Australia will have 1.2 million fewer people by 2060-61 than previously estimated, with 23% of the population projected to be over 65.
A huge reason for this decrease, as stated in Treasury’s latest Intergenerational Report, is due to a slowing birthrate and limited immigration.
Migrants are key to Australia’s economic recovery and will continue to be the largest source of population growth. Yet with poorly managed hotel quarantine, strict border closures and arrival caps, limited exemptions for migrants wishing to leave to visit family and just 5% of Australia’s population fully vaccinated, our borders aren’t opening to new arrivals any time soon.
A nation of immigrants
Migrants tend to be younger and higher-skilled than the general population, making them key to supporting labour force participation and productivity, the Intergenerational Report found. COVID-19 has reduced migrant growth to the lowest in more than a century — from an annual average rate of 1.4% across the past 40 years to 0.1% in 2020-21.
While the report notes migration is not a “complete solution” to Australia’s ageing population, it states “migration needs to be managed well to ensure it continues to support higher living standards”.
Yet migrants have been crying out for help since the pandemic began: international students lined up for support for food charities; families torn apart, with citizens’ partners not able to get into the country; and many migrants — unable to score an exemption or pay for the costly return to visit their families — planning to leave.
Immigration lawyer Adam Byrnes tells Crikey while many visa restrictions have been eased, many feel not enough has been done.
The 408 visa is a new pathway for those on temporary visas to remain in Australia, while others can apply for visas onshore when previously they had to be offshore.
“[People have asked me] if it’s a good idea to renounce my Australian permanent residency because I never want to come back,” he said.
But he stressed migrants shouldn’t make rash decisions: “We are one of the best countries in the world. “As the borders start to open and as people are vaccinated I would envision more people will be eligible for exemptions and we will continue to open up.”
Where are federal quarantine facilities?
At the beginning of the pandemic, Australia had a federal quarantine facility on Christmas Island to bring home travellers from Wuhan, China. The decision to use the detention centre for quarantine was criticised by doctors, refugee advocates and island residents.
When Health Minister Greg Hunt flagged that states and territories would establish their own quarantine facilities in late February, Prime Minister Scott Morrison reminded the country it was not realistic for Australia “to completely lock itself off from the world”.
Since the borders shut, most COVID outbreaks have originated from hotel quarantine. Sydney’s outbreak is the exception, with a limo driver believed to have caught the virus from a FedEx freight plane crew. Failures in Victoria’s hotel quarantine caused the state’s 112-day lockdown mid last year.
It wasn’t until September that calls for federal hotel quarantine facilities grew. Labor called for the specialised facilities, increased quarantine caps and RAAF planes to bring home stranded Australians.
But the federal government has repeatedly dismissed calls to set up Commonwealth centres. At the time, Trade and Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham stressed that the arrival caps were “driven entirely by what the states and territories tell us they can safely accommodate through their quarantine facilities”.
This month the federal government supported Victoria’s plans for a purpose-built 1000-bed facility in Mickleham, but refused to help pay for it. The facility is expected to be up and running late this year or early next.
Quarantine still needed despite vaccines
University of New South Wales epidemiologist Abrar Ahmad Chughtai tells Crikey quarantine facilities will be key for years.
“It will probably take another year or more for Australia to achieve 80% immunity, and probably another two or three years to vaccinate, for example, people coming from other parts of the world,” he said.
He stresses there are a number of factors that need to be considered when addressing who is exempt from quarantine — from how vaccinated the country’s population is, to the type of variant circulating, to how effective the vaccine is against the major strains.
“[Quarantine] isn’t a short-term solution,” he said. “We need to think about short-term, medium-term and long-term.
“Even if these facilities don’t help us now, they definitely will for future pandemic preparedness.”
“Migrants are key to Australia’s economic recovery and will continue to be the largest source of population growth.”
So we are told, repeatedly. But when the economy grows overall merely because the population grows and without any per capita growth, or even a decline in per capita growth, where is the benefit and what is the point?
And that’s without any consideration for whether permanent growth of the population and economy can possibly be sustainable or desirable. The overwhelming evidence at present suggests certainly not.
Agree. It is always the same old, same old arguments we need more migrants: to boost economic growth and to offset the ageing of the population. Those were Costello’s argument 20 years ago. Perhaps we need a complete rethink of the basis of our economy – migrants and mining – and develop an economy that accepts a higher proportion of older people, and economic activities that don’t rely on the Ponzi scheme of migration to keep it going.
The same old white nativist tropes round all things immigration masquerading as concern for the nation or environment….
The expression ‘migrant’ suggests permanent migration but most of our new population growth is merely froth on the ‘estimated resident population’ due to increased temporary churnover of net financial contributors caught up in the ‘nebulous’ and confusingly named NOM net overseas migration (simply net border movements); used to support budgets for increasing numbers of retirees in the permanent population.
This in normal times is exemplified also by those not caught up in the NOM under the 12/16+ rule i.e. high visibility of thousands of students at English colleges in CBDs for less than a year of study and work.
International education has now lost tens of thousands of jobs and income e.g. homestay providers, but seen as victory or a success, why?
You pull this stunt every time immigration is mentioned, deliberately trying to confuse permanent, legal immigration – until recently it had averaged 200,000pa for the previous 20 years – with what you term churn on the multitudes on the various visa scams & overstayers.
This obfuscation is pointed out to you time & again yet you persist so it can only be in bad faith.
So what, 200k or 0.8% of the estimated resident population lines in the sand (low vs. post WWII rates cf population), but what does your number prove apart from antipathy towards ‘immigrants’? This can also lead onto radicalisation AKA Christchurch mosque shooter and others in the far right…..
The population growth obsessives in Australia are directly channeling, without any embarrassment or shame, the US far right white nationalist ‘environmental’ movement supported by fossil fuels, exemplified by Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich and deceased anti-semite and white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton at ZPG, the latter an admirer of the white Australia policy and critic of non white immigration.
The American Prospect gives a good overview in ‘Guilt by Association. A network of organizations that uses environmental concerns to justify anti-immigration views is now courting liberals’. Jessica Weisberg May 2, 2010.
Unfortunately no one in Australia received the memo and still promote far or alt right tropes as environmental; even many Labor types involved in Australia……
You will not address the issue of numbers and the effect on quality of life – aka the carrying capapcity of this arid country – and always, constantly claim racism is the only reason to want fewer people admitted.
Exactly, of course it has nothing to do with ‘quantitative’ population or immigration numbers but confected issues round ‘qualitative’ factors; in turn based on Malthusian principles owing more to deep seated Calvinist Christianity and Galton’s ‘science of eugenics and racial hygiene’.
Which other nation obsesses about immigration and/or population, then presenting as correlation with the sub-optimal health of the environment, while fossil fuels etc. escape scrutiny and environmental regulation? Only Australia and lesser extent the US and UK.
This movement is well documented in the US e.g. ‘Back from the Brink: Ten Reasons to Challenge the Greening of Hate‘ by Betsy Hartmann of the Population Development Program, Hampshire College (in Different Takes, No. 78, Spring 2013) debunks, like many others have, the claims of supposed linkages between immigration or population and environment:
‘Spearheaded by right-wing, white supremacist groups affiliated with the John Tanton network, the greening of hate is a political strategy to attract liberal environmentalists to the conservative fold by using the language of overpopulation‘
Agree. The objections normally emerge from WASP’s who see White immigration as OK but use environmental and lifestyle “concerns” as justification for restricting immigration by Non-Whites.
Everyone in this country is either an Immigrant or descendants of Immigrants and would not be here without immigration.
Any evidence for that?
How many here are White? Where is any evidence of your claims?
What are my claims? I’m asking who exactly sees white migration only as OK.
Media presentation?
Always an accurate representation of reality.
This isn’t just about racism and environmental impact, what about standards of living?.
There are very few standards of living that have improved in the last 40 or 50 years. the only clear improvements were respect for difference,
What about how education has turned into a purely economic requirement, how materialism has accelerated so dramatically?
The damage done to the collective psyche has been significant creating a more easier to manipulate society.
The main trope is population growth to improve the economy, which has no basis for equating standard of living.
I agree that cultural diversity is a great way to make a country better, but look who is pulling the levers.
‘main trope is population growth to improve the economy, which has no basis for equating standard of living’
Interesting how many complain about GDP and/or ‘growth’ due to population growth and/or immigration as not representing ‘well being’. Since when has GDP or growth been discussed in the mainstream let alone being used as a quality of life indicator; simply another false dichotomy.
Worse, it is an old white nativist trope even repeated (unwittingly) in mainstream media to attack immigration and modern day immigrants; exemplifying ignorance.
The economic issue is not just short term growth or skills but long term support for budgets by ‘net financial contributors’ (NOM churn over) so we have PS delivery, pensions, unemployment benefit etc. into the future for more retirees; beware the ‘libertarian trap’.
Oh Drew, you’re at it again, conflating any reasonable argument against declining living standards as being racist, and embedded in Kochian philosophy. It’s true, Koch brothers do and did fight this on purely racial and Christian bases, but that does not escape the fact that there are strong arguments against such high immigration in Australia, and for many of us it is the lived experience in clogged roads and never ending peak hours highest on the list. And you continue to quote that study that found they were net financial contributors, a study which made no attempt to quantify the costs in infrastructure, liveability, and downward pressure on wages for the low paid and the loss of opportunity for the young to get into the jobs market. All real issues and costs.
And in any case, the net financial contributors argument cannot be linear. Most likely an arc. There has to be some point where the next immigrant has a reduced financial contribution from the last and not counting the costs above suggests we have long since passed that point.
Happy for all immigrants in future to be non-white and non-christian, provided the overall numbers come down. But I suppose that would just be a ‘non-white Australian’ policy, which would be equally racist.
Those climate change summers to come and droughts which lead big cities to drinking water only might convince you.
I agree. Gradual population reduction is exactly what the planet needs. Of course our financial and economic system is based on impossible eternal growth – therefore we need to move to new economic and financial systems..
Proper quarantine facilities are absolutely necessary to help protect us from this global pandemic and the next ones while allowing limited international travel.
Whilst I would agree, somewhat (being a big fan of NPG rather than ZPG) that “Gradual population reduction is exactly what the planet needs…”, the problem is ensuring that it is the correct people who are disappeared.
Some might differ.
Protagonists of eugenics via the ‘population’ movement can always do a Garrett Hardin author of ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ who committed suicide, but had liaised with Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich’s long term colleague and fellow traveller (now deceased) white nationalist John Tanton:
‘After leaving ZPG’s leadership, Tanton created additional anti-immigration advocacy groups and built up connections with existing organizations such as the Pioneer Fund. We trace Tanton’s increasingly radical conservative network of anti-immigration advocates, conservationists, and population control activists to the present day. Tanton’s archived papers illustrate, among other things, his interactions with collaborators such as ecologist Garrett Hardin (author of the famous “Tragedy of the Commons”) and his documented interest in reviving eugenics. We contend that this history of Tanton’s network provides key insights into understanding how there came to be an overlap between the ideologies and activist communities of immigration restrictionism, population control, conservationism and eugenics.’
Normandin & Valles 2015 Jun; 39(2):95-105. doi: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2015.05.001. Epub 2015 May 28.‘How a network of conservationists and population control activists created the contemporary US anti-immigration movement’. Endeavour.
A year later his groups were in the White House advising Trump via Bannon, Miller et al. and appearing on Fox News.
Demographics is Destiny.
Of course, and the world is becoming older and browner 🙂
https://ourworldindata.org/age-structure
So we keep digging bigger & bigger holes in the ground, draining more & more rivers, clearing more & more land & inviting more & more people to come & join in the plundering. The stench of a million dead fish still wafts across these lands.
It cannot continue the way it is.
Before COVID came along our population growth was about 1.6% pa. Because of COVID we may all now understand exponential growth a bit better – 1.6% means 100 million people in another 90 years. That’s a recipe for environmental and social degradation. However, growth commentators, political parties, major environmental organisations and the like never mention that. It’s time to talk about it!
No it does not. Population is based on fertility and death rates, plus the NOM. Fertility is declining, death rates will increase (big die off of the baby boomer bubble starts in five years) and ‘nebulous’ NOM is a barometer including mostly temporary churn over, it cannot, like UK PM Cameron tried before Brexit, be cited as migration target or cap; the permanent migration program can and does get capped.
So you agree that the boomer bulge will start to self-correct in the next 5 years, as I’ve pointed out before ( given the elders in that group are now around 75, it has probably begun).
That leads your argument for high immigration as being, erm, high immigration. Hardly compelling.
As I said elsewhere, the usual inchoate incoherence.
Good grief.
This reads like a press release from the property council.
The benefits of pre-COVID mass immigration are in dispute to say the least.
And that’s just the economics.
Environmentally the less said the better.
Population policy should be up for debate rather than decided behind closed doors by the moneyed-up.
Surely THE Covid pandemic provides a breathing space for Australia to properly plan its migration program. For decades, it averaged 70k per annum but has grown almost four fold from the Howard/Costello visa type explosion through to Rudds Big Australia to todays cheap farm labourer and food delivery students The student visa system has become a defacto pathway to permanent residency status rathen than a search for academic achievement.
After 20 years of “going for broke” immigration policies, Australia today has a massive social housing housing deficit and a huge infrastructure backlog in our cities and towns. It has seen wages growth driven backwards. It has a massive impoverished sector of over-50s workers ejected from the job system. Any Productivity increases are generally the result of more bodies through the passport gate and boosting mega profits for home suppliers like Harvey Norman and Meriton.
Today, Frydenbegs scare tactics are more about getting the mass migration program back on the pre-pandemic roller coaster than him worrying about my daughter’s or her childrens’ old age. Like the Banking RC, its time to hold a public inquiry as to the benefits and burdens of a mass migration program, which few if any the other major OECD countries would support or tolerate.
I would say that our social housing problems stem from a lack of political will, it’s not as if we can’t afford it. A few figures; Tasmania is half the size of England, Holland is half the size of Tasmania, yet they have an aircraft industry, one of the worlds major trucking manufacturing industries, and is Europe’s largest agricultural exporter. They also have affordable housing, social housing and regulated rental, communication and energy rates This doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through good, smart governance, something sadly lacking in this country.
You compared everything except population.
Think you are confusing and conflating a still modest permanent migration program with increased temporary churnover of students, backpackers, and other temporary residents; the latter are net financial budget contributors and only modest numbers are eligible to apply for permanent migration under the annual cap.
Since the Rodent took office, the primary immigration – the head visa holder, not including dependents – averaged 200,000+ pa.
This alone increased our population, in twenty years, by over 10%.
In 2006, unknown and unannounced by media and politicians the UNPD NOM Net Overseas Migration was broadened under the 12/16+ month residency rule; inflating headline population by conflating temporary churn over while permanent (formal) migration caps remained (usually runs at about 0.5% of the estimated resident population added to below replacement and falling fertility rate of 1.8%).
Student visas are a pathway to permanent residency, and historically high immigration of 200K, which doesn’t include the student churn numbers (closer to 450K when included) are in now way ‘modest’.
You are wasting your time, ‘Drew‘ is impervious to facts.
On this ‘provides a breathing space for Australia to properly plan its migration program’.
It’s a bit politically suspicious when both the PM and NSW Premier made the same unclear and undefined claims last NSW election e.g. ‘Faragian ‘traffic congestion’ caused by ‘immigrants’; me thinks it’s a dog whistle.
Ditto on avoidance of fossil fuel/mining constraints and environmental regulation by blaming undefined ‘immigrants’ and ‘population growth’ while subsidies and inertia remain for Australians to wreck the environment…..