Peter Verwer |
Wednesday, 1 September 2010 6:00 AM |
8 Comments
The 2010 election has produced at least one consensus – robust population growth is bad.
In their own words:
“Australia should not hurtle down the track towards a big Australia.”
“We don’t need 43 million people by 2050…a consensus might be built around 29 million.”
“No one wants a big Australia …”
“Thirty-six million is not a big Australia – it is a dense, congested and overloaded Australia we won’t recognise, much less want.”
The speakers are Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Dick Smith and the convenor of the Stable Population Party (one of several new anti-growth political candidates).
The prosperity without growth mantra is a half-baked magic pudding concocted to feed growing urban angst (and a dose of middle class self-loathing).
Yet our political leaders have uttered not one word about how we can lift living standards without growing.
Maybe Dick Smith will make a clean breast of it. He’s proffered a million dollar prize to a young Australian who can “go out and start communicating with the world the fact that we have to have prosperity without growth”.
He also cites the cheap bogeyman of big business and developers as co-conspirators who’ve conned governments into high growth trajectories.
For many, migrants are the convenient scapegoats for poor government planning.
More worrying is Bernard Salt’s warning that the old White Australia Policy is now masquerading as a “green Australia policy”.
Make no mistake, the anti-growth sentiment has caught hold and it’s our job to put the alternate case before the Australian people.
A recent Lowy Institute poll found that 69 percent of people wanted the population to be 30 million or less in 40 years time.
We should start with a clear recognition that concerns about increasing congestion, declining housing affordability, over-stretched hospital waiting lists and shrivelling access to basic services, such as childcare, are genuine.
These challenges require solutions. Smart forward planning and better management are the pathways to sustainability.
There are few voices in the business community calling for untrammelled growth. We champion sustainability based on intelligent planning.
Australia was once good at growth.
In the first wave of Australian urbanisation in the decade to 1891, Melbourne’s population grew by 74 percent; Sydney’s by 78 percent – in 10 years flat!
In the quarter century to 1971, Melbourne grew by 92 percent and Sydney by 65 percent.
Australians have been bold and successful experimenters in urban living.
Since 1970, when Australia’s population was just under 13 million, we’ve added a further nine million people.
The results are on the board: the Australian economy tripled in size, we recorded unprecedented improvements in living standards, fewer recessions than the rest of the developed world (including the worst excesses of the GFC) and less debt for future generations to pay off.
We also live longer, the air is cleaner, environmental protection is handled more responsibly and the social safety net is more effective than was the case four decades ago.
Good outcomes have been achieved hand-in-hand with growth in the past, and likewise for the future.
However, virtually every forecast of growth for the next 40 years, including Treasury’s infamous intergenerational report, assumes far slower population increases than in the past.
Treasury also forecasts slower economic progress as a result.
If low growth is Australia’s destiny, future election campaigns will inevitably feature elderly couples lamenting the dearth of young people in their suburbs; farmers complaining that their customers are disappearing faster than water stocks; small business people with great ideas griping about shrinking markets; home owners wailing about soaring interest rates and mortgages that are higher than house values; and palms-up, ashen-faced Treasurers declaring they have no choice but to stiff us with higher taxes to pay for basic public services.
In this bleak future Australians will complain that they weren’t told about the implications of low growth.
It’s our job to make that case now rather than wait until we end up like Western Europe, on the verge of economic and social bankruptcy.
The community rightly demands greater livability and sustainability. We need to invest in these community assets and recognise that economic growth is the seed capital.
As we’ve said for years now, better forward planning, smarter governance, increased infrastructure investment and higher productivity are the answers.
We also need to get serious about regional development.
We’ll need to redouble our efforts to get that message out.
There are no shortcuts. The virtues of growth need to be communicated to every Australian honestly, convincingly and urgently.
Peter Verwer |
Wednesday, 1 September 2010 6:00 AM |
8 Comments
