Sustainable Population Australia
Election Result Won’t Stop Population Growth
Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) sees no progress towards a sustainable environmental and economic future for Australia following the recent Federal Election.
SPA’s National President, Peter Strachan says, “After expanding population by 8.6 million, or 45% over the past 25 years, Australia continues to add 553,000 people per year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.”
Graph courtesy of the ABS
“Of this number 449,500 people or 82 percent result from net overseas migration (NOM). Additionally, there are about 292,000 births, of which approximately 32 percent are born to women who were born overseas, and 187,700 deaths.”
Mr Strachan says, “In total, this is equivalent to adding a capacity crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to Australia’s population every two months. Each person needs to be housed, with water, power, access to public transport and other services like schools and medical services. Government policy initiatives in this area are totally inadequate.”
The MCG stadium would be filled to capacity from only two months of population growth!
Despite wide community support with over 70 percent of voters surveyed wanting a halt to Australia’s population growth, SPA found only one party with sensible policy settings for both a sustainable population and an environmentally healthy future, while others promoting lower immigration were not motivated by environmental concerns.
“Lifting Australia’s historically and internationally deplorable productivity growth will be a major challenge for Labor’s second term. According to many economists, capital shallowing has been a major factor: business and infrastructure investment has been unable to keep pace with the growing workforce,” says Mr Strachan.
According to SPA Spokesperson Michael Bayliss, bringing in more people has generated more skills shortages than it has filled. Meanwhile, jobs growth has been mainly in the government-funded care sector. “This population growth will perpetuate and worsen Australia’s existing housing and other cost of living issues, while eroding what remains of the natural environment” says Mr Bayliss.
Graph courtesy of IFM/Macro Business
“Encouragingly, some nations have shown that it is possible for centrist or left leaning governments to lower immigration without the additional baggage that comes with right-wing nationalist politics. Denmark’s progressive government attracted wide electoral support by adopting lower immigration targets in 2019, effectively dealing with a challenge from the political right.
“Australian politicians must learn from the success of countries such as Denmark. We cannot leave the population debate in the hands of far-right culture wars and neglect its crucial environmental and social justice impacts.”
Mr Bayliss says that nearly 20,000 signatures to the SPA position statement ahead of the election demonstrates that there is strong community support for SPA’s core objectives, including to reduce Australia’s Net Overseas Migration to 50,000 – 80,000 per annum. “Unfortunately, we still live in a society in which our elected politicians are tone deaf to the views of the Australian public on this critical issue.”
https://population.org.au/media-releases/post_election_2025/