Australia's bizarrely high population growth lies behind many of our problems

From Adelaide Now:

Australia's bizarrely high population growth lies behind many of our worst problems

By GUEST COLUMNISTS
March 03, 2009 12:00am

IN Australia, Right-wing "growthists" demand endless growth of the economy backed by endless growth of population. Forced since late 2006 to accept a serious public debate about water supplies and about how to maintain "growth" without more greenhouse gases, they are nevertheless determined to scotch any discussion about limiting population.

Many on the Left also refuse to debate population matters. They confuse immigrants with refugees and make absurd claims that limiting immigration would tumble us into fascism.

Various Lord Nelsons of the media will put the telescope to their blind eye and discern individual problems - unaffordable housing, environmental destruction, urban crowding, out-of-control greenhouse emissions - while somehow managing to not see any connection to population numbers.

Yet when I turned to the email news group run by the admirable society, Sustainable Population Australia society (www.population.org.au), it was the reverse.

I was inundated with evidence of how our bizarrely high levels of population growth lie behind many of our worst problems.

How could politicians and journalists, and even ordinary acquaintances, keep asserting that we had a falling population when they saw new suburbs going up everywhere? How could they raid the public purse for "baby bribes", claiming that births were not keeping up with deaths, when Australia has twice as many births as deaths?

During the 2006-07 drought, some folk gave up pretending Australia wasn't overpopulated. In fact, Bob Hawke and Bob Brown, two politicians who had long seemed determined to suppress concern about population growth, signalled a seeming change of heart.

In general, Australia's growth lobby might be best described as a well-organised stuff-up. However, not only can it be shown why this group's claims are false but also how and why it deceives itself. It can also be demonstrated why it is necessary to cap Australia's population growth, and that it is perfectly possible to do this without policies that are inhumane towards families and immigrants.

The population debate is a debate that we can no longer avoid.

Getting it wrong - as almost all government and business policies currently do - will lead to disaster. Getting it right will make a huge difference to the quality of life of our children, and also to those other species with which we share this unique continent.

Australia's population boosters continue to spread the myth of an empty land. In 2001, a growth-obsessed lord mayor of Brisbane, Jim Soorley, told the press Australia needed to triple its population in 20 years. Former Victorian premier Steve Bracks unveiled plans to increase the state's population by one million by 2025. South Australian Premier Mike Rann planned to raise immigration to SA to 50,000 a year and lift the population half a million by 2050.

Such boosters stand in a long tradition. They manage to believe that the world as a whole may be overpopulated, but Australia is a special case and actually needs more people. Overpopulation, they argue, is always over there. Who cares if the Coorong dies?

This belief that Australia has no limits lies deep in our culture. Yet population growth lies behind most of our troubles: Congested cities, bizarre housing prices that turn couples into mortgage slaves who work absurd hours and neglect their children, the endless ongoing destruction of environments and other species, water shortages, falling food security, greenhouse emissions. The list goes on.

I determined to write a book that would refute the boosters, and show why and how we can safely and humanely cap Australia's population.

BIGGER BUT NOT BETTER

• There is a powerful lobby concerned not with whether human life (or that of other species) would be better in a "larger" Australia, but with profits.

• Profits are likely to be much larger in a more populous Australia. More people means more customers, and more sales.

• In fact, this lobby insists that Australia, a First World country, must grow at faster than the average population growth rate of Asia (now 1.1 per cent a year).

• Australia is now growing at 1.7 per cent a year, on course for 42 million by 2050, and more than 100 million by 2100.

This is an edited extract from Mark O'Connor's preface to Overloading Australia: How governments and media dither and deny on population, published by Envirobook.

Original article