<< A bigger population can be more sustainable, with the right policies. >>

Yes….with the right policies.

But until we get the right policies implemented and have a reasonably long trial period to gain confidence that they are indeed right, we’d be completely crazy to continue allowing our population to rapidly grow.

There should be an urgent requirement to lower immigration to net zero or lower and to kill off the perverse baby bonus and allow our birthrate to return to its natural level.

We can have absolutely NO confidence that the right sorts of polices will be implemented by Gillard or Abbott.

Indeed, if they were on the right track to developing the right sorts of policies the very first thing they’d do is greatly reduce immigration.

They are both in favour of reducing it a bit, but this doesn’t mean anything in terms of achieving a sustainable society, given how ludicrously high immigration has been and how inappropriately high it would still be.

Currently, it is patently obvious that our federal and state governments are not up to the task of even maintaining essential infrastructure and services for an ever-increasing population, let alone actually improving them. It is costing us all an arm and a leg to chase the tail of rapid population growth in order to try and keep up the same level of infrastructure and services and hence quality of life for ever-more people.

It IS completely crazy stuff!

So we need to very urgently reduce the rate of population growth so that we are on track for a stable population as soon as is practical and at the same time work towards greatly improving policies that could allow us to accommodate a significant population increase.

Afterall, the policies that would allow us to do this would be just the same set of policies that would lead us to a genuinely sustainable society.

There is absolutely no reason for Australia to have a bigger population.

End of story.

Full agreement with the two first posts.

Well said, Ludwig!

The political parties that govern us have failed for years to spread our population more usefully around regional Australia, and I have not heard either of them even mention it recently. A hopeless bunch on many issues.

There are numerous ways in which populating regional centres might produce better outcomes than further increasing capital cities. Bigger populations in regional cities will lead to better facilities for all who live in such places. Regional cities are safer: if the Indian students who were being attacked in the crime-ridden suburbs of Melbourne earlier this year had been studying at regional universities, I dare to predict the problem would not have occurred. With more people living in regional Australia, Australian farmers might find it easier to find labour to help pick their crops.

Perhaps an immediate measure that our hopeless politicians could implement even with the excessive migrant intakes they currently preside over, would be to impose the condition that new arrivals be prohibited from living within 50 kilometers of a major capital city for their first 5 years.

“The notion that an Australian population of 30 or 40 million would be environmentally unsustainable is clearly ridiculous.” Mike Keough’s offering of appropriate aridity of thought in this arid continent.

All of the State of the Environment Reports delivered so far concluded that we are environmentally unsustainable at half that number. Maybe it is possible, though unproven, that the present population could adjust society’s way so as to be assessed as sustainable in those SOEs; Just maybe.

On the other hand, Mike Keough might be more expert than the experts in these matters: Perhaps Australia should charge ahead towards 30 or 40 million (and then what?) while playing catch-up from well to the rear of sustainability. Should Mike then put a bell on sustainability in case we lose sight of it?

Should we keep running – for how long – would Mike Keough permit us to pause and catch our breath at 40 million, 70, 100 million?

Ludwig - you said.. "It is costing us all an arm and a leg to chase the tail of rapid population growth in order to try and keep up the same level of infrastructure and services and hence quality of life for ever-more people."
How is it costing us an arm and a leg? How can you quantify this cost? In fact you can't. No-one can, realistically. (The occasional wild figure is thrown around.) Most of the major infrastructure costs have little to do with immigration as such but population shifts outside the capital cities, notably up to North Queensland. Aus population is mainly (note, mainly) shifting North and towards the coast. A part of it is baby boomers retiring. Infrastructure in the capital cities is already well established. It has to be upgraded, of course, but the degree of spending is different and, get this, over a larger population. More water needed? This is due to changed expectations concerning garens rather than population itself - although pop increases play a part (and only a part of that is due to immigration). I agree policies could be improved but time to dump the mind set on immigration and look at these issues realistically.

Ludwig’s argument for “right” policies reminds me that whilst undertaking work for a Minister it was transparent the different groups around Australia all held their view was correct and that if we “had half a brain” we would do what they recommended not what others put forward. There was a myriad of opposing positions with each group convinced of its own wisdom. How is ‘right’ recognised?

In history there has always been a shortage of infrastructure of one sort or another. How the shortfall is met seems the question to answer. The difference now is we can potentially destroy the resources we need to survive.

The concentration of populations to a few cities reflects something, but what is it? Australia seems to be the most urbanised country in the world – barring city states. This seems to be folly as diseconomies of scale come into play.

One particular company I know is headquartered in Sydney despite 80% of its business being in WA, the executives like sailing on Sydney Harbour as well as rubbing shoulders socially with like minded people. Perth is seen as being less personally attractive. As a gambler always put your money on self interest, it is busting a gut to win.

Can governments change this? Kerry Packer was famously quoted during an appearance before a federal inquiry saying that governments were there to do things for him, not to him. This is the true spirit of Australia. Governments will always end up reflecting the values of the society they ‘serve’. Who then have to change their views and act on them?

It is easy to look at executives and say it is driven by them. Acting on self interest in this manner seems part of the majorities’ approach, “I’m just looking after myself”! No one will oppose it; politicians who oppose do not survive.

If we are to create denser cities we also need to hold governments accountable for adapting infrastructure to suit before the event not many years after while the problems continue to snowball.

Large conurbations required overpasses, bypasses, underpasses and a combination of public service transports, more vibrant regional business hubs to take the pressure of the CBD. Denser housing should also include access to green areas,playgrounds etc.

However this is only part of the problem - matching population to what resources can handle is the biggest problem and so far our political representatives seem hellbent on growing rather than sustaining.

Speaking to many migrants one of the reasons they moved to Australia was to avoid those dense living standards and lack of open spaces in urban areas and not living on top of your neighbours and all the problems that incurs.

We seem forever destined to repeat the mistakes of others rather than forging our own path.

Remember to write 'REDUCE IMMIGRATION' at the top of both ballot papers on 21st August. It's perfectly legal, and will not nullify your vote.

Although both sides have made noises about reducing immigration, they need to be reminded. And, remember, that the developers, retail and service industries are alway lobbying politicians to get their way.

Curmy, you asked me:

<< How is it costing us an arm and a leg? >>

By way of our taxes being spent largely on increasing infrastructure and services in order to support ever-more people, rather than on improving existing services and infrastructure for the existing population.

There are scant little real improvements happening. We really are struggling, and failing, to keep up the same level of services and infrastructure for the rapidly increasing population.

Not only is it costing us all an arm and a leg for no average personal gain, but we are paying through the nose for it as well!! ( :>/

<< Well said, Ludwig! >>

Thanks Forkes.

<< The political parties that govern us have failed for years to spread our population more usefully around regional Australia... >>

Yes. But decentralisation is of less importance than the total increase in population and our crazy continuous growth addiction.

<< Bigger populations in regional cities will lead to better facilities for all who live in such places. >>

I think that regional centres that are big enough to be thought of as cities are big enough as they are. And they all have rapid growth anyway. They don't need further growth by way of a concerted push for decentralisation of our capital cities.

I live in Townsville. One of the main pushes in the attempt to disperse some population pressure from southeast Queensland is to boost population growth in Townsville, to the extent of making it a much bigger city, in fact Anna Bligh's 'second capital' for Queensland!

We need that like a hole in the head!

She should implement incentives to get people to move to Charters Towers, Hughenden, Mt Isa, Longreach and so on instead.

When Julia Gillard was in Townsville recently, she was talking about dishing out a series of $15 million dollar assistance packages to help with decentralisation from Brisbane. Places eligible for this would be Townsville, Cairns, Rockhampton and even the Gold and Sunshine Coasts for goodness sake! There wasn't a hint of assistance for small towns that really could do with a bit of growth!

Dear oh dear!!

The anti-population argument whirls around a number of issues but none more so than instrumentalism.

Answer the question: how much is a life worth? The anti-pops premise is that we (Australians) are worth more than a Sri Lankan, Iraqi or Sudanese. Why? Because we are here and this precious eco-system is ours. All ours. Those Muslim darkies will eat us out of house and home.

That's the bottom line. Measure a carrot. How many people will that feed. Measure a white person. They're worth three carrots a day (even though we've got billions of carrots). Measure a towel-headed Muslim - sorry mate. You're only worth one carrot - and we're short on carrots.

Now the fact that we export $43B of food and import $6B due to reciprocal trade agreements (thanks NZ for the wine and cheese) means that we're chocka with food. Can we get this point over to the anti-pops? Nope. Inconvenient truth.

Have the anti-pops discussed urban design, the shrinking tax base, demographics, skills, arable land? Nope. That's because their argument isn't worth a damn unless they can say we're all doomed. Doomed, I say.

Exhume Joh Bjelke Peterson, NOW!

It was a waste of time giving people the vote. Now the common herd think they can have a say in what is best for them.

There was a time when "Never you mind" and the strategic use of police batons were enough to convince the punters that they should restrict their attentions to sport and gambling.

How DARE anyone mention that voters are overwhelmingly opposed to a 'Big Australia'. How dare they put themselves, their children and their country first and above profits for the few at the big end of town.

Let them eat cake and very small glasses of recycled urine in their new urban slums of the future. There was a time when there were market gardens growing there, but hey who needs that when hydroponics with chemicals can grow veggies under glass? People eat too much anyway, they should learn to do without.

It is the way of the future. Meanwhile I'm off to the Val d'Isère for some cross-country skiing, it's too hot, close and pongy in Brisbane's concrete jungle in the year 2020. Brides-les-Bains the year after, a nice long rest is always due for the deserving.

Cheryl rather than dengirating those who seek a sustainable population why not offer some reasons why we should seek to conintually grow our population in this mostly arid land. Is there any point at which you would say 'No enough - we have too many people'.

I don't pretend to know the magic figure but surely commonsense must be screaming out at you that water, arable land and minerals, energy reserves are not endless resources. The sun is about the only continuing resource of which I am aware.

Why is is difficult to work your head around the fact that we can have a sustainable target, better planning and still fulfill our obligations to asylum seekers.

Ludwig - I was hoping for a substantial response rather than a repeat of the original assertion. I know you think that its through taxes and such but, as I previously pointed out, the amount of government spending on the provision of infrastructure is small part of the overall government spend, and even that can be shown to have little to do with immigration. If immigrants stopped coming tomorrow your tax burden would not drop one cent and services would not improve at all.
If you think otherwise then what do you have to back up your thoughts?
Can you point to any direct costs of immigration that are not trivial?

A fair article Mick, all I would propose first;
1- start sending some researchers around areas that would both accommodate a new city and find ones that would actually WANT to change into something like that (some would love it, many would (understandably) abhor it).
2- implement the strategies you outlined
3- Find ways to actually tempt people to go there (as Canberra has full facilities- yet hardly anyone itching to move there, despite the extensive range of museums, parks and zoos).
4- encourage as much as we can for existing residents to move there first. Our cities ARE above limit (measured by the simple presence of peak-hour traffic jams and sheer area of our cities).

In short, infrastructure and employment are only part of the problem- finding a way to start introducing urbanization to an actually willing populace without degrading their living standards to Sydney-slum-levels, and also making a place currently even more boring than Canberra an attractive reason to leave the glittery consumerist paradises of Melbourne and near East Sydney. Not to mention it would also mean that existing major(ish) cities and coastal towns not need to expand already beyond excessive girths to accommodate.

Thanks Pelican, I don't think population is the issue. I think urban planning is. Thinking about 2050 is patently absurd and the 'shock horror' stories pumped out by the SPA are self serving.

Out of a myriad of variables concerning economic life and sustainability, the SPA has solely focused on people. I find it intellectually withering that people are drawn to single causes for complex phenomena but such is single cell life.

How many times have I been asked - do you think population can grow like this forever? Who is the subject of this population? You, me, Germany, the world? Check out the global population graphs for the years 2040-2060 and you'll see the downward trend. But that's ages away.

My other favourite question relates to population but is actually used by the pro-climate changers and it goes - prove that the world is not growing warmer. Huh? I'm at the default position. You're trying to convince me, although granted it's as complex as Chinese maths.

*Answer the question: how much is a life worth? The anti-pops premise is that we (Australians) are worth more than a Sri Lankan, Iraqi or Sudanese.*

Not so Cheryl. But some of us in fact do think that sustainability
involves many species, not just wall to wall humans. We are
not the only species that matter on this planet.

Now given that you think that a life is worth anything, you are
free to send every last $ to Sri Lanka, Iraq or Sudan, for them
to lead a better life. Unless of course you think that those
countries are full. In that case you should be sending money
for family planning!

But given that you own a computer and won't sell it to save another
starving baby in Africa, I can only assume that like with most,
what a life is claimed to be worth is rhetoric.

Not to mention that the value of life also depends on the value of living, and the idea that their own lives are worth more to reduce their standard of living on a philosophy they not only don't believe in themselves, but is followed only by people who treat them with disdain.
Or, valuing the more healthy lifestyle of a low-density area over the substantually draining, aggressive, miserable and unhealthy one of urbanized areas.

The problem with claiming that Australia could feed 70 to 100 million people is that it ignores the balance of trade. Along the same line of reasoning, the author might have also mentioned that Australia produces enough iron or and coal for many hundreds of millions of people, yet I dont think he would think his readers silly enough to believe this evidence that Australia could support a population of hundreds of millions. Yet he seems to think agricultural production as a measure of population capacity. In reality, agricultural produce is a commodity which supports living standards. With 50 million Australians, agricultural production would need to more than double to provide the same per capita trade benefit.

And if infrastructure costs are not big deal, then why are state governments going so deeply into the red? In Queensland, for example, annual infrastructure expenditure is about 18 billion dollars of a budget of just over 40 billion.

http://www.budget.qld.gov.au/budget-papers/budget-highlights.shtml

http://www.investqueensland.qld.gov.au/dsdweb/v4/apps/web/content.cfm?id=12268

This is only the public sector cost of rapid population growth, and the infrastructure is not even keeping up with demand. Supplying the infrastructure to support the high living standard of a developed country is expensive.

Perhaps Cheryl and Curmudgeon should become converts to Pol Pot's agrarian utopia. It would be much cheaper and would Allow Australia to support a much higher rate of population growth. I would like to see Australia support more people as much as Curmudgeon or Cheryl, but not at the expense of living standards, and I am concerned the the current rate of growth is far in excess of what can be supported.

Curmy, I gave you a straight answer to your first question. I didn’t answer your second question because you are right when you said:

<<How can you quantify this cost? In fact you can't. No-one can, realistically. >>

Even if one was to go to great lengths to research the expenditure on various infrastructure and services over the years, they’d need to be able to relate it to real improvements or lack thereof.

A hard task indeed.

However, when you look at it in an overall sense it is patently obvious that we have very serious problems with various services and forms of infrastructure that have not improved and have actually worsened as the population has burgeoned.

Are our national health system or education system or water supplies and provision or road congestion in our cities better or worse than they were a decade or so ago?

Most are clearly worse and those that are perhaps a little bit better are only slightly so compared to the immense expenditure that they have received.

<< If immigrants stopped coming tomorrow your tax burden would not drop one cent and services would not improve at all. >>

Our tax burden wouldn’t drop and neither should it. Services wouldn’t improve straight away. It would take a considerable period of time to see real improvements. And these would be most unlikely if our taxes were to be reduced and hence the expenditure on the things that need improvement reduced.

<< Can you point to any direct costs of immigration that are not trivial? >>

Curmy, I don’t understand why you need to ask this. The direct costs are enormous – immigration, in combination with our domestic birthrate, has led to all the classic downsides of population growth – overcrowding, congestion, environmental degradation, stressed resources, dog-chasing-tail economics, etc, etc.

1. Why have a larger population? Who benefits?

2. Sustainability doesn’t just mean can we grow enough food today to feed a larger population. It means providing the needs of this generation without compromising the needs of future generations.

Farming depends heavily on fossil fuels to run the tractors, harvesters and other equipment that makes farming so efficient and profitable in Australia. Farming also depends on nitrogen fertilisers made from natural gas and in some cases Phosphate fertilisers that are non-renewable. Future generations are unlikely to have cheap fossil fuels, natural gas and phosphates. That means that future generations are being compromised. That is unsustainable.

3. The article implies that there is no problem with water usage in the agricultural sector. The Sustainable Rivers Audit published in 2008 by the Murray-Darling Basin Commission found that 87% of the river valleys in the Murray Darling were in poor or very poor health. Every farming group wants access to more water for irrigation with little concern for the ecosystems that the water supports. That is unsustainable.

4. All the major cities have been on water restrictions during the period that we have used less water. I suppose if we have a lot of blackouts we would also use less electricity. In order to have 40 million people and use the same amount of water, Water restrictions would have to be expanded and strictly enforced. What are the benefits of a larger population that make water restrictions and more desalinisation plants so desirable? Higher population means a poorer standard of living.

5. Erosion in some rivers, especially around agricultural land is 50 times worse than natural erosion. Salinity may impact 17 million hectares by 2050 according to the national Land and Water Resources Audit. 19,000 tonnes of total phosphorus and 141,000 tonnes of total nitrogen runs down the rivers to the ocean every year from agricultural lands according to the Australian Agricultural Assessment 2001. That is unsustainable.

Australia is currently on a path that will leave future generations worse off.

Is sustainability, or rather the apparent threat to sustainability, a symptom or a cause?

There has been an ongoing debate about levels of investment in infrastructure. Roads are one of those. Just how much investment is needed in new and improved roads compared to the level of utilisation of roads?

Amongst Ministers responsible for roads it is clear that traffic builds to utilise the roads provided. It does not matter how much is spent on roads the same outcome occurs.

One proposition to reduce traffic is to close roads. London introduced congestion taxes as well as closed roads to reduce traffic; the M25, which circumnavigates London, as well as the circular périphérique, the inner ring road in Paris, become very expensive parking lots during certain peak periods.

Why does this situation arise? Is it the failure of the government to provide or is it to do with what people expect? There is a lack of wisdom in looking at governments as being THE ones to be virtuous and resolve such absurdities – governments always end up reflecting the people governed (read Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed for an extreme example of such a relationship).

What are the drivers for the expectations and how can they be addressed? I suspect that whilst ever life is seen as being merely the allotted 3 score and 10 years then there is a limit on acting to benefit contempories or future generations – if this is all there is then why not grab what I may while I may?

Mike Keogh demands a factual basis for the population debate, but proceeds to offer not a single fact, just a scenario based on ideological assertion. There is no mechanism for government to shift population to regional centres in significant numbers, as the failure of the Albury-Wodonga experiment demonstrated. Providing additional infrastructure and services in regional areas is even more expensive than providing them in the suburbs, and governments are failing to provide them because they can't afford it, not because they've omitted to plan for it. Why would they opt for an even more expensive option, when sustainable jobs are not in the regions? Why would we charge regional people less tax, when it takes more tax dollars per capita to service them? Why does he think that national population growth is needed, in order to push people into regions? And why would this be a desirabe option, when the proportion of Australians against population growth is even higher in regional towns than in capital cities? On last report, 85% of them don't want more people.

Good arguments presented here so far by the against side, I would be interested to see if anybody could answer them.

And more precisely, with an argument instead of complaining.

It is too simplistic to cut immigration based on immediate emotions of over crowding.

The sustainable population debate is an emotional one. Migrants buy up our companies, they push property and house prices sky high, they crowd our universities and schools, they clog up our roads, they take up seats on our trams, buses and restaurants. It costs billions and years of political and bureaucratic struggle to upgrade our infrastructure. So the natural easy solution is: stop immigration.

But it is part of a bigger issue. The ageing population. Sometime after 2014 the baby boomers in USA, Europe, Japan and China will decide they've had enough, retire, and begin a tactonic shift in the workforce and consumerism. The labour force must be incredibly taxed to pay for the pensions and escalating heathcare costs. Baby boomers lived in a time of immense prosperity due to a rapidly growing population. As the population grows, company sales and house prices will naturally rise - just because there's more demand. But as the population declines house prices will decline, and companies will be forced to innovate and create real value rather than just depend on increasing demand.

Perhaps it would make more sense to gradually increase immigration before the USA and Europe start pushing to attract immigrants. Perhaps attract skilled immigrants that will help create innovation and pay the pensions and healthcare costs of the retiring baby boomers.

Howard Siow
MyPak Egg Cartons Packaging
http://www.mypak.com

Glad you raised the ageing issue, Howard. But it is not the bigger problem. In fact it is a very modest problem, compared with the costs and non-monetary impacts of population growth. What's more, population growth won't make it go away, it will only defer a part of it.
Stabilizing population will bring us only to the level of total dependency ratio we had in the 1960's - only with higher workforce participation than then. Also, more of the non-workers will be aged people covering their own costs, rather than young people who are totally dependent. There is a whole range of other benefits from ageing, including lower crime rates, higher levels of personal saving and lower levels of private debt, meaning less reliance on international capital. Add these to the benefits of population stabilization (a bit like stopping banging your head against a wall) in not having to build infrastructure just to stand still, and having much more capacity to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Population growth won't diminish the total number of aged people we have to provide for, only their proportion of the total population. There would actually be more retired people. So this isn't as big a saving as you think, because it's not just the running costs of aged care and health care, it's the infrastructure. Using the Intergenerational Report figures, which exclude infrastructure, the maximum difference it will make is maybe 5% of GDP by 2050, but we're already being told we must spend 6% of GDP per year for the next 10 on infrastructure for population growth (770 Billion over 10 years) - and that's only the 'infrastructure' portfolio - major federally funded transport and utilities projects, not all the capacity expansion of hospitals, schools, government offices etc that goes into other portfolio budgets, and State and local governments. Ageing is a trifle by comparison.

Thanks jos. Many good points.

As life expectancy lengthens we can't continue thinking that 65 is the end of useful working life. Certainly if you have the cash, retire whenever you want to. The pension system was implemented when life expectancy was less than 65 so the planners didn't even think most people would collect. Now life expectancy is 85 and hopefully it will continue to increase.
An interesting side light of the immigration debate is the claim that migrants are often demonised as causing all the problems of congestion and environmental degradation and it just isn't right considering the huge benefits that immigrants has made to Australia. Slow growthers say no, no, no we agree that immigrants have made great contributions but we need to get sustainable and now is the time. I wonder if slow growthers should shoot back that it is unfair that all the future problems of Australia are being blamed on older Australians (many who are also immigrants as well). Proponents of high immigration are saying that older Australians are sucking the life out of the economy and it just isn't fair considering the huge benefits that older Australians have provided to Australia over the years.

I think more appropriate is jos point that it just won't matter that much compared to all the problems associated with high population. Ageing will be one of the easier problems to solve and having more older people in the population will have many significant advantages.

ericc's post listing the water problems of Australia makes the key argument against increasing our population and hoping the future can solve the problems we make.
Australia is like the Sahara with a fringe around it. It has fewer, smaller and more variable rivers than any other continent.
We increase our population by building on our farmland.

There are so many short-term interests in population increase, especially governments needing a source of prosperity with our decline in manufactures and consequent imports; and so we rely on rising property prices and the building industry, as well as mining, to keep us prosperous.
It is a Ponzi method of keeping going, with cohorts of ageing populations getting bigger and bigger and requiring ever larger immigration. Yet the water that we need . . .

First there's the assumption that we're happy to reduce the income we make from selling food in order to feed more people by saying "it would simply be diverted to the domestic market".
Then there's the assumption that increased urban water use would be OK because we already do that, so look out for more frequent and harsher water restrictions.
Then there's the assumption that the "more liveable" regional centres should accommodate the larger population - thus making them just as less liveable as the cities that we all agree are overcrowded. Some more common sense would have improved this article considerably.