‘Small Australia’ is a Population Con Job

‘Under every realistic scenario Australia’s population will grow’, says Jessica Brown. ‘It is simply wrong for politicians to pretend that they can stop population growth.’

In Populate and Perish? Modelling Australia’s Demographic Future, released today, Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich, CIS Research Fellow and Jessica Brown, CIS Policy Analyst, modelled 36 scenarios and found that—unless migration is cut to zero, life expectancy stagnates and the birth rate plummets— Australia’s population will be bigger in 2050.

‘Our future is a bigger Australia and we must start preparing for it,’ says Oliver Marc Hartwich.

Advocates of a ‘small Australia’ argue that migration should be reduced to 70 000 a year. But even after such drastic cuts, if Australia’s fertility remained constant we would still have a population of 29 million by 2050.

‘It’s wrong to assume that by cutting migration we will stabilize Australia’s population. Fertility will matter as much, if not more, in determining how big our population will be,’ says Brown.

‘We should accept that some level of population growth will happen and embrace the opportunities that come with it.’

Australia’s population will be older than it is today in every scenario, yet ageing is almost forgotten in the current population debate.

‘The combination of population growth plus ageing means the number of Australians aged over 80 will more than double – to about 2 million by 2050,’ says Hartwich.

Arguments about population targets are a distraction. We should instead be focusing on water, housing, transport, and hospitals—just to name a few. These real policy challenges are being largely ignored in the population debate.

‘We need to build more hospitals and aged care facilities, and perhaps change the way we build houses and design our cities.’

‘It’s time to replace population rhetoric with policy. We need to make a growing and ageing Australia a liveable place for all of us.’