Is there anything in Australia’s new Sustainable Population Strategy?
Two weeks ago saw the release of the Commonwealth Government’s Sustainable Population Strategy for Australia. The impetus behind this strategy came from the population and overseas migration debate that occurred during early 2010. What does it say about Australia’s future? Not as much as it could have.
The politics
The establishment of a specific Population portfolio in April last year and commissioning of a report was the former Rudd Government’s response to perceived disquiet over the Commonwealth Treasury’s Australian forecasts of 35 million by 2050. The election itself was conducted as historic highs in net overseas migration were being reported by the ABS (These have since come down markedly).
During the election, the long held political bipartisanship of the merits of overseas migration was tossed aside in favour of the unedifying populism that characterised much of the campaign. Tony Abbott promised to cut net overseas migration to 170,000 in an attempt to appeal to those who saw cutting immigration as a direct way of making housing cheaper and their trip to work quicker, as well as those with slightly more sinister motives.
Since the election, the heat seems to have gone out of the issue, particularly as net migration numbers have come back down from historic highs of 300,000 in 2009 to 186,000 for the year ending September 2010.
The policy
The report itself builds on the three panel reports released last December on Demographic Change and Liveability, chaired by Professor Graeme Hugo, Productivity and Prosperity, chaired by Heather Ridout, and Sustainable Development, chaired by Bob Carr, covering some demographic research as well as catering for the pro and anti growth lobbies.
The final strategy seems to be fairly non committal as one might expect with such differing perspectives in the earlier panel reports as well as in the community at large. I imagine the two interesting questions that people were asking prior to the strategy’s release would be: Do we have a population target? And what is Australia’s ‘carrying capacity’? We don’t get much on either front. The strategy sees targets as arbitrary in nature and difficult to deliver in practice. A reasonable perspective given that overseas migration is really the only lever the Federal Government has to influence population, and even this is limited given Kiwis can wander in and out as they see fit, and Aussies are free to go and live somewhere else if they wish. Limiting a future government’s ability to allow more skilled migrants in is also seen as not a great thing.
So what of ‘carrying capacity’? Bob “Sydney is full’ Carr’s panel report attempts to debunk economic arguments for immigration and tells us that humans have an impact on the natural environment but doesn’t offer much on any potential carrying capacity, merely asking for more research on sustainability. It doesn’t have much to say on the humanitarian and morality elements of immigration, or much on the way in which people live being as important in terms of measuring environmental impact as total numbers of people.
Debunking decentralisation
The main outcome of the strategy seems to be one of promoting decentralisation, both from the CBD to suburbs in our major cities, and also to the major regional centres. In a throwback to the Whitlam Government policies of the early 1970s, regional centres are back in vogue. Two major questions arise here. Firstly, why is it a given that growth of regional centres and suburban employment is more environmentally sustainable than our current growth patterns? I’ve yet to see any evidence that growth on the fringes of say Bendigo is a better outcome than development in Melbourne’s western suburbs. In fact regional centres of Bendigo’s size are never likely to have commuter rail and will probably be more car dependent than fringe growth in our major cities. Are jobs in the suburbs preferable to jobs in the central city? The central city has far better public transport than suburban locations.
The second issue is simply one of money. Who pays for decentralisation? How is the infrastructure that is required to make our cities more sustainable going to be provided? The role of State Governments of course is critical. Just last week we saw the new Baillieu Government in Victoria look at again expanding Melbourne’s urban growth boundary – not exactly a ringing endorsement of the new sustainable population strategy.
Infrastructure anyone?
For those after some fine detail on issues such as decentralisation, future of infrastructure provision and funding and assessment of where growth should be directed, the strategy leaves us keen for more. Perhaps the called for further research and monitoring can start to look at some of these fundamental questions.
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Great summation JB – you’re correct – overall it is very non-commital in terms of what government is doing. Just what is a sustainable population anyway? It’s almost an advertisement as to the $ being allocated to various projects – certainly the NBN was mentioned several times. I personally think the NBN is a worthwhile forward looking infrastructure investment (better than playing catch up as per transport infrastructure), but it does intrigue me that they will put money into promoting suburban employment. Seems strange when, to take Melbourne as an example, only about 1 in 10 employed persons actually work in the CBD. So we already have suburban jobs! To me, the issue is the types of jobs – CBDs tend to have the higher end, professional, knowledge economy type jobs, whereas suburban employment on the whole is geared towards service provision. It’s also about jobs dispersal – at least with the CBD, travel to work is channelled into one location – when it’s dispersed across a metro area you create cross metro travel flows which can lead to congestion issues and greater car dependency (because Australian cities tend to have public transport and road networks focussed on the CBD and State governments tend not to be overly committed to providing cross town public transport unless it involves a bus).
It also intrigues me that they want to promote regional living, but won’t commit to decentralisation as per the 1970s. Not that I think this is a particularly bad thing, but instead, they’re talking about market-led reform. While population growth in regional centres can take the pressure off state capitals and other fast growing regions, market led options don’t always have desired outcomes. Has the market not already spoken when you look at the spatial distribution of population growth in Australia?
I also think the issue of tourism led development in the regions needs closer examination. Many tourism jobs are seasonal and unskilled. The impact on towns of seasonal population peaks eg Phillip Island, need careful management. So it’s not as simple as tourism=jobs=growth.
Just a few of my thoughts on SASC.
An interesting article and thank you. but very presumptuous particularly in saying places like “Bendigo is likely to never have commuter rail”. Paricularly given that the DoT has recently announces a commuter station north of the city on the back of an already commuter station to the south. Additionally to that point, the fringe growth in regional centres is still less than a dozen kilometres from cbd (employment, services etc)
Additional stations designed to get people to Melbourne are one thing, stations designed to get people from all over Bendigo to jobs in the Bendigo CBD is another thing. Growth in employment in regional centres is still likely to be highly car focussed. The main point I was making is that there is an overwhelming assumption that growth in regional centres is somehow more sustainable that that of major metropolitan centres. I’m not convinced but would be happily proved wrong is some research in this area was undertaken.
Regarding whether there is a need for more jobs in the suburbs: to use the north west part of the Perth metro area as an example: this area is planned to have about another 250,000 to 300,000 people living in it over the next 50 years. Transport studies have been done to see what sort of transport sytems will be required in the northern part of the Perth region to serve that growth, and the modelling which has been done as part of those studies has shown that even if the private and public systems in the northern part of the Perth region are provided at their maximum capacities, and if there is only a moderate increase in the proportion of local jobs, the transport systems will not cope. Such congestion has obvious environmental, economic and social impacts. The modelling shows that a really substantial increase is required in local jobs if these transport problems and associated impacts are to be avoided.
Northern Perth is a good example of significant residential growth currently without major employment. Even if jobs are located in the north, the congestion will still eventuate as people living in the north drive to these jobs. The key here is make sure the employment is located both on the railway and is serviced by an expansive radiating bus network. Also need a good density of employment (eg multi storey offices) to encourage public transport and lessen congestion. The trick will be to get those office type uses into the suburbs.
Yes, very hard to see a clear advantage in dispersal of employment, but I suppose it comes down to the transport facts that sustainable public transport is used by a minority, and unsustainable cars will continue to be used by the majority for a long time ahead, so dispersed employment is a way of minimising car travel distances.
Having said that, a survey of work travel here in the Northern Rivers of NSW, where most could live within walking distance of work if they wished, recently found more than half of workers fell into the maximum travel distance category of more than 21kms, some travelling 50kms by car daily. I think we need peak oil fast to concentrate our minds.
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