It’s the population growth – stupid! SPA Responds to ABS data
Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) congratulates Australians for making a sensible and sustainable choice to have smaller families. Despite the nation’s total population rising by 8.2 million since 2000, The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that 15,900 fewer babies were born in the year to December 2023 than in the previous year, limiting natural population expansion to 103,900.
SPA’s President Peter Strachan says “sadly, the sensible choice of voters was again ignored by the federal government as it presided over a net overseas migration (NOM) inflow of 547,300 in the year to December 2023, beating the record 387,000 for the preceding calendar year, and which is 8 to 10 times more than the long run annual average of around 70,000 per annum over the four decades prior to 2004. Despite the government’s claims to be ‘reducing’ net migration, it continues to increase with no end in sight, despite repeated opinion polls showing it is against the public’s wishes.”
Policy disregard by the federal government resulted in the nation’s population rising by an environmentally unsustainable 651,290 in the year to December 2023, only slightly less than an upwardly adjusted 675,600 over the year to September ’23.
Mr. Strachan pleads “that for the health of Australia’s fragile environment and to relieve pressure on an economy that struggles to build infrastructure to support over 27.3 million people, the Australian government must take heed of the massive support that SPA’s Say #NoBigAstralia petition has gained within just three months”.
Further, “slowing population expansion will not harm an economy, which has already experienced a recession over the past five quarters as rapid population expansion causes real GDP per capita to decline”.
“After increasing its population by 43% this century Australia has plenty of nurses and teachers, and it has more houses than ever before. Continuing this manic pace of population expansion would be a sign of madness as it will only increase a need for skilled workers”.
Australia’s population growth rate of 2.5 per cent per annum is already an outlier in the OECD, which has a population expansion of 0.3 per cent pa. Mr. Strachan says “it’s time that Australia matured. How can Australia meet its emission reduction targets if its population growth resembles that of a Central African nation?
Mr Strachan says that the Federal Government’s proposal for a ‘smaller more strategic migration system’ is too little too late.
“The government claims that they will stop the loopholes that allow students and other temporary visa holders to continuously extend their stay in Australia. While this is a step in the right direction, the government is reacting in panic to spiralling, out of control population growth that they themselves created.”
You can add your signature to the SPA position statement HERE