Population

Wildlife harvesting advocate Professor Mike Archer AM has been geeing up the anti-vegetarian ork armies with an article putting the boot in for ‘hypocrisy’ over mice. The pesky little critters erupt into sizable plagues in grain growing areas every few years and Archer thereby accused vegetarians of having the “worst possible” diet in terms of suffering and sustainability.

What not to do when it comes to a sustainable diet

During the robust online debate following his article, Archer produced the following visionary statement on Australia’s food production future:

“In fact (sorry to sound insensitive), but we should not be consuming Australia unsustainably as we are now to feed 50 million people overseas in addition to the rapidly expanding Australian population. It’s a great short-term strategy to make more money and feel we done [sic] our bit to feed the starving millions overseas, but it makes us contributors to the exacerbating global problem of overpopulation rather than part of the solution. If we could just manage Australia sustainably, that would be the beginning of a rational approach to land-use and set a good example for the rest of the world.”

Continue reading "The ethics of feeding off the fat of the land" »

Here’s a simple thought experiment: imagine a glass seemingly empty apart from a scum on the bottom. That scum is yeast that doubles its size every day and you know that, after 60 days, the glass will be full to the brim with that yeasty scum. Question: on which day is the glass half full?

Answer: day 59. Just one day before the glass is filled to capacity it’s half full. That’s the sneaky thing about exponential growth.The final spurt happens so rapidly.

Take the world’s human population. We only made it to the first one billion people within the last 300 years. But then we really started packing them in. When I was born in 1963 there were 3.5 billion people. Now, just 47 years later, we’re double that figure and still climbing rapidly.

Continue reading "How many people can the world support?" »

Somewhere yesterday in rural India, the world’s 7 billionth person was born. This event, which should be a cause for celebration, will undoubtedly provoke the population prophets of doom to predict impending catastrophe.

Last night, Sydney was lucky enough to host the patriarch of the prophets, Professor Paul Ehrlich, who gave an address at UNSW on ‘Population, Environment, and the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere’.

Professor Ehrlich made his name at a time of population hysteria, the age of Logan’s Run, the pill and the birth of China’s one-child policy. He is most famous for his 1968 work, The Population Bomb, which predicted immense social upheaval, massive resource shortages and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people from starvation due to a “population explosion”.

Continue reading "The Earth needs more people. 7 billion isn’t enough" »

The United Nations estimates that the world’s population will reach seven billion sometime in late October or early November. The sixth billion was arrived at in 1999, and it is significant that the seventh billion took the same number of years (12) to add as the sixth.

This is relevant because prior to that, there had been a progressive shortening of the time taken to add billions to the human population. The first billion was reached in 1804, taking many thousands of years of human evolution to achieve. Thereafter successive billions were added in 123, 32, 15 and 13 years respectively.

This reflects a slowing down in global population growth from a high of 2.1 per cent per annum in the late 1960s to 1.2 percent per annum currently.

Continue reading "Seven billion reasons to think about sustainability…" »

The existence of a fountain of youth that restores the health and youth of anyone bathing in its waters has tantalised humanity for centuries.

Substitute the mythical water for modern-day medicine and we could, in the next decade, see medicines that slow the ageing process and help us live to 150 years old. 

Life expectancy in Australia is already on a positive trend. At the beginning of the 20th Century, life expectancy at birth was about 55 years for males and 59 years for females.

Continue reading "What would life be like if we lived to 150?" »

Recently a colleague mockingly asked me why I bothered writing. I replied: because the quality of debate is appallingly bad.

Exactly, she said. Thus with a sense of light-hearted despair at the recent banter in the media, I weigh into Australia’s strategic policy apropos the on-rushing war with China.

It appears that the conservative minds that discuss strategic policy are aligning. China is growing, the world is changing, and power is being redistributed. According to those who subscribe to the various brands of “Realist” international relations theory, this situation necessarily entails armed conflict between states.

Continue reading "Should we defend the Great Wall or the Grand Canyon?" »

Listening to the sometimes facile public debate about population growth, it seems that all Australia needs to do to address our population issues is ditch ‘big Australia’ in favour of ‘sustainable population’.

With a debate as shallow as this, it’s little wonder that we’ve made little headway in addressing our growing pains.

In 2009, when Kevin Rudd dug the first few feet of his political grave with his declaration in support of a ‘Big Australia’, population growth — led by higher birth rates and record migration — was at an all-time high.  With Rudd safely out of The Lodge, Gillard and Abbott raced to the election trying to see who could distance themselves furthest from the former PM’s sentiments.

Continue reading "Big Australia is coming, like it or not" »

Population stability in Australia today is all about immigration patterns and policy, not about some notion of enforced family size.

If it weren’t for sky-high levels of immigration we would already be well on the track to population stability, as are a number of other much wiser OECD countries.

At least the Burke review did not re-endorse Rudd’s “unapologetic” call for massive population growth.

Continue reading "We need to stop the cult of endless growth" »

The latest debate over multiculturalism has again exposed the often inflammatory nature of media reporting and its misrepresentation of Australian society.

A recent study by the University of Western Sydney noted that 87 per cent of Australians agree that “It is a good thing for a society to be made up of people from different cultures”. 

Yet the headline from one major tabloid newspaper was “Australia a land of racists”.

Continue reading "Multicultural debate cloaks the problem of Big Australia" »

A growing population is not the result of over-zealous politicians and bureaucrats or big business trying to expand their market.

It is a result of Australians being healthier, living longer, and having more children. It is because people from around the world want to come here to work, travel, live and study.

Population growth is neither an impending disaster nor something we should blindly strive for—it is simply happening as a result of our economic progress and the collective desires of millions of people.

Continue reading "Population growth is not all about immigration" »

Bigger is better even if it’s top heavy and somewhat false.

Carbon tax or not, Australia’s carbon emissions will keep rising, driven by rapid rates of population growth (A Bigger Australia) and increasing affluence. Most of the carbon is domestic but we also own the carbon that China and other manufacturers emit when they make stuff we purchase from our malls and big box stores.

The ‘Bigger Australia’ much loved by Kevin Rudd and the top end of town surfaced again in the last federal election when both major parties scrambled for a ‘right-sized Australia’ driven by disenchantment in marginal electorates where services are tight and solutions oft promised.

Continue reading "Population policy is driven by the Dolly Parton syndrome" »

Leave the city behind. Leave the traffic and the noise, and the crime and the expensive real estate, and escape to somewhere… idyllic. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Maybe a little too good to be true.

Well it is. Watch out all you tree changers and sea changers - life outside the city can be divine. But it’s not some hazy-edged utopian dream.

Apparently Australians are leaving the big smokes - especially Sydney - in droves. They’re going to the coast, or near-city centres, or not-so-near-city-centres.

Continue reading "Let’s be blunt about the country…" »

Many doctors are concerned that an overcrowded world will be unhealthy, unhappy and hungry; we must not allow Australia to make this mistake.

In Australia our concerns over the effects of a growing population are just part of our concerns for the health of all our patients. For these reasons Doctors for the Environment Australia has a population policy which explains the links between population and health. 

It is fairly obvious that the present rate of population growth in Australia has imposed considerable strain on existing health services in terms of trained personnel, finance and administration. Any increase in population must be constrained by the rate at which services can be maintained.+

Continue reading "Science, not vested interests, must shape population policy" »

Yesterday I wrote to Prime Minister Julia Gillard expressing concern about a report in The Economic Times,  that Australia intends to ‘target’ Chandigarh, Punjab and other cities in northern India with a promotional campaign in 2012 looking to attract skilled migrants.

I told the Prime Minister I do not want the number of skilled migrants to increase, and do not support Australia running promotional campaigns to try to attract migrants.

I cannot see how running promotional campaigns to attract skilled migrants is consistent with the Prime Minister’s pre-election statements that she does not believe in a ‘Big Australia’ and that ‘we need to stop and take a breath’.  I also think this pre-empts the Sustainable Population Strategy for Australia being developed by Population Minister Tony Burke.

Continue reading "Why Gillard is wrong to encourage skilled migration" »

I have a challenge for the foodies of Australia.

Yes, you - the ones out there who’ve been glued to Masterchef, thrilling the neighbours with your medallions of immature ovine, steeped in a garcon’s thimble of the reduced subcutaneous oleaginous lipids of the common or garden canard, garnished with a frisson of cresson.

I think it’s time we stepped it up a notch. You may think you are adventurous, perhaps even original. 

Continue reading "A sustainable foodie future - let them eat bugs" »

The Government today was pushed closer to deciding whether Australia should be an under-populated, bijou nation-ette, or a place of strong population growth producing a stronger economy.

Population Minister Tony Burke received reports from three panels commissioned to look at the economic, environmental and demographic factors involved in increasing the number of our citizens.

He will respond in April.

Continue reading "Escaping Small Australia: A case for population growth" »

When it comes to questions of population, ignorance often prevails. The business lobby in Australia, often through its many and varied “independent” centres and institutes, leads the way.

Through its complex web of public relations activities, it pushes its population growth propaganda, specialising in denial.

Here are some facts:

Continue reading "Population growth is a choice" »

When did Australia get so ageist about oldies?

The Commissioner responsible for Age Discrimination Elizabeth Broderick thinks it’s a good question and says the answer is something the nation should grapple with together. 

Today Broderick launches a new report by the Australian Human Rights Commission, Age discrimination – exposing the hidden barrier for mature age workers. Compiled from a range of research, academic papers and government studies, the report paints a picture of exclusion, ill informed assumptions and even humiliation for older people in Australia.

Continue reading "Ageist Australia reviles instead of reveres its elders" »

For those of us who feel that Australia is at a crossroad on issues around sustainability the debates related to this topic have been more than a little disappointing – and I am not just talking about the election cycle. The issue of sustainability, carrying capacity and population numbers have all been meshed together to give us a linear equation: less people = more sustainability.

It is a simple equation that then takes us to discussions about numbers: should we have 180,000 migrants or 220,000 migrants? Is a 2.2 percent rise in population sustainable?

Fascinated by these numbers I thought I would try and come up with my own equation to work out the right number of people who should be living in Australia. It goes something like this:

Continue reading "Population: size doesn’t matter" »

There’s a rather odd immigration debate taking place in this election, characterised appropriately enough, by today’s immigration debate between Tony Burke and Scott Morrison. 

Minister for (*sustainable) Population Tony Burke began his address talking about all those things that Labor have been stressing in the population debate: sustainability on region by region, arguing that the Coalition are all over the place with their policy and refusing to be pushed into naming a goal population figure: “A sustainable Australia involves a level of detail that will not be solved by finding a glib magic number,” Mr Bourke told the National Press Club today.

Then Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison got up and made his pitch on immigration: it involved talking about boat people almost the entire time. At one point exciting a group of student don John Howard masks and start screaming at Morrison.

Continue reading "The two speed immigration debate" »

Since becoming Prime Minister, Gillard has been work-shopping the phrase ‘Sustainable Australia’. Like Kevin 07’s, ‘working families’ no-one really has a clue what it means, but the faces behind the PM on the six o’clock news all nod diligently whenever she mentions it. It is almost like they are too embarrassed to admit they have no idea what she is talking about.

I bet that every one of those ALP candidates who nod eagerly whenever the word ‘sustainable Australia’ is mentioned would love it if the Prime Minister could explain what the difference is between a ‘sustainable’ Australia and a ‘big’ Australia if you don’t cut the current immigration rate, or increase the death rate or decrease the birth rate.

It is telling the only actual policy Ms Gillard has delivered in her first four weeks as Prime Minister was to change the Minister for Population’s title to the Minister for ‘Sustainable’ Population. Every other policy she has announced will be delivered sometime in the never never or - never, ever.

Continue reading "No sustainability without food security" »

Over Easter, the then Prime Minister quietly upgraded one of his Mandarins. It was the second time in as many weeks that a Mandarin has been invited into the bunker to receive new instructions.

This time it was the NSW Right Faction which scored a prize. The part-time Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Tony Burke, has been asked to come up with a cunning plan to have a cunning plan, and was even given a new moniker to go with the job. Mr Burke, who has always aspired to have his Who’s Who subscription waivered because of Who he was, is now to be know as: The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry, Minister ‘Sustainable’ for Population.

Three days into the job, the Prime Minister’s first actual policy announcement was to add the word ‘Sustainable’ to the Population Minister’s title. It really does sum up the way Labor is driven by spin.

Continue reading "The only population Labor cares about is its own" »

Update: Today’s Newspoll results, as reported by The Australian, show Labor’s primary vote has leapt seven percentage points from 35 per cent after three days of Julia Gillard’s leadership.

During question time last week whenever the opposition attacked Kevin Rudd over asylum seekers Labor MPs would blow on invisible dog whistles. In retrospect that just looked like an early practice session for the Government’s new band.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s decision to abolish Kevin Rudd’s plan for a big Australia has as much to with concerns with over asylum seekers as it does over population.

Up until this point the Opposition had been cynically and successfully able to merge peoples concerns over asylum seekers and a Big Australia policy. Gillard knows this and yesterday’s announcement was all about whistling a new tune of her own.

Continue reading "Campaign countdown: Julia now whistling her own tune" »

The NSW Government this week announced new zoning for some of our more leafy suburbs, allowing for the development of medium and high rise apartment buildings along the North Shore rail line.

You’d think building apartments near railway stations in a city choked by cars and a rental crisis would be a good idea, but from the reaction you’d think they’d authorised the concreting of a National Park.

While Federal Politicians argue about Big Australia, and just how big is Big, the issue of density has stayed in the sphere of the local skirmish. And while people complain about the urban sprawl of Australian cities, we’re still acutely averse to the concept of raising our children without the luxury of our own back yards. And that’s what back yards are, a luxury. Well a luxury that you have to mow.

Continue reading "Australia, it’s time to ditch the backyard" »

Home ownership is central to the great Australian dream. A home is not only a means of shelter, but the crucible from which personal development, family relations and community bonds spring forth. For many Australians, it is a tangible way in which they can share in the wealth of the nation.

A decade ago, social researcher, Jeanne Strachan, reflected on an emerging concern about housing: “Young couples today are the first generation since the war to face the reality that they often can’t obtain, even with two full-time workers in the house, what their own parents saw as a fair and reasonable reward for their hard work.”

Strachan observed a growing sense of pessimism about home ownership: “Many young couples have an ingrained belief that it is not ‘right’ to raise children in a rented home. They make a very strong emotional link between the goals of parenthood and home ownership. They recognise that before the birth of their first child they will bath have to work to fulfil their home ownership dream.”

Continue reading "How Labor has made housing more expensive" »

Last week Gordon Brown called one of his voters a bigot. Her crime, voicing her concerns about immigration policy in the UK. Brown was condemned for an act of outrageous insensitivity and dutifully marched back to her home for a 45 minute apology.

Talking about immigration is not easy in western democracies. There is an elite consensus that seeks to deny the conversation. Apparently, we’re not mature enough to have this discussion without our raw, untamed racial prejudices overwhelming our capacity for reason and having their way.

To protect us all from our dark side, the self appointed elite apply the tags of racism, bigotry and dog whistling to anyone who cares to discuss the topic. After all, it’s for our own good.

Continue reading "Debating population is not racist or bigoted" »

In just a few short weeks population policy has turned into a panacea for just about every problem of the modern economy - from immigration to water management and more. Luckily for us, we can now lay these problems at the feet of the world’s first Population Minister, Tony Burke.

Never mind that many of these problems that have been around for decades, they are now gathering under the banner of ‘population policy’, effectively making Tony Burke the new Minister for Everyone and Everything.

For starters the Minister will need to strike a balance between economic growth and environmental sustainability, and tackle the impact of population growth on urban planning, transport, housing, water (and it seems just about every other type of infrastructure).

Continue reading "“Population” the new phrase for everything going wrong" »

Australia’s population will be a major issue at the coming federal election.  Not just because of the ongoing problems with Labor’s border protection laws but because Australians are increasingly concerned with the sustainability of our country.

Last year in a rare moment of clarity the Prime Minister made very clear that he ‘believed’ in a ‘big Australia’.  He made these comments on the day that his government announced its population target for Australia of 36 million by 2050

Continue reading "Don’t forget sustainability in the population debate" »

There’s a laundry list of reasons Melbourne could probably already be regarded as Australia’s most prestigious city over Sydney. It hosts the Australian Open, the Melbourne Cup and various other prestige horse races, the AFL Grand Final, and the Formula 1 Grand Prix. The last time Tiger Woods came to Australia, he was in Melbourne.

What has Sydney got to compete as regular international attractions? There are a couple of world-class restaurants with obscenely-priced menus and a rarely-used, difficult-to-get-to Olympic stadium. There is the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, though it should be noted that this features a bunch of people with lots of money and significant business connections getting out of the joint as fast as they possibly can.

If size does matter in the battle for status as the nation’s most prestigious city, it now looks likely Melbourne will be bigger than Sydney in the not-too-distant future. A spokesman for the developer lobby that commissioned the report remarked that Sydney had the hallmarks of “a global city in decline”.

Continue reading "Against Melbourne, housing the least of Sydney’s worries" »

As Tory wrote yesterday The Punch conducted a survey on attitudes to population growth last week. One question we asked was what people thought of the idea of building a new city, and 70 per cent said yes. So given there’s probably broad support for building a new city, the next question is: where should it be? There are some suggestions in already but we’d like to hear your thoughts in the comments - some of the initial suggestions are in this map and we’ll add to it as your ideas come in.

View Location for a new Australian city? in a larger map

Have a click around the map: zoom in and check out the various icons - there’s a little summary with each location and why they might work - or you can see a full-size version of the map here. But be bold and make your own suggestions in the comments below and we’ll keep building the map out.

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It is easy to dismiss the growing backlash to population growth as a case of national NIMBYism, but the story could have more to do with the capacity of our major capital cities to deal with any extra people.

While there was lively debate over the idea of a new city in yesterday’s Punch the latest Essential Report shows the real issue is whether the government should tell new arrivals to go bush.

In what could be a real clue to the Federal Government in how to handle this difficult issue, most Australians actually support an increase in the population of major regional centres and smaller regional towns.

Continue reading "The key to coping with more people is to send them bush" »

The decision to suspend asylum seeker applications for six months represents a superficial attempt to appear both hard-line and compassionate on people smuggling, and just in time for the Federal election.

It has been less than a month since with dry-cleaned suits, a full stomach and make-up for the cameras, three senior federal ministers announced a suspension of asylum seeker claims from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan for three and six months respectively.

Ever since then though, the policy has continued its descent into a shambles with over a thousand asylum seekers in a detention centre designed for just four-hundred on Christmas Island – in tents and demountables – and the reopening of Curtin Detention Centre.

Continue reading "Treating the symptoms of a political headache" »

Welcome to sunny Big Australia, the land of opportunity, where you’re welcome to be one of 36 million of us by the year 2050 - as long as you’re prepared to live, oh, about 4,000 kms from the Opera House.

The Punch set out last week to find out just how tolerant Australians are of the idea of the kind of population growth being considered by the Federal Government, and more to the point, how it should be managed.

What we found on the streets of Sydney, the country’s most under pressure city, is a political nightmare for both sides of politics. While Sydneysiders are quite open minded about welcoming more Australians, 70 per cent said we’d need a whole new city to house them, and that city should be far, far away.

Continue reading "Where the bloody hell do we put them" »

Today there will be thousands of Australians losing an hour of time with their kids for the privilege of sitting in traffic gridlock in our major cities.  Somewhere else there will be an employer looking at a business, which could generate much more money if only a worker could be found.

The concept of Australia running at two speeds couldn’t be starker than it is with population.  One group of Australians are flying at high speed to work at a mine while others may as well put the handbrake on.

Developing a sustainable population strategy means finding a way forward for both groups.  So far a lot of the debate has dealt with national population figures and presumed all we need to do is arrive at a total number.

Continue reading "We can’t keep the country running at two speeds" »

There are plenty of vast, empty spaces on this continent and many Australians The Punch spoke to last week would like to see them filled.

In a survey The Punch ran testing Australians’ thoughts on population growth, the majority of respondents were open to the idea of building a new major city somewhere on the continent to relieve population pressure on other cities.

They were resolute about its ideal location: anywhere but near Sydney and Melbourne. John, 20, from Cronulla agreed with many survey respondents that Australia’s next Canberra, if built, should go somewhere on the country’s Western coast: “It should be somewhere between Perth and Broome.”

Continue reading "We’ve land to spare, but it’s got to be out there" »

It’s begun. The dog whistle has been discarded in favour of an all-out symphony designed to convince mainstream Australia that their darkest fears are about to become a reality.

In the past few days we have seen the Federal Opposition announce it supports a decrease in immigration and by implication has rejected the Treasury’s projections of a population of 36 million people by 2050.

For the record, I have nothing against debating population or immigration – but the catalyst for the Coalition announcing these new policies seems to be the ongoing arrival of boatloads of asylum seekers. And it is this the attempt to link two very separate issues that leaves the Coalition looking like crude political opportunists.

Continue reading "The population debate has nothing to do with boats" »

As Kevin Rudd welcomed his 100th boat last week, he also started to scramble on the even larger issue of his ‘Big Australia’.

The problem for Kevin Rudd is he seems to be repeating the same mistakes on both issues.

While some argue that concerns about increased boat arrivals is due to xenophobic fears of being overrun, there is a danger in impugning this motive. Every time Labor attacks the Coalition as racist dog whistlers for raising concerns about border protection, Kevin Rudd insults millions of Australians who share our concerns about Labor’s failures.

Continue reading "A population debate that Kevin Rudd has already lost" »

Predictions for Australia’s population seem to be going up like bids at an auction.

Three years ago the Australian Bureau of Statistics predicted 28 million by 2050 and more recently Kevin Rudd has mentioned a figure of 35 million. Media reports in the last few days have put the figure at more like 40 million by 2050. Any advance on 40 million?

So where are these figures coming from? Many experts agree that the current focus on growing Australia’s population to 35 million or more by 2050 is not founded on sound science but on short term trends with a large dash of wishful thinking.

Continue reading "It’s time we had an actual discussion about population" »

The political class is on a collision course with the punters they are elected to represent over the issue of population growth, because they are failing to engage the public in a meaningful, mature debate.

While the major political parties have signed up to the official long-term projections of 36 million by 2050, the public overwhelmingly thinks that’s way too many. In response, the politicians bat on with the reflexive response “There is No Alternative”.

This dissonance highlights much that is wrong with our political system. It also opens up big opportunities for both the extreme Right and the environmental Left over the coming years.

Continue reading "Tell us again why we need population growth" »

Who knew the lower north shore of Sydney was a hunting ground for anti-immigrationists. This flyer popped up in mail boxes last weekend in more than one apartment block, in more than one suburb. Unauthorised of course, and probably the work of a nutter.

But it’s an election year, and these things don’t tend to happen in a vacuum. During the next six months there’ll be a lot more of this rubbish peddled by those outside the political mainstream.

Scott Morrison has requested we be able to debate immigration without labeling people racist. That’s more than fair. But keeping the debate clean is a two way street.

Continue reading "Want to lose “racist” from the debate, lose the racism" »

Immigration has held a special place in the fears of many Australians but the figures tell a different story to that told by Liberal MP Kevin Andrews in his recent post on The Punch.

The data on asylum seekers and refugees in particular provides some much needed perspective on the current national debate.

When Mr Andrews informed Punch readers of the latest migration figures of 173,290 permanent migrants, he neglected to mention that in the last year of the Howard Government the number of permanent migrants to Australia reached 184,438.

Continue reading "Counterpunch: the figures on refugees tell the story" »

Why is the Rudd government hell-bent on bringing more and more people to Australia?

In 2007-08, 173,290 people permanently migrated to Australia. In addition, there were another 544,000 temporary migrants to the country, excluding the five million visitors. That’s close to three-quarters of a million extra people residing here in a year.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Net Overseas Migration contributed 60.6 per cent of Australia’s population growth in 2008, compared to 39.4 per cent contributed by natural increase.

Continue reading "How many people does Australia need?" »