Jessica Irvine’s latest spruik “Why I love a Big Australia, and you should too” (debunked earlier today), has been given short-thrift by SMH readers. Not only did most of the 200-plus comments disagree with Irvine’s position, but today’s Letters to the Editor have been overwhelmingly hostile:
It’s disappointing that Jessica Irvine wants to create a false choice between our current extreme population growth and “culling 10 million living Australians” (“Why a Big Australia beats the alternative”, July 17). Let’s look at the third option – stability. The real choice should be between a big Australia and a sustainable Australia. This choice should be put to the people in a plebiscite. I would choose an Australia that is better, not bigger. Oh, and unless Jessica proposes we “cull” migrants when they turn 65, there is no solution to our so-called “problem” of ageing in importing more humans. It simply creates many more aged people.
William Bourke Wollstonecraft
Jessica Irvine implies that the only alternative to a ‘Big Australia’ is to return to past population levels. Not so. We could reduce our current rate of population increase, the highest in the western world, to a level which will enable us to protect our natural assets and build liveable cities instead of the current mad scramble which only makes developers rich.
Norman Carter Roseville Chase
There is no debate, there is no election time policy “conversation” – there is no official policy. The bulk of our population growth comes from immigration levels and we are the second-highest immigration nation in the world, after Israel. And most of that is in the form of skills migration and what I call “money migration”. Intake levels can be changed by a minister’s signature, without the need for horse trading in the Parliament.
High immigration means Sydney and Melbourne are now subject to exponential growth stress at a time when governments perceive that they can’t afford infrastructure – at least not without privatisation.
Norway has a generous humanitarian intake, free university, an overflowing sovereign wealth fund from careful use of natural resources, high taxation, terrific infrastructure, good economic growth, and always wins the global quality of life index.
Their population growth over decades has varied from 0.3 per cent to 1.3 per cent and hovers around 1 per cent, as do all the Scandinavian countries – a doubling time of 70 years. Ours has sat between 2 and 2.5 per cent – the latter giving us a doubling time of about 28 years.
Without change, we’ll need two WestConnex more after the next generation, four more for the following and eight more for the one after. What a pity Norway hasn’t got our beautiful climate.
Dave Goldberg Wrights Beach
Jessica Irvine ignores the exponential nature of growth and the impossibility of infinite growth in a finite world. At our current rate of population growth we are doubling every 50 years or so.
As we have grown to almost 25 million we have wrought huge environmental damage and future damage with this sort of growth would be devastating. Certainly, growth has been necessary to get Australia to a viable economic size, but all natural systems, such as animals or plants, grow to their mature size and then stop. So must it be with human populations. Of course we have all benefited from immigration and most of us are immigrants or descended from immigrants. We could, however, stabilise our population by reducing immigration to about 70,000, leaving room for further immigration, especially for refugees. It’s well past time that our politicians and commentators looked to the future and discussed the implications of never-ending exponential growth. To ignore it is to pander to the rent-seekers, the destroyers and the unthinking who see no further ahead than the next opportunity for profit.
John Burke Wahroonga
Clearly, Jessica Irvine lives in a different part of Australia to me. In the Australia where I now live, secure, full-time work is becoming the preserve of the few; wage growth is flat; casual pay rates are falling; high-rise, high-density living is increasing; an ethnic mono-culture is dominant; television viewing is short on diversity and long on cheap, mind-numbing “reality”; political direction is bereft of long-term policy and preoccupied with meaningless personality; daily commute experiences are tear-inducing; home ownership is largely out of reach. No, Jessica. You’re probably too young but give me the 1974 living standards any time. The Big Australia you advocate is certainly not better than the alternative!
James Laukka Epping
William Bourke is right: Australia’s future population size should be put to a plebiscite. That’s the democratic thing to do.
