Population now likely to be bigger election issue

IN THE 2016 election year we will hear a lot more about one of Australia’s hitherto practically unsung federal-state imbalances.

The much sung one, of course, is the fact that the Federal Government raises the bulk of the taxes, but the states are the ones with the responsibility for spending them – schools, hospitals, police, most roads and so on. It goes by the rather ugly name of vertical fiscal imbalance.

The unsung one is that the Federal Government is responsible for Australia’s high immigration rate, but it is the poor states who have to provide the services and infrastructure for the extra people. It could be called vertical population policy imbalance. But it might be easier just to call it dumb policy.

Australians seem to have some idea about vertical fiscal imbalance because the Premiers and Chief Ministers are forever whingeing about being starved of funds by the Feds. It is a convenient excuse for long hospital waiting lists and the like.

But Australians have very little idea about population. A survey published this week by the Australian Population Research Institute reveals just how ignorant they are about it.

The survey asked four basic questions with multiple-choice answers. Only 2 per cent of respondents got all four questions right. That is worse than random guessing, which would have yielded one in 16 getting all four questions right, or about 6 per cent of respondents.

That suggests not just ignorance but the possession of misinformation, as if people have been victims of a slow-drip propaganda campaign.

The questions were: Is it True or False that without immigration Australia’s population would be shrinking? What is Australia’s population? What portion of the immigration intake are refugees? And is it True or False that Australia has one of the highest population growth rates in the developed world?

The best result was the present level of population with just over half of respondents getting it right.

The worst (19 per cent) was the fact Australia has one of the highest population rates in the world. Only Israel and Luxembourg in the OECD have higher rates.

Overall, 12.6 per cent of respondents got all four questions wrong. Again, random guessing would have resulted in only 6 per cent of respondents getting them all wrong. The 12.6 per cent result can only be the result in some general pushing of misinformation – not just ignorance on its own. By the way, this is my conclusion, not that of the researchers.

If political leaders, business, the media and other providers of information and information were generally pushing the correct or no information – rather than an incorrect picture – you would expect a better than random result for all questions right and for no questions right. Instead, both are worse.

The survey backs up what a few people have long suspected: that the big end of town – a tiny, wealthy and powerful minority which gets benefit from high immigration — and the politicians they finance have pushed the case for high immigration, generally against the overall public interest.

They do this by stressing imaginary benefits – economic growth, cure for an ageing population, cure for a falling birth rate etc. And they underplay how aberrant high population growth is; the strain it puts on infrastructure and the provision of services; and the strain it puts on the environment.

Further, they are desperately worried that any difficulty with refugees might detract from what they say is general support for immigration. Former Prime Minister John Howard said as much. That is why he was so tough on refugees.

Well, it is about time some of these myths got busted. And it looks as if the next election campaign may go some way towards that.

For a start, last week’s report revealed that politicians’ assertions that there is widespread support for immigration in Australia are plainly wrong.

The survey found that 51 per cent of Australians do not want any population growth.

The Australian Population Research Institute is an independent research institute. Its members are participating researchers, mainly academics. This survey was commissioned by Sustainable Population Australia (about to change its name to Sustainable Australia). Its candidate was supported by Dick Smith in the North Sydney by-election this month.

Smith said he has been in discussion with Flight Centre founders and rich-listers Graham Turner and Geoff Harris about supporting Sustainable Australia at the next federal election.

Money, of course, helps immensely in politics. The Palmer United Party, backed by millionaire miner Clive Palmer, won three Senate seats and a House of Representatives seat last election. Its support has since collapsed and two of its senators deserted the party and its policies have been incoherent.

You need more than money. You also need a convincing platform. So expect to hear a lot more about immigration and population at the next election. Money can buy media presence, either directly through advertisements, or indirectly through things like last week’s research and paying people to present the message effectively.

One of those messages is likely to be that Premiers should stop asking the Feds for extra money, and ask them for fewer people instead.

Oddly enough support for population growth was stronger among university graduates and urban dwellers.

It was extraordinarily high in Canberra – the centre of political lobbying.

Overseas born were – as you would expect – more in favour. The research suggested that more recent arrivals did not have a past reference point of a less populated and less congested Australia.

Males were more in favour than females and tended to cite economic reasons more than females, who when in favour cited cultural diversity and helping refugees more than males did.

The interesting question will be how the Greens and the National Party react. The Greens have not been very active for an environmental party on the sustainable-population front. The National Party has opposed (fairly weakly) mining on agricultural land, but has been virtually silent on the question of population expansion encroaching on agricultural land.

They may be forced to get into this debate come election time.
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Fairfax Media on 26 December 2015.

7 thoughts on “Population now likely to be bigger election issue”

  1. Interesting article. Having the 4 answers would have given greater weight and meaning. Clearly I was intrigued at my own ignorance. I had True, 23 million, 2% and False. Ignorance exposed?

  2. After the fraudulent Gillard-Burke ‘Sustainable’ Population Strategy of 2011, Labor and Liberal have reverted to their preferred cone of silence. Neither party’s website owns up to any current, substantive policies on population or immigration.

    It reaches the height of absurdity in the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Its left hand quietly brings in 200K migrants a year, a policy that’s never been discussed with or agreed by the electorate. Its right hand delivers savagely repressive policies against a few thousand asylum seekers.

  3. What intrigues me is how these and similar surveys on many subjects consistently show that a majority of Australians are in favour of rational policies and yet the politico-media complex precludes the election of governments representative of those views.

  4. I would have appreciated the correct answers to all 4 questions with the figures to back them up… I am basically still clueless 🙂

  5. “For a start, last week’s report revealed that politicians’ assertions that there is widespread support for immigration in Australia are plainly wrong.”

    At Last, somebody has said publicly what is blatantly obvious, I mix in various circles; I rarely encounter any person who is in agreement with our level of migration, lack of infrastructure, overcrowding are the most often reasons given.
    The trouble is that the politicians and others who have something to gain, often play the racist card, stifling sensible debate.
    If we are going to have a plebiscite/ referendum on same sex marriage why not combine it with a vote on this issue, I am sure it would attract more interest than the former.

  6. What expertise does Dick Smith, Bob Birrell et al have regarding population (growth) which has slowed significantly in e.g. WA?

    The US based ‘zero population growth’ movement was never based on empricial science, but personal preferences, linking negative or proxy issues e.g. environment, with ‘non-European immigrants’, no surprise due to ‘white nativist’ influences.

    Keep in mind the UN definition as used by Australia changed in 2006 to include temporaries, in addition to new permanents, via the NOM net overseas migration which is balance between arrivals/departures of ALL travellers. Accordingly this has inflated the headline estimated resident population (which is then spruiked negatively for maximum impact), and mostly reflects international students, backpackers, 457 workers, NZ’ers and dependents.

    Further, one of the increasingly significant drivers of population growth in Australia and the rest of the world is neither fertility nor immigration, but longevity through better health care and education leading to an ageing population that needs to be supported physically and through working tax base.

    Rather than increase the permanent migration program Australia has come to reply upon temps who can work, with no or limited access to future permanent residency and citizenship, who in fact lower the per capita debt.

    Regarding statistics, like ‘population’ and ‘immigration’ the definitions have been egregiously conflated and confused to induce inflation of data for more impact in media.

    For an expert view on international population growth, human development and statistics Professor Hans Rosling is the acknowledged expert, and concurs with enviornmental scientists etc., outside Australia, that the supposed issue is not scary and in fact a myth: ‘Don’t panic: the facts about population’ http://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-population/

    Viewpoints or theories presented by ‘experts’ about demography, ‘population’, ‘immigration’ etc. in Australian media seem more related to the beliefs and attitudes of good old boys from the deep south of the USA…. unfortunately it’s not science.

  7. Great article….. It’s no surprise that the government likes to keep the issue under wraps; after all it is colluding with business to promote high population growth. For government, high population growth leads to higher economic growth, although on an individual basis we are going backwards. For business, high population growth means more consumption. This is a real challenge for the greens, because these two objectives are highly unsustainable. The only party that raises all the negative issues created by high population growth is the Sustainable Australia Party, but it is hard to get the message to the bulk of Australian population when they are bombarded by all these powerful vested interested group.

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