I am disappointed at the shallowness of much of what is passing for the so-called population debate. I expected the Murdoch press to push the big growth agenda, but I hoped for clearer thinking from Crikey and the so-called government and strategic decision-makers you say you’ve been talking to.
You say our policy makers are trapped in the gulf between public concerns about rapid population growth and Australia’s “moral responsibility” to take more immigrants from our Asian neighbours. Well, not for the first time the public has a better grasp of the situation than your experts.
Our gold-medal winning population growth wins us no friends in Asia. Most of our neighbours have spent years struggling with population issues of their own and they can only wonder why Australia is so keen to travel in the opposite direction. Our refugee intake looks ever more miserly as our population increases, and our climbing birth rate makes us the odd one out in the region. The constant back-flips over a few boat arrivals must appear ridiculous compared to the almost 500,000 people added to our population last year. We may not see it for what it is, but they do.
You suggest we risk generating “resentment” and being “out of sync” with our neighbours if we reduce our immigration even a little. Really? In fact it’s our current people-hungry policy that is doing damage to our reputation. I am currently making a documentary on population issues and am just now returning from Asia, having spoken to experts working at the two extremes of the population question: Bangladesh and Singapore.
Bangladesh has made great strides in reducing it’s population growth, but it’s still a crushing 160 million, five times the population density of China. In central Dhaka, I stood in the huge tent erected in the car park of the International Centre for Diarrhoea Disease Research where a thousand patients a day are being admitted for emergency treatment. Dhaka’s water table has now fallen to 60 metres below the city, and its 16 million citizens suffer from a desperate lack of clean water, exacerbated by the daily power black-outs. Australian Dr Kim Streatfield has been here for 18 years studying the impact of demographics on disease and poverty. Surrounded by dozens of suffering people, he told me how difficult it was to keep his trained staff. Doctors, nurses, IT specialists and analysts have all been poached this year. One of his most experienced doctors told me she’d be willing to “get a boat” to come to Australia. Dr Streatfield said he considered Australia’s policy of sucking out the best trained locals as immoral, undermining Bangladesh’s ability to escape extreme poverty. I agree with him, and our selfishness will not be forgotten here or in other developing nations we seem all too willing to plunder.
Singapore, on the other hand, has stabilised its population at five million and expects to keep it there, though it’s also struggling with the balance between immigration and natural increase. Professor Gavin Jones is another Australian working on population at the Asia Research Institute. He’s been researching demographic trends across the continent, and it’s ageing rapidly, presenting a far more serious problem for East Asia and China than it does for Australia. There will inevitably be a human arms race for the world’s best and brightest, and looking at the incredible development going on along Singapore’s waterfront, it’s only a matter of time before Asia returns the favour and starts luring our own professionals for salaries we may not be able to match. We can survive the loss of a few hundred currency traders and even a few cosmetic surgeons, but when they start coming for our local GPs there will be trouble.
Instead of relying on imported skills, we need to address the appalling lack of training of our own workforce. Julia Gillard recently received a shocking report from Skills Australia — all but ignored by most media commentators — showing that 4.7 million workers don’t have the literacy or numeracy levels to participate fully in a modern workforce.
In other words almost half the workforce is functionally illiterate! This is a tragic indictment of our government and educational planners and a recipe for disaster. We currently offer adult literacy education to just 1% of those who need it. Meanwhile our TAFE system is in serious trouble, with the numbers of local students enrolled having stagnated for a decade. We ran down our higher education system by greedily trying to turn foreign students into permanent residents. And the Asian students who feel ripped off will not forget the experience in a hurry. Madness!
I suspect Minister Gillard is one of the few politicians who recognises the danger all this represents for our future prosperity. Countering Kevin Rudd’s “Big Australia” argument, she has warned that we are squeezing out Australians because of our addiction to imported skilled labour and foreign students, which she has said “is not in Australia’s best interests”.
The growth cheerleaders in the Murdoch press, who have suddenly discovered the population issue, continue to harp on about mysterious skills shortages and missing the resources boom. Funny, they never admit that the mining industry employs just 1.5% of our workforce and that the overwhelming majority of new arrivals head straight to Sydney and Melbourne where they add to the infrastructure and housing crisis rather than helping it.
Would Crikey please go back to the government and strategic thinkers its been talking to and tell them the so called “policy dilemma” is in their imagination. They’ve been looking down the wrong end of the telescope and it’s our current high growth policies that are undermining Australia’s role in the region.
(((((The growth cheerleaders in the Murdoch press, who have suddenly discovered the population issue, continue to harp on about mysterious skills shortages and missing the resources boom. ))))
The Murdoch Press love this…it’s a furphy and has never existed, nothing short of a ready made pretext for a cheap labour market servicing the big-end of town and other mining interests who only employ a meagre 1.5% of our workforce.
Immigration based on compassionate grounds should always hold pride of place in any nation worth their salt, but unchecked and rampant immigration which only serves the nefarious agenda of foreign interests should exit Australian policy, lest we become the Tail and not the Head.
I don’t have much time for the Murdoch press either, Dick, but wrapping up the pro-immigration movement as ‘growth cheerleaders’ is too slippery for me. The problem is global, which means Australia can nether solve it nor avoid it, so setting arbitrary limits is stupid. There are plenty of people who want the place to stay the same or go backwards, but the challenge to them and the rest of us is how to live in a way that can absorb more people. Enter climate change deniers with their world government conspiracy theory. But something has to give because keeping our population artificially low will seem like a combination of protectionism and isolationism and that may lead to something even more startling than leaking boats from Indonesia. Amazing though it may seem to some, Australia isn’t a different planet. Sad but true.
A great reply to the tosh that is just now being rammed through the official corporate mouthpieces in the media.
Crikey have consistently made gooses of themselves on this issue – starting last year when they applauded the ‘bipartisan’ silence on this issue from both major parties as reflecting some kind of political maturity. One of the most inane, patronising and elitist bits of guff that i’ve read in a long time – and you got the feeling that who ever was responsible (eric, sophie?) were sufficiently ignorant as to not even understand the implications of what they were saying. I almost choked on my latte
The recent one where the editor knowingly quotes from these supposedly wise and worried senior officials and politicians is just as comical. Apparently they just won’t like us in Asia if we don’t keep our population uptake the highest in the world.
Throw in the regular conflation of those concerned about our population explosion and racists (thanks bernard) and you get a coverage on this issue from Crikey which is pretty much in line with what you’d get out of Ruperts corporate gulag and spruik shop.
Baal
I’ve gone through your argument to find coherence but all I find is a succession of non sequitors and cliches.
“the problem is global’, ‘australia can neither solve it or avoid it’, the ‘challenge is is how to live in a way that can absorb more people” we can’t go on “keeping our population artificially low’
These are all contested notions but you don’t argue them…you just blurt them out as givens.
The point of the article is to say that Australia can address it, that the challenge isn’t about absorbing more people but less, that the global reality is one of most nations trying to put a reign on population growth.
And the idea that our population is artificially low is laughable. There is not one serious environmentalist who has stated that we are not close to our capacity vis-a-vis the carrying capacity of the land. Credible scientists such as Tim Flannery have said that ideally we should be carrying approx 13 million. Yeah it looks big on the map but its mostly desert and non arable land isnt it…And thats before we get to the built environment, infrastructure etc.
((((Enter climate change deniers with their world government conspiracy theory))))
Baal, you are sounding more like a Prophet of your name sake more and more….and defending the Murdoch press?…sheesh!!!
It’s cringing, when we see the “climate denier card” played out over an issue that is only partly or semi-related to main issue. What next?…population denier = holocaust denier???…give it a rest.