While I disagree with his anti-migration stance, Monash University’s Bob Birrell makes some good points in his commentary on Australia’s sustainable population strategy, which rejected Kevin Rudd’s vision of a big Australia by electing not to nominate a population target. The Australian  (Population strategy ‘of little relevance’, says top demographer) reports:

JULIA Gillard’s new population strategy makes it clear the needs of the economy are more important than her “sustainable Australia” mantra, one of Australia’s leading demographers says.

Monash University’s Dr Bob Birrell said the document, released today, was “of very little relevance” to addressing the problems facing Australian cities.

The strategy, which declines to nominate a population target, also makes no attempt to predict how Australia’s major cities will grow over coming decades.

Dr Birrell is right to argue the report is light on analysis of Australian population issues:

Dr Birrell said Population Minister Tony Burke’s report had failed to analyse Australia’s current population settings.

“Burke has obviously had to accept the government’s decision that higher skilled migration is the number one priority,” he said.

“And they’ve put in place rules which ensure that we are likely to go above net 180,000 (migrants) a year, at least in the foreseeable future.

“So Burke is left basically mouthing platitudes, saying `wouldn’t it be nice if we had sustainable communities, wouldn’t it be nice if we had outer-suburban cities, and so on.”

The Government’s population strategy contains an illogical justification for the lack of a population target that can easily be read as a concession to the short-term demands of business for more skilled migrants:

The adoption of a population target would also limit the use of the migration program as a policy lever to address emerging skills gaps and labour shortages.

Why are we responding to what are possibly only short-term skills gaps and labour shortages with higher migration, which can result in a permanently higher Australian population? If the additional migrants test our ability to grow in a sustainable fashion, that doesn’t sound like a good idea. The Government would solve a short-term problem at a potentially high cost in the long-term.

If the Government considers the shortage of skilled labour is a long-term phenomenon, then we should review appropriate migration levels within the context of the full set of long-term challenges facing Australia – particularly those environmental and urban development challenges that heightened public concern about our population growth in the first place. Unfortunately, the Government has put this all in the too hard basket, rather than making a clear case – which I, optimistically, believe can be made – for the larger population that will inevitably flow from current migration policies.