Stable Population Party: a dead vote

The Stable Population Party (SPP) will lead the Malthusian charge for a Senate seat at next Federal election on a platform of less people in Australia.

The SPP has one simple message, 'population is an everything' issue.

"Population growth is causing or exacerbating all of Australia's major problems…. This is why population needs its own platform, and why it is important to not dilute the message with other divisive and less important policy positions (e.g. carbon tax, gay marriage, republic)," says the SPP website.

This is a brave manifesto, based in biological and systems theory, to take to the Australian people. According to the SPP, pokies, gay marriage, the Republic, Australia's trade position, social welfare, the health budget, conservation, urban design, university funding and defence, to name just a few, are all secondary or tertiary considerations to slashing Australia's population.

The crux of the SPP's policy agenda is creating a'balanced migration' program. In simple terms, it's 'one in, one out'.

"Permanent immigration would be equivalent to permanent emigration… This would reduce annual permanent immigration from around 250,000 (including NZ) to around 80,000, and include skilled, family reunion and humanitarian (refugee) components."

Permanent residency fluctuates from year to year but as of June 2012 it was 87,000 people, not 250,000. The SPP has confused temporary migration including students, 457 visas, working holidaymakers and tourists with all migrants including permanent residents. The total migration program outcome was 228,000 people to the year ending 2012.

Some visas periods are one year, some are two, others require employer sponsorship while still others are granted permanent residency. These visas protocols are complex and also include about 83,000 international students per year.

Australia has one of the lowest unemployment rates for migrants in the OECD and is one of only three OECD nations where migrant unemployment is virtually the same as the local born. Overall, our migrant program has been an extraordinary success. But it's true, they do eat and therefore are considered 'rabbits' by the Malthusians.

The 'anti-populationists' do not understand the nexus between immigration, skills, profitability and capability in the Australian economy nor do I believe the SPP has any conception of how a modern economy works.

Apart from the ridiculous prospect of foreign businessmen and women being forced to line up for months to work in Australia on international joint projects, the bureaucracy needed to undertake this scheme would be of a magnitude undreamt of in a modern economy.

The SPP has said that GDP per capita has fallen due to population pressure. Wrong.

GDP per capita has nothing to do with population. One of the leading indicators of per capital growth is disposable income and this directly contradicts SPP claims of misery and woe.

I'll quote directly from the Measures of Australia's Progress: Summary Indicators, 2012 (1370.0.55.001).

"During the decade 2000-01 to 2010-11, Australia's real net national disposable income grew from $38,500 per person to $49,100 per person in 2009-10 dollars. Year-on-year growth of around 2-3 per cent was consistent for most of the decade, until real net national disposable income peaked in 2008-09 at $47,400 per person. This was followed by a 1.3 per cent decline in 2009-10. Australia's real net national disposable income per capita has since recovered, with growth of 4.8% between 2009-10 and 2010-11."

For those who have an obsession for rankings, according to the World Bank, Australia ranks 16^th in the world at about $40,000 per person by GDP (PPP) on a per capita basis (2011). It's a fairly meaningless comparison because of the unusual and unique petro-dollar based economies of Qatar, Kuwait and Brunei and the bank rich economies of Luxembourg and Macau, who all rank in the top ten. It's beholden on fledgling political parties to get the facts right. Australia's economy is first division whereas the SPP's thinking is amateur league.

In 2009, Simon Butler, a writer for the Green Left Weekly, succinctly put the argument against population control. I have paraphrased his comments here.

Population does not cause climate change.

Anti-populationists want reduce the number of humans on the planet to control climate change. People are not pollution. Blaming too many people for driving climate change is like blaming too many trees for causing bushfires. The real cause of climate change is an economy locked into burning fossil fuels for energy and unsustainable agriculture.

The world is not 'full'

The world is not experiencing runaway population growth. While population is growing, the rate of this growth is slowing. This is mostly due to rising urbanisation and marginal improvements in women's access to birth control technology. The rate of population growth peaked at 2 per cent annually in the 1960s, and has fallen consistently since then.

According to the UN, the average number of children born per woman fell from 4.9 in the late 1960s to 2.7 in 1992. Yet the rate of greenhouse gas emissions is rising. Polluting technology, rampant consumerism and corporate greed are driving this increase - not population.

Population and upside down thinking

Climate change threatens life on the planet. Recognition of this fact means that governments must take serious action on climate change. Advocates of population control turn this fact on its head. Climate change will lead to a world so harsh, uncertain and polluted, their argument goes, that it's more "humane" to prevent future generations from being born at all.

This population reduction argument is couched in terms of containing, or mitigating, the apparently inevitable effects of environmental destruction. Instead, the struggle for an alternative model of development, based on meeting the needs of people and planet, should be our main concern.

Less migration is a dangerous policy

Migrants are a convenient scapegoat. They are already being falsely blamed for contributing to unemployment. Supporting cuts in migration avoids the burning issue: Australia is the highest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in the world. Migrants and refugees who come here should be welcomed and invited into our movement for a safe climate.

Who holds power is the real 'population' issue

There is one part of the world's population that poses a genuine threat: the small group of powerful, vested interests who profit most from polluting the biosphere and are desperately resisting change. The real population change is not artificially reducing human numbers. Rather, it is about winning real democratic change, by increasing the number of people who participate in making decisions about investment in green industries, agriculture, global trade and military spending.

Population control narrowly looks only at the quantity of human beings to find a solution to climate change. Ultimately, its narrow vision makes it a divisive policy. The climate action movement, however, is concerned with improving the quality of human life.

Conclusion

The SPP want to "Limit the baby bonus and paid parental leave to each woman's first two children." No argument from me there. Studies have shown that except for the first year of introduction, the Baby Bonus plays no role in birth rates.

Nor do I believe the SPP is a branch of the more radical elements of population control as witnessed by the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) in the UK, which has a website called 'Pop Offsets'. The website allows you to work out how much carbon you emit per day. It then tells you how many births you must help to prevent in order to offset that carbon.

But cutting population will do nothing to relieve infrastructure stress. It will only exacerbate it as the taxable horizon contracts. Cutting population will increase the cost of living pressures as wage inflation goes through the roof. As Australia exports more than $30 billion of foods stuffs per year, cutting population will do nothing to protect our food supply. If the SPP was serious about minimizing urban sprawl, it would focus more on urban design, which it has not done.

By making population the 'everything issue', the Stable Population Party stands for nothing.