Sick of the congestion? Time to talk about immigration
Michael Duffy
June 28, 2008
The congestion problems in the news this week have the same cause as a lot of other problems that make the Herald's front page. They're due to our increasing population, or more precisely, our failure to make adequate provision for it.
This might seem obvious, but in fact Sydney is in a state of denial about population increase. We don't prepare for it adequately and seem constantly surprised that public services and infrastructure fail. When they do, we blame politicians, or climate change, or the greed of people (other people) for cars and houses and air conditioning. Anything but what is often the main cause, population growth.
This comes from births, migration from other parts of Australia, and immigration, but it's only the last category we have much control over.
This week the Bureau of Statistics announced that last year the nation's population grew at its fastest rate since 1988. The growth rate was 1.6 per cent, or 331,900 people. Net overseas migration contributed 56 per cent of that increase. As is well known, a large proportion of those people settle in Sydney. But for years, Sydney has just pretended it wasn't happening..
Water is a good example because it's so simple. A Water Supply Strategic Review prepared for the Water Board in 1991 noted that since Warragamba Dam had been completed in 1960, Sydney's water storage capacity had been increased by only 2 per cent. This was despite an increase in population from 2.3 million to 3.6 million. The report noted, given the projected future population increase, "if measures are not taken to provide Sydney with additional storage, early in the next century there will be a real risk of serious water restrictions being necessary".
The rest is history, but try to find anyone today who will admit our water restrictions are the result of population growth and the failure by governments to respond adequately. Much easier to blame drought and global warming.
The same thing can be seen with other issues. Just this week in the Herald there's been coverage of a report on road congestion by the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Among other things, the report advocates building more roads to keep pace with population increase. The Roads Minister, Eric Roozendaal, rejected the report as the work of "academics in ivory towers". He also rejected a proposal by the institute for congestion pricing of traffic.
So what do the streetwise guys in government propose as a response to population pressure on our roads? In relation to the size of the problem, just about nothing. When you consider the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics has predicted an 18 per cent increase in car use by 2020 due to population growth, maybe we need something better.
Why has the link between immigration numbers and the above issues been ignored? One reason is that state governments have no say in those numbers. And the Federal Government has no (direct) responsibility for most of the problems they cause. If Kevin Rudd knew that when he bumped immigrant numbers up he'd be responsible for all the extra schools, hospitals and roads that would be needed, he might think twice.
Another reason immigration has been ignored is because to question it is to be seen as politically incorrect, even racist. This could why the environmental movement has largely ignored it, despite its central role in the problems the movement talks about all the time.
The Australian Greens' record on this has been documented by author and conservationist William J. Lines. Writing with Natalie Stone in People and Place in 2003, he noted: "Originally promulgated in 1995, the [Green] party's population policy was revised in 1998 and again in 2002. With each revision the Greens altered their principles, lessened their commitment to limiting population growth … [and] replaced concern about population and environmental degradation with a social justice, global human rights platform."
Before the policy launch for the 1998 federal election, "the Greens' immigration policy proposed that 'Australia's voluntary immigration program be reduced as part of a strategy to achieve eventual stabilisation of the Australian population'. Subsequent policies dropped this strategy entirely and made no recommendation to reduce immigration. In fact the [policy] targets now openly encourage immigration".
Another rollover occurred in the Australian Conservation Foundation. In his book Patriots (UQP), Lines describes how in the 1990s "each successive leader [of the ACF] displayed an extreme reluctance to discuss population".
Barry Cohen, the former Labor politician, noted recently that it is bizarre to hold apocalyptic beliefs about human-induced climate change while supporting near-record levels of immigration.
It's time for a national conversation about immigration numbers. We'll be starting from a long way behind. At the moment the Government doesn't even have an overall number for immigration for next year, which is strange when you consider the Prime Minister's belief in planning and targets.
The issue of population was treated in a trivial manner by the 2020 Summit, which arrived at the following vision: "By 2020 we will have a sustainable population and consumption policy: while the population grows, net consumption should decrease."
Let's get real.
Steve Bracks, the former Victorian premier, has called for the premiers' conference to devise a population policy and then look at how the nation will cope with the resultant immigrant numbers. He wants the Commonwealth to give more money for this purpose to the states. Whatever figure is arrived at, this sounds like a sensible approach.
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