Back in 2019, then Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in a foreword to the government report, Planning for Australia’s Future Population presciently stated: ‘[One] of the big issues is population.’
He also noted: ‘[Everyone] has a view on what Australia should look like in the future … they would include a safe Australia … an Australia that welcomes new migrants but ensures we choose who joins us … where people can afford a home … Australians don’t want to be stuck in traffic or wedged in … they [want to feel] like they live in a country of shared values and goals.’
Few would argue with Scott Morrison’s comments that everyone has a view on what Australia would look like. Unfortunately, having a view doesn’t guarantee having a voice or any influence.
In the six years since this report, successive Coalition and Labor governments have presided over a net population increase of about 1 per cent per annum with massive net migration in the last two years especially. For the year ending June 2024, about half a million people emigrated to Australia, comfortably more than making up for the deficit during the Covid period. The projections are for a much more populous Australia 20 years from now, with very high levels of urban density.
This population increase and significant change in the composition of the population has occurred through administrative and bureaucratic fiat without any real electoral mandate or clear public support. The Morrison and Albanese governments did not take a population growth policy to the respective elections they won and there has been very limited and mostly unsatisfactory public discussion of the broader question of our population strategy and policy.
The policy questions around managing Australia’s population have been viewed essentially through three prisms rather than holistically.
First, migration and the impacts on social cohesion and community harmony, especially as some of the recent migrants have not come from the Anglosphere.
Second, the economic impacts of population growth and net migration on home affordability and employment.
Thirdly, but not as prominently, the impact of rapid population growth on our natural and built environment and infrastructure.
Each of these dimensions are critical and interrelated but it’s time for the government to dust off the Inter-generational Report of 2023, the 2019 Population Report, and other policy resources and elevate the issue of population as one of the nation’s key policy issues, and one should be much more open to sensible public debate. The policy debate, such that it is, has been obscured by political distractions. The average person in the street feels completely sidelined from any say on our population policy.
To put it simply, any government of the day should be focused on producing the best overall life and lifestyle for the population it governs, and for the future population other governments will inherit. There are social, economic, cultural and environmental dimensions to this fundamental obligation. The voting demographic of marginal seats, next quarter’s GDP figures, or other short-term issues such as cyclical skill shortages should not drive policy as they have in recent times. Moreover, it is a simple but worthy aphorism, provided you believe in international borders and sovereign nations, that it’s better to provide an 8/10 lifestyle for 26 million Australians than a 6/10 lifestyle for 30 million Australians. Further, pursuing lower emissions targets, energy transition and better home affordability at the same time as overseeing a huge growth in population produces some obvious tensions.
Life in Australia’s big cities has become very difficult. Apart from recent economic woes, many Australians have felt a depressing increase in congestion, environmental degradation, and diminished social cohesion and unity. The absence of a coherent regional development policy has meant that these pressures have been mostly concentrated in the capital cities. Our much-vaunted decline in national productivity also betrays the notion of building a better-skilled and diverse population through immigration-based growth.
Conventional wisdom about the need for a bigger (or a smaller) Australia has not been sufficiently tested or debated. Competing views are promoted by different sides of politics for different reasons. Big retailers, property developers and other enterprises reliant on scale and growth have their own agendas. Other proponents of a big Australia and supporters of massive migration are driven by other political agendas. Equally, some opponents to migration focus too heavily on cultural issues and fail to grapple with the challenges of our ageing population and some key skills shortages. There needs to be a more clinical and even-handed assessment of our population policy removed from some of these self-interested viewpoints.
A population policy summit or convention that draws on different voices and stakeholders and a cross-portfolio approach would be a good start for whoever wins the next election. An independent Commonwealth population agency with a new cross-disciplinary charter should also be constituted.
Lastly, our population policy, or at least migration, is shaping up as an important election issue in the forthcoming federal election. This should not be of the usual dog whistling type around migration or an opportunity to bandy about misconceived accusations of xenophobia. The policy debate needs to be a more elevated one that focuses on the present and future economic, social and environmental needs of Australians now and into the future and how our approach to population management and migration can best match these needs.
Andrew Christopher lives in Sydney and is a lawyer and writer.