'Mongoose politics': Michael Pascoe
Analysis of the election debate from a business and economics point of view.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has a population clock on its web site. If you are as simple as I am and take a minor pleasure in noticing a car's speedo roll past a number with a lot of 9s in it to one with lots of 0s, you might want to visit the ABS clock this morning to see it pass from 22,399,999 to 22,400,000.
The clock works on the statisticians' best guess that Australia adds a net person to Australia every 1 minute and 13 seconds thanks to a birth every 1 minute and 47 seconds, a net gain of one international migration every 1 minute and 54 seconds – hey, more babies than migrants – and a death every 3 minutes and 44 seconds. To the Grim Reaper, migrant and native born are all the same.
Anyway, the thing about that clock ticking over the 22.4 million mark this morning is that even if it was possible to immediately reduce the already-easing growth rate to Tony Abbott's promised 1.4 per cent, we'd still have a population of 39 million by 2050.
You might remember Kevin Rudd got into trouble by talking about a “Big Australia” in the context of 35 or 36 million in 2050. So if 36 million is a “Big Australia”, 39 million must be…
Yesterday's renewed surge of politicians fudging and dissembling about immigration might put some in mind of dog-whistle politics, but I think there's another animal that fits: mongoose politics – a pair of glorified ferrets dodging and weaving around the cobra of public opinion.
Between Julia Gillard's weasel words about not believing in a Big Australia and Tony Abbott's wilful misleading on migration numbers – including the use of out-dated statistics - the population question has been the least edifying aspect of the mongooses' dance. (Or should that be mongeese?)
If you're a touch masochistic, try reading the statistical mish-mash that's the Liberal Party's “real action on sustainable population” policy. If it was a university stats assignment, it would deserve an F.
But Labor has been worse – Julia Gillard's Big Australia agnosticism doesn't even count as an attempt to answer the question. Heavens, it's only a step away from convening a citizens' convention on the topic.
(Actually, they're already done a bit of that with no less than three panels appointed to advise Minister for Sustainable Population Tony Burke on “sustainable population issues”. Hilariously, one of those panels is being chaired by the avowedly anti-growth Bob Carr. If any single person was to be blamed for the quality of life problems now facing western Sydney, it would be Carr for NSW's lost decade under his premiership and the rubbish government he left.)
During last night's debate Gillard finally fudged up some figures in reaction to Abbott's red herring, chiming in with a 10-week-old population guess by BIS Shrapnel that's been doing the rounds. Plucking a maybe-maybe not estimate by private consultancy out of the files is not the sort of rigour with which one might hope a government operates, but it was all that was on offer.
The surge in population growth to 2.2 per cent in the 2008-09 financial year is already history. In the year to December 2009 it was down to 2 per cent and falling. There were several factors in the surge that have passed – expats coming home as the GFC reduced job opportunities overseas, the peak of the foreign student influx, Kiwis were busy crossing the ditch, 457 “guest worker” visas were not difficult for employers to obtain.
Tightening up on foreign students' residency hopes and our strong dollar probably mean the international education industry will contract, but even if it maintains current enrolments, there will be no growth to feed into the stats. The expat repatriation surge is over. The 457 visas are harder to come by – anecdotally slowing some resources projects. As for Tony Abbott's pledge that “the Coalition will ensure that two-thirds of our permanent migration programme will be for the purposes of skilled migration”, skilled migration already accounts for 67.5 per cent of the program this year.
So cutting through the miserable dog whistle and mongoose politics, it turns out that population and immigration is another area where there's actually little difference between the two parties and no real change to current policies. We're still firmly on track for the intergenerational report's 36 million or so residents in 40 years.
And while neither side of politics is game to say it, that's a necessary thing. Otherwise we'd be in danger of a severe case of the Dutch disease, suffer immediate labor and skills shortages that would cause inflation, resulting in higher interest rates designed to slow the economy and increase unemployment.
The pessimistic souls who claim we can't support more people despite being a major food exporter and barely beginning to price water properly might rejoice in Australia missing the present window of opportunity for a series of major investment opportunities, but most would not. Gen Y and X would find themselves paying substantially more tax in a few years or Baby Boomers would be in for a much poorer retirement. (Actually, that last bit will probably happen anyway – but it would be worse.)
Both parties know that. Both parties are just playing with the snake until August 21.
Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay contributing editor.
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