Populate or perish?

Above: Jakarta’s footprint and below, the same footprint – home to 26 million people – superimposed on south east Queensland.

The argument that Australia is somehow incapable of supporting substantially larger population numbers cannot rely on some myth that we short of room. Nor can it rely on suggestions that we would exhaust our energy stocks (we are a net exporter and would remain so at much larger population numbers), nor our food production capacity (again, we are a net exporter and would remain so even with much higher levels of population). In fact, in terms of food production, a lack of domestic market scale poses a significant problem for producers. The efficiency gains of primary production (livestock to cropping) has outpaced the growth in population. 

There is an argument regularly raised that Australia has insufficient water supply to support much larger population numbers but this argument doesn’t hold water (sorry, couldn’t help that). What we do lack is water storage by way of dams, but the environmental lobby has vigorously opposed almost every proposed dam in the last 30 years whether it is for domestic supply, agriculture or hydro energy. The lack of water storage has been a policy decision made by successive governments for varying political reasons. The lack of water per se is not an issue.

Think also for a moment how cities like Mexico City (population nearly 20 million people) or Cairo (population 18 million) or even countries like Morocco (population 32 million in 500,000 square kilometres on the edge of the Sahara compared with Australia’s 7.6 million square kilometres) manage for water? For Australia to claim it cannot support more people due to water limitations would be a bit of joke if aired in the United Nations. 

Above: arable land area in hectares per person. Australia is well ahead of the field. 

Infrastructure deficits are the other vexed issue raised by objectors to population growth. They have pointed out that infrastructure investment has not kept pace with population, and in some respects they’re right. The problem though is largely that strategic infrastructure investment in this country is something really only talked about. Instead, what typically happens is that billions are doled out on pet projects in marginal seats or designed to win over particular interest groups that some focus group or other suggests could hold the key to winning the next election.  Politically motivated rail projects (especially in NSW), home insulation schemes, TV set box boxes, green energy schemes... the list of our nation’s capacity to waste vast sums quickly with little to show for it is pretty impressive. Our deficient national road network, our inadequate domestic water storage (in many areas), our looming potential energy problems (not just in price thanks to a carbon tax but also in terms of power generation shortages according to some experts) – the bigger and more strategic infrastructure priorities which would support growth seem to get the least attention. Witness the latest Federal Government budget. (Read what Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, among others critical of the budget, had to say here). 

So the capacity to fund and deliver strategic infrastructure isn’t the issue. Inept public policy is.

Instead, do we have some other more deep seated aversion to a bigger population? And is this race based? Despite being a successful nation of immigrants (and a nation of successful immigrants) are we fearful for our culture if more immigration is the key to growing our population to economically sustainable levels? Environmental impacts are often publicly cited as the reason to oppose more people, but if the examples of Los Angeles or Jakarta are remembered, we could in theory house a great deal more people without encroaching on vast areas of natural terrain. 

If it’s not race, what is the deep seated objection to a ‘big Australia’ that seems to have so many public policy leaders running for cover on the issue? At some stage, public policy is going to have to confront the issue in a rational manner. The clock is ticking for Australia’s ageing population and even the Federal Government’s own ‘Tax Reform Roadmap’ released with the May budget warned that:  “The proportion of working age people is projected to fall markedly over the coming decades. Today there are about 4.8 people of traditional working age for every person aged 65 and over. This is expected to fall to around 4 people within the next 10 years and to around 2.7 people by 2050.”

Australia’s current rate of population growth is hovering around 1.4%. We are just shy of 23 million people. We say we’re concerned about getting to 35 million by 2050, by which time the world population will have increased by 2 billion people. We know that our ageing population will struggle to be supported by a diminished workforce in that time. We know we already lack sufficient critical mass to sustain a variety of industries which are too regularly yielding to the weight of global competition, much of which is based on numerical strength. Yet we consistently refuse to confront the question of a larger population and what it would take to get there, along with the consequences of failing to do so.

Whether we aim to become a nation of 35 million or 50 million or if we ultimately agree that despite the consequences that are clearly understood we would collectively prefer to remain a small nation of less than 30 million, it’s a discussion we need to be having. Pretending the issue isn’t there won’t do anyone any good.