With no compelling evidence to support our mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ program, the proponents have become increasingly shill.
The latest example is The Australian’s Greg Sheridan, who penned the following rubbish over the weekend:
The will to build a nation is slowly collapsing in Australia and with it perhaps comes a question mark over our will to thrive and even to survive.
The latest portent of this decline is the decisive turn by conservatives and some of their icons against a substantial immigration program.
There are two problems with the immigration program. One is that under the refugee and humanitarian program a small number of people — but nonetheless too many — have come in whose values are antithetical in some key respects to modern Australian values…
The second problem is the colossal failure of state and federal governments to build infrastructure. It is a telling, devastating sign of our national decline that the response is not to tackle infrastructure directly but to blame migrants and hope that with fewer people our pathetic shortcomings in infrastructure will be less obvious to ourselves.
In reality, a sharp cut in the immigration program will make all our problems worse…
We are, overall, severely underpopulated. With a land mass the size of the US, we have a paltry population of just under 25 million (compared with America’s 326 million). In our region we look across the water at Indonesia with 250 million, at The Philippines with more than 100 million, at Vietnam with nearly 100 million, at China with 1.4 billion…
We have always understood, at some level, that population and immigration are matters of national security…
If our immigration program were to stay at its current proportionate rate we would get near to 38 million — just about Canada’s population today — by 2050. We should then be able to envisage a defence force of 24 long-range subs, 18 frigates, six AWDs, 200 state-of-the-art fast jets and so on. To possess a force like that would not be militaristic. We would not threaten any of our vastly populous neighbours…
If we are a nation of 40 million with a median age of 39 and a productive industrial capacity we will be able to cope with whatever challenges we face infinitely better than if we are a chronically indebted, enfeebled nation of 28 million, with a median age of 57, and no industry…
Cutting immigration will make all these problems worse. Almost everything you’ve heard about immigration in recent weeks is wrong. By any conceivable measure the program is an immense success and gives great economic benefits to all Australians…
There’s so many falsehoods in this article, it’s hard to know where to start.
First, Sheridan is wrong about the two main problems with Australia’s immigration program, which are that:
1) it is far too large – set at roughly triple the historical average of 70,000 people per year:
And 2) that our immigration program is overly concentrated in just two jurisdictions – NSW (read Sydney) and VIC (read Melbourne) – which is taking roughly three quarters of Australia’s total net migrant intake:
This level and concentration of immigration all but ensures massive indigestion in our two major cities, with Infrastructure Australia projecting that traffic congestion, as well as access to jobs, schools, hospitals and open space will all decline as Melbourne’s and Sydney’s populations hit 7.3 million and 7.4 million people by 2046:
Second, the claim that Australia is under populated in comparison to the United States is a classic strawman. Has Sheridan not noticed that, unlike the United States, Australia is mostly arid with little rainfall outside the coastal strip? As noted earlier this month by Bob Carr on Q&A (and supported by Tim Flannery):
… every river on the Australian continent would fit in the Mississippi and the Mississippi wouldn’t notice it. There are geographic limits about Australia and these really do undermine the happy faith we, as Australians, have sometimes invested in decentralisation.
One is water. Don’t forget, in the last drought, that you had inland cities running out of water. It was particularly acute in Goulburn and Canberra, for example. And that is really a restraint on how you could build population in those centres. And, second, decentralisation only works where you have some terrific value-adding industry. An efficient abattoir, for example, or a mine, like the Cadia gold and copper mine in Orange.
Water security is a key limiting factor against Australia having a large population, and yet Sheridan has ignored it entirely.
Third, Sheridan’s linking of mass immigration with national defence is ridiculous.
Lowering Australia’s immigration program to around half the current level – i.e. similar to what existed before the ramp-up in the mid-2000s (see above chart) – would not materially endanger Australia’s national security, which can be assured via diplomacy, alliances and an edge in defence technology. Australia has no hope of keeping up with the regional giants on population, nor should we even try.
Moreover, if Sheridan is really so concerned about national security, then why not argue to build the “bomb”. This would pose a much bigger deterent to a potential aggressor than simply importing millions of people to work in services jobs in our major cities.
Fourth, Sheridan’s claim that mass immigration delivers “a very big pay-off in delaying ageing” has been debunked for more than a decade by Australia’s Productivity Commission, which has noted:
- PC (2005): “Despite popular thinking to the contrary, immigration policy is also not a feasible countermeasure [to an ageing population]. It affects population numbers more than the age structure”.
- PC (2010): “Realistic changes in migration levels also make little difference to the age structure of the population in the future, with any effect being temporary“…
- PC (2011): “…substantial increases in the level of net overseas migration would have only modest effects on population ageing and the impacts would be temporary, since immigrants themselves age… It follows that, rather than seeking to mitigate the ageing of the population, policy should seek to influence the potential economic and other impacts”…
- PC (2016): “[Immigration] delays rather than eliminates population ageing. In the long term, underlying trends in life expectancy mean that permanent immigrants (as they age) will themselves add to the proportion of the population aged 65 and over”.
Of course, Sheridan could also read ANU demographer Peter McDonald’s 1999 paper to the federal government, where he explicitly noted:
“It is demographic nonsense to believe that immigration can help to keep our population young. No reasonable population policy can keep our population young”.
The reason is simple: mass immigration is a Ponzi scheme. It requires ever more immigration, with the associated negative impacts on economic and social infrastructure, congestion, housing affordability, and the environment.
Finally, Sheridan’s assertion that Australia’s immigration program is “skilled” and would endanger the economy if it was cut is laughable. Has Sheridan not noticed that Australia has no “skills shortage”, that there is widespread visa rorting going on, and that Australia’s so-called skilled visa system is a giant fraud, whereby:
- many recently arrived skilled migrants (i.e. arrived between 2011 and 2016) cannot find professional jobs;
- many skilled migrants have gone into areas that the government’s own Department of Employment has judged to be oversupplied (e.g. accounting and engineering); and
- migrants have generally worse labour market outcomes than the Australian born population?
Honestly, if this the best the mass immigration defenders can now dish up then they have comprehensively lost the argument.
