Introduction
Tags: Immigration, Politics, Ecology, Australia, Population

Where do I begin? It is raining in parts of Greenland it has never rained in before. The North-West passage is opening up. The winter rains that have for so long been the backbone of Australia’s wheat crop are now just falling uselessly into the Southern Ocean. Australia’s 2019–20 bushfires are like nothing that has ever happened in my life. Climate change is happening.

As well as these existential threats there are many ‘middle class’ concerns that don’t necessarily threaten the end of the world but are entirely avoidable and entirely undesirable from anything but the most short term perspective. The greens spaces at my primary school, high school and university are all worse than when I was there. At the same time, the national conversation is that the country has had a spell of great prosperity since 1983.

So much of the environmental movement seems impotent. The sixth IPCC Assessment report is incredibly grim. Yet so were all the others and still so little action has been taken. The furious warnings from the IPCC and the echos of code red from so many well intentioned organisations and individuals will all amount to little when set against vested interests coupled with general indifference, busy-ness, the tragedy of the commons and so many other things that choke up action.

I drove through the Gold Coast hinterland and was reminded of how beautiful it is there. It is in South East Queensland, between Logan and the Gold Coast so sub-tropical but also at an elevation of about 500 metres or so, so is a bit different from the rest of South-East Queensland. Lush, unique, verdant, beautiful and special. Later that night I looked on the internet at what it would cost to live there (a lot). On one of the ads for some huge block of land for sale was a statement that the Queensland state government had identified this area as a high growth urban corridor or something like that. How disconnected is our government from reality that they could look at this area and think that what it really needed was suburbia?! Yet I could not blame the state government because so long as the population is growing, they have to have somewhere for people to live. How do I both want to live there and want others to not do so? How do I malign this and do this?

Population is upstream of all of this and is everywhere a political creature. People with the most freedom to choose always choose extremely small families. The last thing Australia needs is more people. Every single environmental problem is made easier with fewer people. Our population is growing because of both net overseas migration (ins equal outs) and natural increase (births minus deaths). The prospect of significantly lowering natural increase in the short term is effectively zero short of the black death, nuclear holocaust etc. Lowering net overseas migration on the other hand is completely doable, we would have to cut our permanent visa grants significantly and cap our temporary migration (ins equal ours). This is the path to slowing and halting our population growth. Only politics and psychology stands in the way.

Yet the corona pandemic has given us a rare opportunity to recalibrate our politics. Our migration policies are a balancing act between the public’s 69% opposition to further population growth and the property and construction industry’s massive donations to the parties of government. Throw into that mix the fact that many Australians are home owners and like the idea of houses getting more expensive.

What could be better for the soul of this country than higher wages and cheaper houses? How much better would things work if more people had more of a stake in the country?

We could slow and then halt our population growth by 2040 if only we cut our migration. We can re-energise the path to sustainability by linking those middle class quality of life concerns (how nice our homes, schools and cities are) with the existential threats (climate change, biodiversity loss, extinction).

If Australia can lower its migration it can slow and then halt its population growth. This is no environmental or economic silver bullet but it is an unambiguously good thing that is part of the equation of so many other problems. It is a checkable claim we can make of government.

When I talk about these things people first challenge the facts then retreat to, ‘why would we focus on what’s happening in Australia?’, i.e. why aren’t you worrying about these global issues like climate change, fish stocks, plastic pollution etc. I am. Pivotal to Australia’s contribution to all of these problems is the number of Australians. Moreover, the solution is political. As Australians we have a unique ability to influence the politics of this country in a way that no other people do. Similarly we have a very limited impact on the politics of other countries.

Part of the solution to both these existential issues and the middle class amenity issues is lowering immigration. We can build a workable coalition around these concerns and push back against big Australia.

Big Australia (deliberately growing our population) is a terrible idea sustained by bad politics. Let’s stop it.