Australia: Many in denial over rising population

The United Nation’s Population Fund is concerned population growth in Asia averages 1.1 per cent a year. Australia, as a First World country, should have a much lower growth rate. It does not. By the end of the Howard era, our annual population growth had risen to a stunning 1.5 per cent: almost off the First World scale and high even for Third World countries. (Indonesia’s, by contrast, was then 1.3 per cent, but has recently come down, with much effort, to 1.2 per cent.)

Under the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, our rate has increased. According to Bureau of Statistics figures, it is now 1.7 per cent. Both natural increase and net migration continue to rise. At this rate, one which many are determined to maintain or increase, our population will reach 42 million by 2051. By the end of the century, it will pass 100 million.


This is far above any credible estimate of the population Australia could hope to feed.

Troubles will come sooner. This week’s government white paper proposes a 5 per cent cut in emissions, but this, like Ross Garnaut’s report, assumes large per capita cuts can outpace population growth, like a swimmer prevailing against the tide. But this planning is based on the dubious assumption we are heading for 28 million people living in Australia by 2051, rather than 42 million. If the Rudd Government does not change course, even painful per capita cuts will deliver no overall cuts, but an increase.

Much the same goes for water consumption. El Nino droughts come two or three times a decade, yet state and federal governments are, in effect. gambling it won’t happen on their watch. Several of Rudd’s ministers, most notably Penny Wong and Peter Garrett, are “population deniers”. Even Rudd has been heard repeating the nonsensical claim that “numbers are not the issue”. They are.

Some claim Australia is a big country, “boundless plains to share”, etc. Yet the geographer George Seddon has remarked Australia is more truly “a small country with big distances”. Even our agricultural areas are not so large, or fertile, as population boosters pretend. Wheat is our main crop, yet France, for instance, grows twice as much wheat (and far more of most other crops).

Sydney Morning Herald