Over the fold, a couple more paras on population, which is becoming a very hot issue.
It will be interesting to see how Abbott handles it. As with the parental leave tax, he has run with a populist position, apparently taking no trouble to square it with his business base, which is already causing trouble. Since he was supporting high immigration intakes only a couple of months ago (in the context of an attack on asylum-seekers), it’s hard to see how he can escape charges of opportunism. In fact, it’s hard to think of a major issue (tax, climate change, parental leave, WorkChoices) on which Abbott has not been, in Malcolm Turnbull’s memorable description, a weathervane. I suppose that’s what authenticity means.
It will also be interesting to see how his 9-day, 1000 km cycling/listening tour affects both his substantive position, and his ability to manage the debate[1]. Presumably, touring through rural areas, he’ll find it hard to back away from calls for a cut in immigration, but the Liberals are all over the shop on this.
The government has its own problems. Rudd’s “big Australia” is popular with business and some elite groups, but the case hasn’t been made to the rest of the country and I doubt that it can be. As I say over the page, it would probably be better to make the case for migration at the individual level (why should person X not be allowed to come/stay here) than in terms of aggregates. But if the Libs keep on messing things up, it will be relatively easy for the government to adjust both its rhetoric and his substantive position.
The strongest arguments in favor of high migration are based, not on narrow economic calculations but on a general presumption in favor of freedom. People want to come to Australia because there are jobs for them here, because they would like to join family members or friends, or to escape from repression and poverty.
Refusing to let them in reduces their freedom and the freedom of their Australian relatives, friends and potential employers. Before we take such a decision, we should have good reason to think that the net costs imposed on the community as a whole by increased migration justifies the loss of freedom involved in every individual refusal of admission.
fn1. Personally, it would be good news for me if he can manage it. I’ve been getting into triathlons and similar, nowhere near his Ironman feats, and it would be good to think that this can be done without detracting from the day job.
John Quiggin 
@Michael
I regard a request for “evidence that immigrants are responsible for property unaffordability” as too silly to bother with. Of course an increase in housing demand when the market is already tight will drive up house prices, it’s just basic common sense. How on earth could anyone think otherwise?
Daggett,
I have pointed out to you (and several others here) before that you use the term “Ponzi scheme” incorrectly. A Ponzi, by its very nature, has little or no productive output. It will not result in houses or flats in which people live. A Ponzi is simple – money in on the promise of massive returns, no investment or productive activity that may give rise to any returns and eventual inevitable collapse.
Clearly, a scheme where people are brought in to build houses and are paid to do so is not, by any stretch, a Ponzi scheme. If you wanted to make the argument that it is a pyramid scheme then that may be supportable (I would still disagree, but that is a different argument) but if you claim it is a Ponzi scheme than you are simply, and flat out, wrong.
@Andrew Reynolds
I suspect D@ggett is using it simply to mean “any scheme in which buyers bid each other up until the pool of funds required exceeds that held by potential buyers”.
Your objection, while formally correct, is not how the term is used popularly.
Maybe you could expand a bit. The last point was not an accountants argument, but should be seen as political economy.
So I agree it was not pure economics.
I continuously separate economics from political economy. Those who claim just to be using economic tools, are probably discounting the fact that they are doing this within a capitalist framework.
I deliberately look outside this barrier.
Within this broader context – we are seeing calls from industry lobbyists for artificial population growth and investment in necessary infrastructure, for economic goals.
These lobbyists use politics for economic ends. This is why the broader context is necessary.
There is no confusion.
Fran,
If he is going to argue that something is a Ponzi scheme then he should expect that the proof of his error is a trivial matter. If he wants to make a strong argument then he should actually use the correct term.
.
Sam,
The crucial term in your argument (IMHO) is “…when the market is already tight…”. Why is the market tight? That, to me, is the primary cause, not the immigrants.
I don’t think you have grasped the point. The fact that you had a child in a high rise flat is probably biasing your understanding.
I don’t understand why you would mention vandalised bus shelters as these exist near high rise flats as well, so what is you point?
How have I declared my lifestyle supreme? I have not used or described my lifestyle?
You do not know what my lifestyle is nor its relevance to anything said above?
Maybe this was your Freudian slip, as it appears you are the only one proclaiming the beauty of your own high rise flat experience.
@Andrew Reynolds
Well I’ll take out that unnecessary caveat then, and restate the argument in a stronger form.
Of course an increase in housing demand will drive up house prices. Period.
Why does that statement need justification? I’m genuinely curious to know why you think it would.
@Chris Warren
Before I reply to #4, p2, I’d like to get your assurance that you will not assume (and assert) that I am targeting you (or anybody else).
It’s interesting the way “deep brown” arguments have been co-opted by those opposing immigration on environmental grounds. Apparently, we can’t have 35 million people and address environmental concerns, because our quality of life would be ruined—cue horror images from Hong Kong, as if a doubling of the nation’s population would lead to a twenty-fold increase in urban densities. What puzzles me is how proponents of such a view square this belief with their view that, with a stable population, either 1) we can address environmental problems with only a small reduction in our material living standards, or 2) the costs are large but we’ll be all the happier for it. If the costs in terms of our living standards of achieving more sustainable outcomes are small, as they are, why shouldn’t we be willing to accept the small extra costs of achieving those same sustainable outcomes with a bigger population in exchange for the benefits of immigration, like personal freedom and alleviating poverty and other social and environmental problems in the rest of the world?
Michael, I completely agree with you about the NIMBY vibe that surrounds the debate about immigration. The whole thing is a kind of NIMBYism writ large. But it’s been interesting to view the debate because it provides insights into an issue that’s always puzzled me, of why environmentalists oppose medium- and high-density infill developments in the inner city, and thereby exacerbate the environmental costs of sprawl. The answer is that the people who would live there just shouldn’t exist, and if they do exist then protecting the environment would impinge on their welfare too much, and anyway it’s development and they’re capitalists and anyway it’s all just evil.
Chris Warren, if you care to inform yourself, you’ll learn that urban economics recognises a range of positive and negative externalities associated with higher population density and a larger population. I doubt you want to hear it, but there are consumption and production benefits from having more people located within a small geographic area, otherwise cities and towns wouldn’t exist. If you want to come to a sensible conclusion about these matters, you have to address these issues as well, not just focus on the obvious minuses like congestion and housing costs.
Daggett, you know there are other resources apart from natural resources—things like labour, and physical and human capital—that are quite useful for making goods and services that a region can trade with the rest of the nation or the rest of the world in exchange for things it can’t make cheaply itself. In fact, south east Queensland’s economy is already based mostly on manufacturing goods using natural resources from elsewhere, in particular the rest of Queensland, and providing services to the rest of the state, the nation and the world. This is what all urban areas do.
Unless supply grows quicker.
@Luke Elford
“I completely agree with you about the NIMBY vibe that surrounds the debate about immigration. The whole thing is a kind of NIMBYism writ large. ”
And the above statement is an attempt to change people’s preferences by means of social pressure involving silly labels such as NIMBYism.
“as it appears you are the only one proclaiming the beauty of your own high rise flat experience.”
I’ve lived in big high rises, and found it fine too. It was nice having proper security, a pool, a gym, a private bus to the city, never having to worry about maintenance, someone to collect parcels for me when they came, rubbish collected for me, etc. . Some high-rises even have hire cars now, so you don’t need a car if you’re like me and only do 2000ks or so a year. The main reason I don’t live in one now is that most of the good ones in Melbourne are located in places I don’t want to live (e.g., the Docklands). In my books, the worst accommodation you can live in are mid-sized apartments, since you generally don’t get a view or any other benefits of the big high rises, but you have essentially the same limitations. These of course are the main alternative to high rises.
@Ernestine Gross
Exactly Ernestine – well said. Its been a proclivity of those on the somewhat “has been” right to use pat pour out breakfast cereal style aphorisms like “nimbyism.” Oh and dont forget the extra writ large value pack.
Luke…try something more intelligent…but then again if you want to use such expressions..you could always consult the Miranda devine dictionary of such terms (Im sure she has collated quite an archive)…or then again, Tony Abbott has a nice little repertoire as well.
Its all wearing off. No-one knows what you mean by nimbyism and no-one cares anymore.
@Luke Elford
Luke Elford
You obviously do not know how to conduct yourself.
Please explain where I suggested:
1) that externalities do not exist ?????????
2) where I expressed doubts about wanting to hear anything ?????
3) where did I focus on congestion or housing costs ???????
You are just making stuff up.
Why would you just look at benefits of having more people located without looking at costs? preferences? and alternatives?
Grow up.
Zoning laws drafted to protect the interests of existing residents and spurious admonishments about “changing the character of the neighbourhood” are also attempts to restrict people’s ability to “reveal” their preferences by disallowing removing or restricting alternatives. If you look at some local by-laws you will find that houses that predate the rules would often not pass the new rules brought into “protect” the character of the neighbourhood. People have a right to try and protect their assets and lifestyle up to a point, they don’t in my opinion have a right to naked hypocrisy. The end of history “preference for sprawl” is a shonky simple-minded argument manufactured by paid up intellectual mouthpieces for developers seeking to push urban growth boundaries.
@Chris Warren
No. My reference to “bus shelters” was in reaction to your simple minded reference to low quality, low income UK “housing solutions” as an example of what living in flats is like. It also happens to be my personal experience living the “Australian dream” amongst the disaffected youth who smash every bus shelter in the area or cover them in swastikas. Since I have tried both lifestyles I can say that when high density living is done well (in another country as it happens) it beats my current suburban quality of life, but people like you who haven’t experienced it can make sweeping statements like “You cannot really bring up kids in high-rise flats.”
Luke Elford wrote:
In a sense, the argument against population growth is a case of the self-interest of current residents of a country or region against the interests of people who would wish to become residents of that area.
The paradox that people arguing against population growth face is that many who are arguing against population growth today might not be here today if those arguing against population growth a generation ago.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that population growth has been demonstrably detrimental to the interests of all but a few of the smaller population that was here a generation ago, and, further population growth will be similarly detrimental to the intersts of, if not catastrophic to the current residents of the region.
At some point population growth has to stop before the numbers become unsustainable and, given that there are insufficent natural resources in the region, most notably water and given that the koala (as just one example) may well become extinct in South East Queensland within two years, thanks to the destrction of much of their natural habitat.
Past experience demonstrates that no civilization can survive if it destroys its natural habitat. A good example of where South East Queensland is headed can be found from studying the experience of the Pre-columbian North American Chaco Anaszi civilisation:
So, it would seem that the self-interest of those who would wish to preserve the life-style we have today, or at least, prevent the further erosion of what remains of South East Queensland’s once relatively pleasant and harmonious lifestyle also coincides with our long-term sustainability.
If we don’t stop growing our numbers, then we face the serious risk that our ecology will also collapse and that our numbers may well also collapse catastrophically when we find we have insufficient water, fertile soil and other natural resources necessary to sustain us.
In conrast, the naked rapaciously greedy self-interest of those who would crowd ever more numbers into this region, that I referred to in my earlier post in this discussion, just so that they can prosper in the short term from their Ponzi scheme while the resut of us are driven further into poverty is completely contrary to our long term sustainability.
—
Also, Luke Brown’s arguments about the supposed economic efficiencies of scale of crowding more people into a region are self-evident clap-trap.
Even if some efficiences are possible, what use are such efficiencies if their are less natural resoruces per head of population to which they can be applied?
Furhermore, what economies of scale may be possible would be entirely dwarfed by the obvious diseconomies of scale that we see after the optimum population has been exceed which it clearly has been in our region.
The diseconomies of scle occur, because at a certain point, the necessary complexity of providing services for additional people actual increases the cost per capita.
The other cause of diseconomies of scale is the necessity to destroy infrastructure that would have been perfectly adequate for an existing population in order to build the necessary infrastucture for a larger population.
Another aspect of that destruction is the destruction of communities all over Bribane that are required to build new roads, bridges and tunnels.
This is why all our living expenses — elecricity, water and gas charges, coucil rates, toll road charges, parking fees, parking fines, traffic infringement fines, car registration, food prices, etc. are going through the roof.
If the economy-of-scale argument had any validity, we would surely all be paying less for all of these services, rather than more.
The fact that Bligh herself justifies the $15 billion asset fire sale on the grounds that it is necessary in order to pay for the increased population is surely evidence that population growth is unsustaintable.
The notion that our population can not grow due to constraints on resources makes no sense. Places like Sydney are not self reliant on food and import the stuff from outside. If that outside is across the water instead of across the land it matters little. In order to feed it’s population Britian has been dependent of food imports for over a century. Australia does not need a large amount of resources to handle a larger population. However it does have a large amount of resources.
In terms of providing drinking water coastal regions should have little problem so long as governments are willing to permit desalination plants. And even without that we can do a better job of harvesting storm water.
@daggett
Daggett you raise a good point about the Ponzi scheme appraoch to development that the Bligh government and the Beattie government have supported. It appears that when your ALP membership card gets the stamp on it for you to become a parliamentarian, it includes a free membership to become a property developer. There seems to be a huge number of ex-Ministers with interests in basic subdivision based property development.
The issue, I beleive isn;t that the population growth that is occuring is a bad thing. Rather, it is the approach that is being applied to the management of the growth. The appraoch in SEQ has been and continues to be for an increaseing % of jobs to be focussed in the CBD. In part this reflects a market preference for proximity, but it also reflects a lack of foresight on behalf of government to spread the economic activity. There are a number of potential methods that could be used for this spreading, and a node based approach is likely to offer a better outcome than a completely distributed approach. Many studies have identified thise sort of node based approach to economic activity, if properly managed provides a significantly more efficient environment within which services can be delivered. IN effect a properly laid out city, and region would decrease costs of healthcare, social services, education and most importantly would significantly reduce the undeliverable infrastructure plan. You need to balance both expectations and deliverables, you cant let everyone picj their preferred houseblock size and then just try and retrofit infrastructure to support it. A more sensible approach is to provide good quality options (some low density, some high density, not much medium density as it tends to be a cop-out) and have a sensible discussion with the population about the balanced approach and the significant benefits it brings.
Edward de Bono states that you can analyse the past but you have to design the future. With population growth management, or lack thereof, and with immigration I see governments with a distinct lack of design for the future. An incremental approach to these issues isn;t acceptable.
@daggett
I am not sure what the argument is to which you reply, but I do know it is not my point.
@Michael
OK if you want to try to call people simple minded – here is a simple test for you.
Where did I mention low quality, low income UK “housing solutions”? This is a figment of your imagination.
The UK developed flats as a good quality, economically efficient, architect designed, policy including new towns. The rejection of this lifestyle, when other alternatives emerged, led to them being occupied disproportionately by a few social strata, who could not access the same preferences.
Another test to find the simple minded. Where did I say I haven’t experienced it?
For your information I have lived on farms, in suburbia, flats and colleges, in Canberra, Sydney and London.
I have owned flats in Canberra and Sydney and I currently own a double brick flat in a housing estate in London at Elephant and Castle and, as I have its Home Information Pack and environmental report I can attest to its quality.
So unfortunately it is Michael who is simple minded, sprouting nonsense from his own biased imagination.
The face at the bottom of the well is his own.
@Ernestine Gross
I was responding to you calling NIMBYism a silly label. It’s not, it’s an accurate descriptor of a lot of people’s motivations for being against changes in the urban landscape such as increasing density. Do you reject that notion? It’s a perfectly understandable behaviour but one that governments need to temper for the wider benefit of society.
Maybe I read too much into your statement. If what you are saying is that Chris Warren’s views on child rearing in quarter acre blocks “reflect the preferences of Australians” then I (as a non-economist) would reject that as simplistic. There are many factors that influence the houses people buy and live in. Few people really get to build their own homes in a location where services suit them or their jobs might be. There are also a lot of cultural and technological factors in the development of the urban landscape, cheap oil being one of them. In other words much of the current urban landscape represents a culmination of all these factors rather than a simple revealed preference. Are you familar with Wendell Cox’s arguments in support of sprawl?
What are your views on population? Maybe you fleshed them out on another thread?
You implied it here.
They might have started out with good intentions but in reality they were failed social engineering experiments. You are conflating poor town planning, social issues with high rise housing, by drawing from your limited experience.
All within similar “Anglo” cultures so your experience of high density is limited to were it’s demonstrably failed.
Michael
Stop wasting time. Your first point is wrong – there was no implication. You created this.
Your second point has no content – How is my experience limited? You do not know what my experience is. Can you tell me what my experience has been?
If you had passed your test of simple mindedness, you would not be trolling like this.
Now you want to rant and rave about “Anglo” culture as if this was even relevant or appropriate.
You simply do not have the ability to control concepts without inventing “implications” (and then barking at your own implications).
Every post you make only takes you further into the quicksand.
A white australia policy would solve all problems – more productive workforce, lower crime rate, fewer people on welfare and probably a lower natural population growth rate.
This post should be ignored. This person is continuing to misrepresent views for no good purpose.
I never mentioned quarter acre blocks.
What is a desirable “socio-spatial” standard, for humans to live their lives in quiet enjoyment (a legal right), depends on many factors.
Aborigines lived in family groups separated by 20 paces, and in tribes separated by 20 miles.
When they were compressed into missions, many died, 100% in the case of Tasmania.
PrQ, I draw your attention to EMH’s explicitly racist proposal. Not apt here.
@E.M.H
EMH – An immigration policy that only let in Japanese people might arguably achieve even better results. Assuming the metrics you apply are the only ones that matter. However I don’t favour a race based immigration policy. Even if in Japan they do.
No, no, no
The descendants of Charles Perkins and Kevin Gilbert etc would probably say
A black Australia would solve all the problems.
However I would say you only need a stable Australia irrespective of differences of identity.
@Michael
Michael: “I was responding to you calling NIMBYism a silly label. It’s not, it’s an accurate descriptor of a lot of people’s motivations for being against changes in the urban landscape such as increasing density. Do you reject that notion? It’s a perfectly understandable behaviour but one that governments need to temper for the wider benefit of society.”
EG: You are entitled to your opinions but so am I. I said already that NIMBYism is a silly label. It is surprising that the silliness is not obvious to anybody in a non-dictatorial society because: If agent y can do something in agent x’s backyard then the effective ownership of the backyard shifts from x to y. There are many examples where corporate interest groups have used the silly label NIBYism to achieve a costless transfer of ownership. If you wish to have a suitable application for the term NIMBYism then I suggest you attach it to those CEOs who during the past decade or more argued for wage restraint for everybody except themselves. Get the point?
Michael: “Maybe I read to much into your statement….”
EG: Yes you did.
Michael: “What are your views on population?”
EG: The discussions on this thread have brought out several points which indicate to me that having ‘views on population’ is a silly idea to begin with.
JIM,
The issue of whether regional areas could sustain larger populations should be explored. However, …
1. We should not continue to expand our population until it is proven that those regions can;
2. Even if they can, it would surely be appropriate to first use that capacity to relieve the acute problems created in the major urban regions by the successive Hawke, Keating, Howard and Rudd Governments before we even consider expanding our population further; and
3. Until we see evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to assume that any alternative Government likely to be elected can do any better than the sorry record to date of the successive Beattie and Bligh Governments.
Some degree of decentralisation would make sense and I suspect that it hasn’t been pursued further since the middle of last century because it suited the property lobby that it was not.
It seems more likely to me that the newly rediscovered fad for decentralisation is just a ploy to divert our attention from the critical question of population growth and we can expect that when (and if) the furore is behind us, it will be quickly forgotten.
Everyone has focused on immigration. Can we at least agree that the baby bonus is bad policy? It’s very expensive, and is making Australia’s environment worse by increasing the number of people.
We shouldn’t care about the aging of the population because;
a) Creating a baby boom now is just making another problem further into the future, and
b) It’s not a problem anyway, because
i) Old people are much more productive than official accounts suggest,
ii) Children are much more dependent than official accounts suggest and,
iii) Decreasing the working age population has positive benefits, such as reducing unemployment, which (because of it’s emotional effects) we should value much more than long run growth.
TerjeP, since to spend is to tax I think you should be against this totally counterproductive distortion of people’s natural behaviour.
Nice to see my ol’ mate Dagget back. Glad to see some here want to put the horse before the cart, neoliberlism on the one hand and racism on theother, have no place in a conversation of this sort, what’s wanted is accurate modelling, then interpretation, rather than the half cocked approach to”development” proposed by the corrupted Labor Right and Tories (same thing?).
Oh dear, o dear; this is an old cry.
Remember the ABS’s doomed approach at a “Composite Indicator”? This approach to economics will never work.
A key problem is that noone has found a way to predict exchange rates.
And there seems no way to predict debt trends.
And there is no agreement about how capitalism operates. Some p/g students once created a physical fluid model of a Keynesian, but it too failed – good for tutes, bad for life.
Models tend to have 50% accuracy in predicting outcomes within 2 quarters, provided you don’t require them to predict turning points.
Other models that are more accurate are based on a pipeline effect – eg if you know the changes in university commencements – you can predict next months enrolments.
OECD has a Composite Indicator, which predicts growth but only too short a timeframe to serve any policy purpose at all.
Has anyone produced, even a scheme for a model of a capitalist economy that explains permanent per capita debt increase and that can achieve a steady state without decreasing wages, adding to the population, or importing economic benefit from outside?
I would be very interested in reviewing any such literature.
@Ernestine Gross
I agree re the silliness of ‘nimby’ – it is essentially a label given to justify a ‘lite’ form of colonisation.
Yes, Chris Warren- you get it exactly.
Rudd’s propositions are likely cock and bull and no time to show, as against a basket of indicators, whether the ecological and economic sustainability of the place and its latest “plan” is finally tipped, or not (WE already know the answer ; think CRS, Murray Darling, run down infrastructure, privatisations etc, inherited from the last generation), until AFTER it’s too late.
The one thing they WONT offer for their harebrained schemes is any meaningful mechanism that gets the People out of the crap they will find themselves put in by the neolibs, who will have long since scarpered with their money-crammed brown paper bags, or whatever the modern equivalent is.
Thank you for that nice welcome back, Paul Walter.
You are also welcome, as is anyone else here, to post your thoughts on population growth to any of the articles on our web-site concerning population growth.
Here’s yet another online poll which has come out overwhelmingly against population growth. The Age Online poll question was:
Population-wise, is a bigger Australia a better Australia?
4979 responded and 69% voted against while only 31% voted for (and if there was not so much propaganda in favour of population growth the results would, no doubt, be even more overwhelming).
No doubt Rudd intends to continue in the fine tradition of Bob Hawke of “imposing elite as opposed to majority views” on immigration even though neither he nor any other population growth advocates have been able to put a case in favour of population growht other than to satiate their own greed.
For my part I consider this unacceptable in supposed democracy.
Daggett, I thought a couple of articles in the SMH, one by Peter Hartcher in particular, added background to the issue, following from another report observing that there significant omissions; accidental or even deliberate lack of data from Treasury’s latest population growth stats and projections somehow withheld from its report.
Refugees are a different topic; sadly they have been drawn into the latest imbroglio and will remain where they are whilst the political parties contests for the priceless political prize of “authenticity “.
I suspect Labor turned the tables on Abbott last week, a little reminiscint of the way Howard did to Beazley in the wake of “Tampa”.
Abbot at least will quite approrpriately, wear the same approbrium as Rudd from now on, and that’s an improvement for Labor and a fair one.
You’d like to think that one more devastating defeat would finish off the right of the Liberal party and that then Labor could finally be free to render a more civilised policy than the current one, starting with those “poor sods” who have been stranded at Merak.
But it is likely that Labor has finally got its message across, re Abbott’s obstructionism, and without emotive issues to run with, his election push will finally fizzle and the Liberals, after their upcoming election defeat, can at least at last get rid of their discredited right, who undermined the reforming likes of Turnbull so pyrrhically, keeping it in the denialist Dark Ages.
@daggett
Suppose that they didn’t agree that “a bigger Australia” was “better” (terms too vague to say) but that a bigger Australia was feasible i.e. we could manage.
It’s all how you interpret the question. I’d have no strong opinion on whether it was “better” but I think it might be inevitable if one is a humanitarian and a beleiver in non-coercive public policy.
Trying to keep a “small Australia” or working for “a declining Australia” might turn out worse.
Perhaps someone should have asked: “Do you think a declining Australia would be better?” or “Do you think a laager Australia would be better?”
Push polling anyone?
Paul Walter,
The boat people/refugee issue is a a vexed question.
I favour a more humanitarian treatment of all arrivals, but the bottom line is we have to have a system that works and is fair to all and is within the capacity of the Australian community to support.
If we cut back economic immigration, then our capacity to accept refugees could be significantly increased,. but even then we would more than likely be far from able to accept everyone in the world who would like to come to Australia, even if they had good grounds to fear at least persecution, torture or death.
Ultimately we have to aim to help people in those regions to solve their problems, whether political, or simply problems of poverty driven by there being too many numbers.
The approach of many refugee activists seems to imply that there is only one conceivable way Australia can and should offer help to people in the world suffering hardship, that is, to offer them residence here.
I fear that if we don’t have a rational discussion on this issue, we could find ourselves again in the circumsntances we found ourselves in through much of the last decade where most refugee activism actually seemed to help John Howard retain power. This helped make possible the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have made the plight of those people even worse.
This is because the reasonable objections of people who understandably feared that perceived leniency towards boat people could encourage much larger numbers of people to try to reach our shores by boat. This is certainly the experience of Southern Europe for example. I recall a few weeks ago David Marr was dismissive in precisely that way. And while people became wound up by the relatively small numbers of boat arrivals, Howard ramped up economic migration to record levels, a fact that few, if any, refugee activists attempted to draw our attention to.
Fran Barlowe,
Although most population stability activists disgree with me, I don’t entirely preclude the possibility that Australia could sustainably support a larger population (although I think it unlikely).
This just might be possible if:
1. We fix up the Murray Darling Basin;
2. We thorough fix up our land by applying systmeatically with Peter Andrews’ Natural Sequence Farming ideas.
3. We take urban planning out of the hands of land speculators and property developers and put it back in the hands of the community through their elected local state and federal governments.
4, We stop woodchipping old growth forests.
5. We accept lifestyles in which we all make do with consume less material resources.
6. Ditch the baggage of economic neo-liberal ideology and allow
7. Etc.
To allow our population to further increase with property developers, land speculators, mining companies, banks etc. still exercising their insidious control over our destiny is a sure-fire recipe for evironmental, economic and social calamity.
I think if we adopted all the policies I advocate, we may still find that we only have just enough to support the current population.
Whether or not the evidence shows that this country can sustainably support more, the same or a smaller population, any decision to increase the population should be for the people to decide.
Daggett, good try.
Whether you get a sensibleand honest response from some of them, or not, I dont know.
Apologies, in my second last post, I should have linked back to Paul Walter’s post.
The first sentence in the last paragraph should have read:
This is because the reasonable objections of people, who understandably feared that perceived leniency towards boat people could encourage much larger numbers of people to try to reach our shores by boat, is dismissed.
Apologies for the broken link back to Fran Barlowe’s post in my last post.
—
BTW, I am still waiting for someone to provide an economic defence of immigration.
Can I take it, therefore, that everyone here concedes that the economic justifications are complete nonsense?
daggett, what do you mean by “an economic defence of immigration”?
Ernestine, surely Daggett means”an economic defence of immigration”he means “a boost to population “that is not economically and/or ecologically sustainable?
After all we’ve just spent the last two years debating whether or not world civilization is going to collapse through ecological problems culminating in the global warming disaster, that make even current populations problematic.
All of a sudden we hear that an inquiry into population growth, apparently employing dumbed down figures, tells us that the population growth projected is now completely different and more rapid than now even to what it was just a few years back.
Why shouldn’t I ponder the presence of a religious excess, for example, to do with their (Rudd Abbot, Conroy,etc) odd fertlity cult, advocating rapid population growth for mythic delusionary reasons rather than equitable constructive economic ones?
How can I be sure that this alliance of Ruddists and property developers is going to offer me or my fellow “norms”anything for the future after their misappropriations have finished. Any guarantees involving firm money (hyperbole alert!).
If rapid population growth is the new future for Australia, replacing neoliberal “reform” as the dogma of choice, why are they fudging the figures.
OKlLets just presume they are fudging?
If rapid population growth economics is such a marvel, you’d think they’d have every piece of economic data they could find at their finger tips.
It must have been a different thread where I read Ernestine discussing this in depth and in a thrust more sympatico to Daggetts sentiments?
Hey, Ernestine, I seem to remember you claiming a little expertise here at economics, a while back.
Perhaps you could give us your impressions of what rapid population growth would mean, given current circumstances and (im)ponderables involving global warming, Murray Darling, defoliation/soil degradation, etc.
These can be measures on some sort of realistic projection of these as seperate and incorporated projections for future growth, resource use , productivity, etc? eg, more than expected increase in global warming, unforseen circumstances (massive quake inLA or Tokyo, a war), complete with graphs /numbers, etc?
I feel Daggett is just worrying that in to trying to do the rightthing we dont go to the stage of actually sinking thelifeboat rather than merely filling it.
Paul, the question asked by daggett is too vague, IMO, to reply. As for population growth globally, its pretty obvious that resources (marketable and non-marketable) are finite and therefore there is an upper bound on total population. But don’t ask me for the numerical value of this upper bound because I don’t know it and I don’t believe it can be calculated; possible scenarios is about the best one can achieve. Moreover, and this is what I have argued on many occasions, economics intersects with natural science and with philosophy. The latter influences the institutional environment of ‘an economy’ and knowledge from the former is essential to empirically study questions of resource feasibility. The ‘global economy’ is a complex organisation – much more complex than international trade models reflect – not least because of differences in the philosophical base of various countries, call it culture if you like. The extent of uneven development in the so-called ‘global economy’ complicates matters further. For example, to what extent is uneven development, as conceived by economists from Europe-US-Australia, a problem in the eyes of economists in some other parts of the world. I am trying to say, not very successfully, that it seems to me to be a pretty hopeless endeavour to on the one hand acknowledge histories of cultural and real resource differences among countries and regions and, on the other hand, pretend they don’t exist. Hence I would not volunteer to offer an opinion from the comfort of my armchair in a leafy North Shore suburb. At present and, IMO, foreseeable future, big topics like sustainable global development need to be addressed via inter- and intra governmental bodies who can draw on interdisciplinary research organisations and free exchange of academic research globally. This is not to suggest that broad public debate from a local perspective is not important for policy formation.
Thank you,
Ernestine. It’s releif to get a straight and informative reply and the answer is a bit more honest than some have been offered, from some who arguably have had far more obligation to be so.
However.
You’d agree that it would be an improvemt if we did not have too many “secret ” negotiations without a proper chanel of comunication with the public.
Eg Afghanistan.
AUSFTA is a good example, too.
I know very few people who are “over” the guts of it.
Then there are the local versions involving infrastructure, where pertinent information is witheld under the nakedly unscrupulous COI ( commercial in confidence) rules, and interferences in Freedom of information laws.