Speeches

Guard Rails for Population Growth: Speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia

Tuesday 13th July 2010

In November last year I addressed an economics conference at the University of Melbourne organised by the Melbourne Institute and The Australian, where I nominated population growth as the defining policy challenge for my generation of political leaders.

In January this year, after becoming Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, I said the Coalition was determined to give Australians a debate on the important issues of population growth and immigration.

There has been significant opposition to this suggestion.

Rather than constructive engaging this debate, there has been a concerted effort, including from the Government, to accuse the Coalition of being everything from economic vandals to racists.

I remain convinced that we can have a mature debate about these issues, and more fundamentally that we must have such a debate.

I can think of no other issue, broadly defined, that will have as great an impact on the quality of life we can have as Australians than managing and meeting the needs of an expanding population.

Even more importantly we must reach a new policy consensus to address the future population challenge.

There is no doubt that Australia's population growth since World War II, and the successive waves of post war migration, has been the driving force behind our expanded capacity as a nation and the prosperity that we now enjoy.

Immigration has made the Australia we know today.

Today, 45 per cent of Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent who was.

We are an immigrant nation and there is broad public acceptance, according to research undertaken by Monash University, for the view that bringing immigrants from many different countries makes Australia stronger.

The Department of Immigration estimates that the cumulative impact of the 2008-09 permanent immigration in-take alone over the next 20 years is about $23 billion. By 2011-12 alone the annual contribution will be in excess of $800 million net.

According to Access Economics skilled migrants account for more than 90 per cent of this contribution.

However, past successes do not justify a population blank cheque for the future.

Times have changed.

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 implications for our economy, national finances, environmental carrying capacity, food production, infrastructure, service needs, housing and overall quality of life have all now been put under the spotlight.

The release of the most recent report, projecting a two thirds increase in our population to 36 million by 2050, caused many of us, not including the Government, to stop and think and question whether this level of growth was sustainable. The Coalition concluded it was not.

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.

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

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

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.

Net overseas migration now accounts for two thirds of population growth, the highest on record, and is primarily responsible for the strong growth in population in recent years.

Given that the Intergenerational report assumes a net overseas migration rate of 180,000 by 2012,I described this level of net overseas migration as unsustainable and was chided by the now current Prime Minister and then Population Minister for saying so.

According to respected demographer Professor Bob Birrell, Australia’s current rate of net overseas migration will deliver a population of 42.3 million people by 2050, significantly above the intergenerational report forecast of 36 million.

Equally, the ABS predicts a ‘Big Australia’ of more than 40 million people under Labor’s current policy settings. This includes a Sydney of 7.3 million – up 64%, a Melbourne of 7.5 million – up 92%, a Brisbane of 4.5 million – up 135% and a Perth of 3.9 million – up 141%.

On current policy settings Australia is sleepwalking into even 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.

As a result, the Coalition has broken break ranks from the longstanding détente on immigration and population policy.

The Coalition believes Australia needs a population that our services and infrastructure can support, our environment can sustain, our society can embrace and our economy can employ.

While the Government has changed its Leader and apparently it’s tune on population, they have not changed their policies, and have put off any real decisions until after an election.

Kevin Rudd’s Big Australia has become Julia Gillard’s Big Australia, unless she changes Labor’s policies. This is the real test of her commitment on this issue.

Julia Gillard needs to do more than...

Previous More