High population growth: good for the rich, bad for the rest of us

There is plenty our political leaders could do about high population growth, but they don’t want to upset their wealthy mates and they know that there is very little passion for the sustainability argument against high population growth.

Becoming sustainable is something that we will have to do some day. There is no disagreement about that. The critical issues are when and how. The current answers are sometime later, and we’ll decide how, later.

Politically this is completely understandable. The politician’s primary goal is to be elected at the next election, not to make good, long term policy. There is currently very little pressure to be sustainable and immense pressure to be seen to be managing the economy well, in the short term. The most recognisable measure of the health of the economy is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Increasing the immigration rate and encouraging high population usually increases the GDP even if economic times are tough.

Following the global financial crisis some commentators said that high population growth saved Australia from a technical recession, because even though GDP per capita dropped for four quarters in a row, total GDP decreased in only one quarter. This saved Kevin Rudd from being called the Prime Minister who brought us a recession, despite the average Aussie being worse off.

The Rudd Government is so scared of being seen as a poor economic manager in the short term that they will never reduce immigration rates. Rudd knows that if the GDP increases he will be seen as a good economic manager, even though the average person is poorer than he would have been with low immigration. Second, he won’t get criticised by 79 per cent of Australian CEOs for reducing immigration rates, which would imply that he was a bad economic manager.

High immigration and high population growth are locked in with either of the major political parties and it is our children and grandchildren who will be paying the costs.

When Harry Triguboff’s grandchildren ask him why he didn’t care about green spaces, traffic congestion or the liveability of our cities, he will be able to say; “But I made billions of dollars out of those ideas,” and his grandchildren will probably say “Well, then that is OK, I guess”.

When Kevin Rudd’s grandchildren ask him why he let Australia’s environment deteriorate and our resources run down, he will be able to say “Those policies helped me get re-elected,” and his grandchildren will probably say “Well, then that is OK, I guess”.

When our grandchildren ask us why we didn’t care about traffic congestion, environmental deterioration and depletion of resources, we will have to say “Well, I guess we didn’t think it was that important,” and our grandchildren will probably say “Gee, I wish you would have thought it was a bit more important, then things wouldn’t be quite so tough for us now, but at least you got rich out of using up all those resources and saving money on protecting the environment.”

And we will have to say “No, actually our incomes grew more slowly than if we hadn’t had such high immigration”.