morrison government, there is no minister for population. Alex Hawke is Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, but not population. And he’s in the outer ministry, so has less influence. Anne Ruston, on the other hand, is Minister for Families and Social Service – a portfolio that may affect population policy – and is in the ministry itself.
Let’s hope that ministers Hawke and Ruston talk to each other.