Speeches

Address to Informa Conference: Australia's Population 2050

Monday 28th June 2010

Address to Informa Conference: Australia’s Population 2050
Marriot Hotel, Sydney June 28, 2010

Scott Morrison MP
Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship

As at the end of last year our population was growing at the rate of one additional person every 73 seconds.

A population growth rate of 2% per year makes Australia one of the fastest growing populations in the developed world, higher than Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, as well as China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia.

If we repeated our current 2% rate of growth year on year, Australia would have a population of 50 million by 2050.

Our rate of growth has not always been this high. It is in fact a very recent phenomenon, driven by even newer forces.

For the last forty years Australia’s population has grown at around 1.4%.

The successive waves of post war migration added significant value to our economy, our society and our way of life. It has made the Australia we know today.

However, this past success does not justify a population blank cheque for the future.

Times have changed.

The implications for environmental carrying capacity, food production, infrastructure, service needs, housing and overall quality of life are far more dramatic. In short, there is far less margin for error.

All of these issues came in to greater focus when the third intergenerational report was published forecasting a two thirds increase in our population to 36 million by 2050.

The Intergenerational report process started by Peter Costello was one of the most forward thinking planning initiatives with respect to population undertaken by an Australian Government. It forced us to confront the realities of our changing demography.

The most recent intergenerational report caused many, but not the Government, including the now Prime Minister, to stop and think about just how sustainable this type of growth path was for our country.

The debate also questioned the long running assumption that such growth was always good for the economy, and rightly highlighted the role of productivity and participation as far more significant factors in our future prosperity.

As part of this debate I and others noted that the relationship between population growth and real GDP capita was at best weak and that there was diversity of international experience on the population and economic growth.

While Treasury and others regularly like to refer to the Japans and Italy’s as examples of the demographic curse that Australia must avoid, little attention is given to the experiences of Finland, Korea or Canada and many others who have all had lower rates of population growth than Australia, yet experience higher rates of growth in GDP per capita.

Population growth is a lazy substitute for productivity and participation gains in our economy, particularly in the context of an ageing population, and we must be careful not to be seduced by the argument that our future prosperity is inextricably linked to high population growth. And let’s remember that 2% is high population growth.

As these debates continued it became clear that Australia on current growth settings was sleepwalking into more congested cities, strained resources, a marginalised environment, over burdened services and unaffordable costs of living. This is the price of getting population policy wrong.

For these reasons the Coalition decided to break ranks from the longstanding détente on immigration and population policy and draw attention to the dangers of continuing with the Government’s current immigration policy settings that had seen population growth increase from an average of 1.35% under the Howard Government to a peak so far of 2.1% under the Rudd-Gillard Government.

Of particular resonance was the fact that net overseas migration had risen to an average of more than 300,000 under Labor’s policies, up from just over 200,000 in the last 2 years of the Coalition Government, and a longer run average of around 130,000.

Given that the Intergenerational report assumes a net overseas migration rate of 180,000 by 2012, down from what was assumed as a current average of just over 240,000, and assumes a population growth of 1.2% and growth, that was running at 2.1%, I made the rather obvious point that a net overseas migration rate of 300,000 per year was unsustainable and needed to be reduced.

At that rate of net overseas migration Australia would have a population of 42.3 million by 2050 according to Professor Bob Birrell.

I argued further that 36 million people should not be accepted as a fait accompli, but should be conditioned by what our infrastructure could support, our environment can sustain and our economy could productively use.

These sentiments were later expressed in the release of the Coalition’s own sustainable population policy.

The response from Labor, including Julia Gillard, and others was to accuse me and the Coalition of everything from racism to economic vandalism.
You will therefore understand my surprise regarding the Prime Minister’s comments yesterday and the absence of any critical assessment of her position.

As recently as last week the Population Minister, as he was then known, was attacking the Coalition to business groups in Canberra saying our policy for sustainable population growth was reckless and damaging.

The Government’s answer to population growth is to change the title of the Minister, and delay any decision until after the next election. This was Kevin Rudd’s position and nothing has changed under Julia Gillard.

Julia Gillard needs to do more than change Tony Burke’s letterhead, if she wants to get serious about the lifestyle and environment destroying impact of unchecked population growth.

If the Prime Minister wishes to engage the population debate then she needs to produce a policy, as the Coalition has done. If she doesn’t support the 36 million target then she must say, given she has the resources of Government, where will she cut the migration programme to get to firstly the 180,000 net overseas migration figure that would produce the 36 million figure in 2050 and then how she will go ...

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