NSW Planning Minister Rob Stokes has called on the federal government to develop a national population policy discussing the size of the country it wants:
Mr Stokes said that, despite having policies on everything from fruit flies to mythical panthers, NSW had no “policy on people”: “how many we can expect, where we want them to live and what their needs and attributes might be.”
“I suspect it’s got something to do with the echoes of a rightly reviled, racially based, population policy – the White Australia Policy … the echo of this terrible policy has meant that the federal government has been reluctant to actually talk to the community about what size of population, what rate of growth, what distribution of population we want to see, ” Mr Stokes said, before urging the Commonwealth to have a “mature discussion” about population policy…
Mr Stokes said Australia needed a national population policy to inform a national settlement strategy “and every infrastructure, social and environmental policy at every scale in every part of the country.”
However, Big Australia shill professor Peter McDonald attacked stokes’ ‘ludicrous’ suggestion:
Peter McDonald said it was “ludicrous” to suggest any lingering impact of the White Australia policy in the way Mr Stokes had. He said the Commonwealth did have a migration policy, as referred to in its June intergenerational report, which shows the government was planning for 190,000 migrants in 2023-24…
Professor McDonald said planning for where people were located, rather than how many were allowed into the country, was “very much state policy”.
The Productivity Commission’s 2016 Migration Intake into Australia report explicitly recommended the Australian Government develop a national population policy that focuses on maximising the living standards of the incumbent population and their future offspring, and is informed by “genuine community engagement”:
RECOMMENDATION 3.1
The Australian Government should:
• develop and articulate a population policy to be published with the intergenerational report
• specify that the primary objective of immigration and the Government’s population policy is to maximise the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of the Australian community (existing Australian citizens and permanent residents) and their future offspring.Australia’s immigration and population policy should be better informed through:
• genuine community engagement
• a broad range of evidence on the economic, social and environmental impacts of immigration and population growth on the wellbeing of the Australian community
• a published five yearly review of Australia’s population policy. The Australian Government should calibrate the size of the annual immigration intake to be consistent with its population policy objectives.
MB has for a long time called for a frank and honest national conversation about population policy, which focuses on raising the living standards of the existing population. Not the current ‘grow and hope’ position displayed by the major political parties, which blindly assumes that mass immigration is beneficial, and maintains the current ‘Big Australia’ policy without proper planning, community consultation, or support.
A truly democratic process would give Australians the opportunity to vote on the future size of the nation via a plebiscite, the results of which would then be used to inform the size of the immigration intake.
Sadly, our governments are not interested in democracy and will instead return to the pre-COVID mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy at the earliest opportunity. The growth lobby demands it.
