This will generate some predictable responses. Self-interested business people, particularly in housing, will call for more migrants. With their eye firmly on next quarter’s figures they see more people as the way to quick profit. Other businesses will call for more skilled migrants because they are too skint to train their own. And a lot of deep green zealots will demand zero population growth and zero immigration.
On this isolated occasion it would be far better if the Government did not listen.
Population policy demands thinking in time frames that are beyond most governments and business. Howard’s sudden interest in population is obviously knee-jerk. His immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, was apparently caught on the hop (as he was on Kosovo). Was Howard trying to appease the pro-immigration Murdoch monster? His comments first appeared in the Murdoch press.
Was Howard trying to prove he is beyond One Nation? Or was he suggesting that rural Australia could be repopulated with migrants? In any event, he has exposed his government to pressure for change that would have been better left alone.
The trouble is that people entering the debate want instant solutions or have their eye on a result. Populations, however, take generations to respond and even if a result is achieved at an instant point by then seeds would have been sown in the population make that would make the trend thereafter unpalatable or even catastrophic. Birth and mortality rates change slowly and even immigration cannot be cut easily. Some very solid demographic number crunching has been done by Professor Peter McDonald and Rebecca Kippen of the Parliamentary Library. (I will be borrowing from their number-crunching but don’t want them to be saddled with my acerbic asides or simplified conclusions.) Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has called for Australia to have a population of 50 million in the next 50 years. This is absurd. If birth and death rates stayed the same, it would require about 450,000 mi grants a year, five times the present intake. Most would go to Sydney and Melbourne. Sydney has 37.5 per cent of the overseas born but just 21 per cent of the population.
Fraser suggested the high level was needed to stop international jealousy of Australia’s open spaces — teeming hordes stuff. He also suggested that it was needed for Australia to be a major player in world affairs. Both counts are silly. The space has been empty for decades while the north has teemed. We have had a few thousand boat people, but no armies. Not one statement in any international forum points to the vast spaces. As to the major-player status, does Nigeria, Brazil or Indonesia (each with between five and 10 times Australia’s) get major- player status on population alone, over countries like Austria and Holland (each with less than two-thirds Australia’s). No.
Then we have the argument that the aging and dependency problem can be solved through immigration. The argument helps those who seek support from the ethnic lobby keen for family reunion.
At present Australia has a de pendency ratio of about 0.75. That is for every 100 people at work, 75 are dependant on them. At present there is an in-built momentum in the age structure of the population. Low birth rates and low death rates mean the population will age and on current projections (including present immigration) by the middle of next century there will be 115 (not 75) dependants for every 100 at work. If we aimed to keep the 75 ratio and an age profile similar to the present one, we would need an astonishingly high immigration program. It would result in a population of about 160 million by 2050 and more than 900 million by 2100. The cost in over-population is not worth it. There have to be other ways.
We already have some momentum in our population caused by the baby boomers and low birth rates. We have a birth rate of 1.8 per woman, when you need 2.1 for replacement. But because the baby boomers’ children are themselves a boom, our population will still naturally increase until about 2040. After that the population ages fairly quickly and the dependency ratio goes up. Too many young people supporting too many old fogeys. Immigration can address this a little bit, but after a while the costs in ultimate extra population and social costs of too much immigration make it not worthwhile. We must ultimately allow the baby-boomer momentum to work through, rather than attempt corrections that are worse than the problem. We should not replace the baby boomer momentum with other equally unpalatable momentums for population change in either direction.
Enter the zero immigration people – whether on grounds of intolerance or misguided environmentalism. Sure, lots of countries around the world manage without immigration, why not Australia? The central difficulty for Australia is a low birth rate. In the past 20 years, the average new mother’s age has gone up from early 20s to late 20s and the average size of family has fallen. Government policies are making it worse because families feel they need both incomes but there is not enough childcare and other government support.
If you chop immigration completely, the population goes up till 2040 then declines to about 14 million by 2100, but with a dependency ratio of 140 per 100 working people. If you couple that with a one-child policy the aging problem would be very damaging. People would be too busy looking after the old to look after the environment.
That can be avoided with continued immigration at present levels for a while, only gradually falling off over 50 years.
Australia can have a very beneficial immigration around 75,000 and fulfill social roles like family reunion, international obligations for refugees and a skills program where we genuinely cannot train our own. At the same time it maximises the attack on the problem of the aging ratio without sewing in a population time bomb.
But once you head beyond 100,000 you get a lower proportion of skilled people, you exceed what’s needed for family reunion and you build in social problems. You also head for an environmentally and economically questionable higher population when it ultimately levels out.
Higher immigration is a cop out for not generating policies that encourage women to have babies and to give people confidence that their health, education and training will not be so onerous as to turn women off the exercise – not “”bare-foot and pregnant policies”, but policies that encourage career and children.
Zero immigration will ultimately create a momentum for decline that will result in a self-defeating backlash.