If you want a textbook example of how Australian academia has lost its credibility, look no further than the below analysis from University of Western Sydney Economics Professor Raja Junankar in The Conversation:
Many who fear Australia’s population boom believe we should be cutting down on immigration. They blame immigration for congestion and expenditure of environmental and other vital resources. They say Australia’s cities are becoming overcrowded and cannot sustain more people.
But if Australia were to cut down on immigration, it would also then make sense to introduce policies that limit numbers of international tourists and students. Why single out one group of people? If any person living in Australia drains a certain amount of resources, it stands to reason this is also the case with short-term visitors arriving year after year.
Not only do tourists and international students add to crowded trains, trams and buses, think of all the environmental resources they consume – such as the water hotels spend on frequently washing their sheets.
Just as with migration, tourist numbers are on the rise in Australia. The number of international tourists (blue line) increased from just over 4 million in 1997-98 to nearly 8 million in 2015-2016. Settler arrivals (people living in Australia who are entitled to permanent residence) increased from 81,000 in 1998 to 135,000 in 2016.
My crude calculations show that if Australia were to allow zero tourism, it could accommodate roughly 900,000 more migrants. As a comparison, Australia’s total migration intake is around 190,000 per year.
But of course curbing tourism, or immigration, isn’t a feasible option. Tourists, international students and migrants all add positive value to Australia…
In my seven years of covering this issue, I have never read such as inept analysis. But to come from an economics professor and to be published in The Conversation (a supposedly august, pro-mass immigration academic portal) is an indicator of how biased and desperate the population apologists have become.
First, international tourists typically stay in Australia for a few weeks and then leave, whereas permanent settlers stay, have children, and add to Australia’s population base. Tourists also don’t use public services like health. To compare one group with the other is ridiculous.
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Second, the Professor has only looked at short-term arrivals, not net short-term movements (which includes Aussies overseas). If he had done this, he would quickly have discovered that while short-term arrivals have boomed to 9 million people annually, so too has short-term departures of Australians (11 million):
In fact, net short-term visitor movements into Australia are negative. Not only is it false to apportion any of the population pressures being felt in our cities to short-term visitors like tourists, net short-term movements are actually relieving Australia’s overall population pressures:
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Third, it is Australia’s turbo-charged permanent migrant intake that is the primary driver of Australia’s manic population growth:
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The 2016 Census revealed that Australia’s population increased by a whopping 1.9 million people (+8.8%) in the five years to 2016, driven by a 1.3 million increase in new migrants:
Sure, temporary migrants also boomed, and many would be captured in the above Census figures (provided they meet the 12/18 month rule). But they increased by a relatively modest 382,000 over the past five years:
Therefore, the fundamental driver of Australia’s population increase is permanent migrants. Again, they stay in the country and also have children (then captured as ‘natural increase’). Thus, permanent migrants continually add to Australia’s population base both directly and indirectly.
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If the permanent migrant intake was hypothetically reduced to zero then, over time, NOM and by extension Australia’s population would barely increase (because all temporaries would have to go home):
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
