PRIME Minister Julia Gillard gets it, but ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope does not: a large majority of Australians are unhappy with the prospect of high population growth.
Indeed, looking back at the rise and fall of Kevin Rudd you could argue that the turning point came on 22 October 2009 when he said: “I actually believe in a big Australia. I make no apology for that. I actually think it’s good news that our population is growing.”
After that, Labor’s primary vote never got above 50 per cent.
Yes, the dumping of the emissions trading scheme in April, the insulation and school building troubles and the mining tax hastened the fall in popularity, but the “big Australia” was the starting point for several reasons.
First it showed Rudd putting the interests of the big end of town against, dare I say it, working families who have to deal with the consequences of higher population: congestion, hospital waiting queues, loss of city green spaces, higher density living, higher food prices as market gardens and agricultural land falls to housing, higher land prices and so on.
Secondly, it showed Rudd as self-aggrandising, almost arrogant.
Thirdly, it showed Rudd as putting economic growth before the environment and quality of life.
Thus began the leaking of votes from Labor to the Greens.
Stanhope should be careful that he does not fall into the same bind. His statement disagreeing with Gillard’s retreat on pursuing a big Australia for the sake of it, is not very popular. Stanhope said government policies should aim to increase Canberra’s population by 140,000 or about a third.
The Canberra Times internet poll was running 63-37 against him this week with about 700 votes. Sure, these polls are not hugely reliable, but usually they are cranked up by self-interested parties, who in this case would be the exponents of growth.
The ACT position is interesting. In the ACT, the leaking of Labor votes to the Greens began a year before the federal trend – at the October 2008 election. As is often the case, the ACT leads national trends.
The Greens representation in the ACT – at 23.5 per cent of the seats – is the highest of any place in Australia.
So Stanhope’s big-growth comments are politically dangerous because he needs to claw back some of that Green vote. It is the only way he can pick up seats. He cannot pick up any seats from the Liberals for the simple reason the Libs have sunk as low as they can go – just two members in each of the multi-members electorates. You only need to get 25 percent of the vote to achieve that.
If Stanhope continues the big-growth theme he will improve the Greens’ prospects of retaining their four seats.
Politics aside, the big-growth policy is suspect anyway – unless you happen to be a developer, own a carpark or be a large property owner.
Population growth requires more infrastructure. When population growth hits 2 per cent, the task becomes almost impossible. That is why the high-population-growth hell-holes in Africa are hell-holes.
You see, when you hit 2 per cent growth you have to almost double your infrastructure spending. Assuming most big public infrastructure lasts about 50 years, you need to spend a steady 2 per cent of the total infrastructure value every year to replace what is deteriorating.
But if you are adding 2 per cent to the population every year, you need a further 2 per cent spend on infrastructure to provide for those extra people.
In short you have to double your infrastructure spend. Sure, you might get a few economies of scale, but you also get some major threshold capital requirements with population growth – extra lanes of Commonwealth and Kings Avenue Bridges, for example.
The ACT was lucky in that it got its total infrastructure free of debt at self-government in 1989. It is questionable whether successive ACT Governments have done the requisite upkeep of that infrastructure or whether they have done enough infrastructure investment to service the population growth since then.
Things like the Gungahlin Drive Extension fiasco, water restrictions, and the worst elective-surgery wait in Australia suggest not.
I doubt whether the ACT is prepared for the strain on existing infrastructure that will result from the development of Molonglo. The developers will walk away with their profits, leaving the broader public to pay the burden imposed on the rest of Canberra.
Historian Keith Hancock quoted his friend and Cabinet Minister Charles Hawker as saying Canberra was “a good sheep station spoiled”.
It is hard to argue that about the city now, but it looks to be the fate of the Molonglo Valley over which the suburb named after Hawker looks.
Far from providing better services and a better life for the bulk of the people, high population growth makes things get worse.
A few at the top are better off, and governments can cream off higher rates and land taxes with higher property values, but this comes at a cost.
The ACT has a special difficulty with infrastructure. A major part of our infrastructure was built during the rapid spurt of growth in the 1960s and 1970s. This stuff is approaching its use-by date and a lot of it needs major work.
Yes, we need a certain level of population for the wealth and prosperity that comes from the division of labour, but there is a limit after which on balance extra population results in lower, not higher standards of living and where lower population results in higher standards of living because there is more wealth to go around. Canberra and Australia have easily reached that point.
Politicians and economists like to cite the “economic growth” argument. The argument is warped because economic growth is not adjusted for population growth.
The Rudd Government was quite smug about Australia’s economy growing thoughout the economic crisis. It did. But when adjusted for population growth we were worse off per head for at least two quarters, and that’s what counts.
And economic growth does not measure well-being. It does not account for things like the connectedness that comes with smaller communities and the greater contentedness that comes with great equality or being in greater touch with nature.
Politicians, including Stanhope, use words like “stagnate” to describe stable population. But the population does not have to be growing for people to lead vibrant, prosperous, happy lives.
The well-educated ACT population sees that. More people are seeing through the population-growth scam which enriches and aggrandises the few at the cost of the many.
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times on 3 July 2010.
It’s almost funny but when I read an article like this I think advocates for population growth are so obviously crazy and obviously self-serving that I wonder how many people can or could ever agree with them. Let’s hope that through articles like this more people come to this side or the arguments so that the orthodoxy becomes one of no growth and pro-growth people are in the minority. Certainly the level of public discourse about population is growing and lets face it: the only thing worse than being talked about, albieit often slanging from from ‘the other side’, is not talked about as that just keeps the whole current orthodoxy the orthodoxy!
This is a clearly written very accurate account that no rational individual could disagree with. Congratulations.
Crispin has his finger on the pulse of community sentiment. The Stanhope government is allowing developers to concrete over our green space, and our roads to become as congested as the capital cities some of us came here to escape. A few property magnates make super profits from high population growth, while taxpayers and existing residents are left to pay the costs.
Another amazingly good article from Crispin who has encapsulated the whole debate in one article – congratulations Crispin. The infrastructure argument is particularly vital. Having more people does not mean a solution to poor infrastructure, indeed, two per cent growth rate means infrastructure needs are actually doubled. The other vital point is that only a few benefit from high population growth e.g. large property owners, developers and car-park owners, while the rest suffer “congestion, hospital waiting queues, loss of city green spaces…and so on,” as Crispin said. He made passing mention of water restrictions but could have elaborated about further such restrictions under a possibly drying climate. There’s not much point in raising the height of the Cotter Dam if it doesn’t rain that much. It may well experience the plight of Lake Mead in the US behind the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Lake Mead is 100 feet below normal levels because of a drying climate and too much extraction from fast-growing cities like Las Vegas nearby. Let it be a warning to us!