The population debate just got a little bit worse
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If you thought the population debate couldn’t get any worse, you were wrong – very wrong. Yesterday degenerated into a sort of “I’m Spartacus!” debate in which Labor, the Coalition and Mark Latham all sought to claim that the others were pretenders to the throne of King (or Queen) of Sustainable Population. “I don’t think this is a immigration debate,” the Prime Minister told an interviewer. “I think it’s bringing into play issues about water, about soil, about city planning, about infrastructure and services, about getting skilled people where we need them.” This was indeed a strange thing to say, given we only make new Australians by the old-fashioned way or by importing them. Gillard naturally wants to avoid being pressed on the issue of exactly what immigration levels a Gillard Government would set. Scott Morrison decided to wade into the issue, risking a repeat of previous embarrassments when he got basic numbers about immigration wrong. Bear in mind that the Coalition’s idea of a population debate includes graphics with red lines from Islamic countries invading Australia. Morrison attacked Gillard for delinking the issues. But what would the Coalition do? Well, there’s the problem – both Labor and the Coalition have exactly the same policy. Labor’s is to have Tony Burke conduct a review, which he has already set in train, to consider the issue of sustainable population. The Coalition’s is to have a review as well, by what it will rename the “Productivity and Sustainability Commission”. The Coalition’s plans for the PC, by the way, are a nice demonstration that in the Australian Public Service, success is invariably punished with more work and more responsibility. The PC is one of the great legacies of the Howard years, a fine institution that is an invaluable source of independent, sensible economic advice. Because of this, it will be nixed by the Coalition and replaced with a “Productivity and Sustainability” body with a mandate to frolic around in environmental, social and resource issues. This, sadly, has gone below the media radar – understandable, I guess, but it’s a crying shame the PC will be wrecked in this way to suit this current anti-immigration fashion that has blown like a waft of foul air through Australian public policy. So both sides will hit the ground reviewing on population issues after the election. That gives them a neat way out to duck the hard campaign question of what they really want to do with immigration, which based on their rhetoric is slash it, and Australia’s economic growth prospects along with it. But as if to show there’s no debate that can’t be dragged lower, in walked Mark Latham. On Sky News – which in the old days he would have bagged as the Tory Network – the Campbelltown Poltergeist accused Gillard of a “con job” and “fraud of the worst order” on the good citizens of western Sydney. “I’m Spartacus,” he insisted, saying that neither side was prepared to admit Australia really needed to cut immigration. For all of Latham’s behavioural issues, he at least always had a reputation as an innovative policy thinker. In retirement, it turns out he’s just another member of the Little Australia brigade, playing in the shallow end of the gene pool with the likes of Dick Smith and Bob Birrell. There’s good news, though, because according to David Speers, Latham is thinking of getting on Twitter. Outstanding, because there’s not enough bile and snark in the Twitterverse. |
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12 Comments
What an absolute tragedy that this non-issue, this wretched red herring will not only dominate election coverage but will reward whoever gets nastier with victory at the poles. What the hell are we thinking??
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“The PC is one of the great legacies of the Howard years, a fine institution that is an invaluable source of independent, sensible economic advice”, says Bernard.
Spare me. Apart from the fact that the Productivity Commission was created in 1921 as the Tariff Board, the only thing remarkable about the PC is that Kevin07, despite his ghost-written anti-deregulation rant, tolerated its continued existence. Under Howard the Commission lurched further and further until it reached the extreme right, where it lingers on as the last bastion of neo-liberal economic ideology. From its tax-payer funded shelter, the PC continues to produce ever more unrealistic advice for a world too busy dealing with the economic, social and environmental fall-out of these very same ideas to be able to read their tripe. Follow the UK lead - abolish this damaging institution and create a Sustainable Development Commission instead.
By the way, did anyone else notice that Rudd’s supposed conversion to ‘social democrat’, desperately opposed to neo-liberal deregulatory fanaticism, was not so deep that he was moved to abolish, or even rename, his Department of Finance and Deregulation?
“The population debate just got a little bit worse” hmm, is that because another two “policy failures” cruised into Christmas Island last night. “Policy failures” being a Joolia Gooliard term - not mine!!!
Seems Sky are using loopy Latham a great deal more these days. Probably the i/v with Latham and Speers along with that long dreary 30min discourse with Barmybanana the coup boss from Fiji is Sky’s attack on the launch of the ABC 24/7 News Channel today. For all their self promotion Sky’s still a very small player in the scheme of things, probably more so from tonight.
Wouldn’t be surprised to see a couple of offers being made to Sky news personel, from Aunty.
Bernard, what most people, including Abbott and Gillard, are interested in is “sustainable growth”, not “no growth” or a “Little Australia” which are simply straw men. Do you advocate “unsustainable growth”? I wouldn’t think so.
Frank - please define “sustainable growth”? It’s a seductive idea but many people, including Professor Tim Jackson of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, are recognising it as an oxymoron. A sustainable rate of economic (including population) growth is very close to zero. Not zero, to the extent we use genuinely green technologies to fuel future growth, but very close. Given the recent Copenhagen debacle (which was really about precisely this issue), how do we rate the prospects for the world voluntarily adopting a sustainable growth path any century soon? There are other ways it could happen, of course…
Excellent points, Phil! I would define sustainable growth as being a long-term rate of economic growth (including population) that does not impose generally unacceptable economic and social costs on the population and the environment. It would of course vary by country or region. I readily acknowledge that my definition begs the question of what is meant by “unacceptable”, how we measure social costs, impact on the environment etc. I heard a talk by Tim Jackson recently but my memory of it is not great so I’ll track it down and refresh the brain cells. You’re absolutely right about Copenhagen and I take your point about political difficulty of adopting sustainable growth, especially if it’s a very low figure.
Whether by happenstance or not, Julia Gillard is more on the button than the Opposition. Anyone wishing to discuss sustainable population sensibly must read two books. “The Revenge of Gaia” by James Lovelock predicts that the result of all of the human activity which is unbalancing the biosphere (not only the climate), there will be great conflict for living space and particularly arable land, to house and feed growing populations. “Eaarth” by Bill McKibben expresses the view that we cannot reverse climate change and that the best we can do is to bring it to a halt, in an environment which is markedly different from what we enjoy today. The current sustainable population target of 35 million assumes that things will go on much as they are today. These authors suggest that we must do the maths and estimate what population we can support in the new environment, probably at a much more modest level. If we do not and try and maintain the status quo, we must build into the equation assaults on our living space, from boat people right up to inter-nation wars of invasion.
I have a blog on this subject (reengineeringaustralia.wordpress.com), suggesting ways of first of all analysing every square kilometre of Australia to determine the best land usage (which will itself require research into new intensive agriculatural techniques), the infrastructure required to service the land and the financial and political processes required to encourage and support population movements into more remote areas than we are used to. I would welcome any inputs to this topic.
@PH - a point which when put to advocates of this nonsense almost always turns out to be a position on self centred personal comfort (‘quality of life’). If you don’t want to have to queue for 20 minutes to get your de-caff soy latte frighten the bogans into thinking Pauline was right and we ‘are being swamped …..’.
With the advance of technology the notion that an additional 14 million people over the next 40 years will have any impact on the environment is abjectly ridiculous. To measure impact against today’s capacity is misleading in the extreme and akin to suggesting we’ll still all be driving petrol based cars and lighting our homes with brown coal sourced power, we won’t.
I may have implied that it’s not worth the candle for Australia to target sustainable growth, particularly in the absence of the rest of the world doing likewise. But this is of course equally false as the mercantilist view we’ve heard from a succession of Australian governments for decades now, that we can’t show leadership (!) on climate change until everyone else does first.
The thing to target is not the economic growth rate, nor the population growth rate, but rather a set of sustainability benchmarks. Eg, the rate of adoption of the green technologies and practices we need (which, for the mercantilists among us, we can then flog to the rest of the world. But that would be a spin-off benefit, or a reward for good behaviour.) The economic and population growth rates can then look after themselves. Get the first bit right, and who cares about the latter? No benchmark or set of benchmarks will be perfect, but that seriously doesn’t matter. What matters is to get started.
Sustainable development debacle is a good trick for any election campaign. People are made to believe that they can decide about the population growth.
We may try to think that it is up to us to decide how to ‘shrink’, reduce, sustain, develop or move forward.
But come one powerful lobby group and all our plans and dreams are ruined. Whenever big business needs slave labour or heaps of foreign students with huge cash - we are persuaded that free market economy is good for Australia.
It is called sustainable compliance with foreign powers.
In the meantime, we are free to entertain the idea that ‘we decide who comes to this country’.
And, by the way, who decided to grant over 300 000 visas a year? The voters?