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Editor's note
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Australia doesn’t have an overall population policy, but the issue touches on almost every aspect of life in Australia. And those impacts aren’t always as obvious as people imagine.
In the last piece in our series Is Australia Full?, Shanthi Robertson and Kristine Aquino test the perception that new migrants are to blame for the pressures on services in Western Sydney.
Clearly, judging by Conversation readers’ response to our series of the past two weeks, population is an issue that many Australians care about deeply. So here’s the rundown of the series in full, allowing you to explore some of the many aspects of population and consider the sometimes sharply divergent views on these issues.
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Population: policy and data
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Despite expert recommendations to adopt a population policy, Australian governments continue to resist.
Scott Cresswell/flickr
Liz Allen, Australian National University
Considering all the aspects of life in Australia that are affected by population, it's remarkable that the nation doesn't have a national policy on it.
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Even without immigration, new data reveals Australia’s population would continue to grow.
blvdone/Shutterstock
Tom Wilson, Charles Darwin University
The latest statistics show Australia's population growth in the last decade has been significantly higher than in other developed countries.
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Cities suffer the planning consequences of rapid population growth while the federal government reaps the revenue.
Gilad Rom/Flickr
Glen Searle, University of Sydney
Financial benefits are behind the development industry’s push for a continuous rapid population growth. But our poorly planned cities are ill-prepared and already struggling.
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Migrants and immigration
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Many people in culturally diverse populations in Western Sydney have lived in Australia for many years, if not several generations.
Shutterstock
Shanthi Robertson, Western Sydney University; Kristine Aquino, University of Technology Sydney
Reasoned debates on sustainable migration intake levels are important. But transport and health infrastructure shortfalls in Western Sydney won't be solved by reactive anti-immigration attitudes.
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Only one Australian suburb, Lakemba in Sydney, has a population that is more than half Muslim.
AAP/Jane Dempster
James Forrest, Macquarie University
Local neighbourhoods where Asians and Muslims form a majority are almost entirely concentrated in Australia’s two major cities – Sydney and Melbourne.
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Increasing numbers of migrants will inevitably have an impact on Australia’s health system.
from shutterstock.com
Santosh Jatrana, Swinburne University of Technology
Selecting immigrants on points is likely to result in them being healthy, or at least healthy enough for them not to put much strain on our exhausted health systems.
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International migrants are key contributors to the unskilled workforce.
World Bank/flickr
Emily Longstaff, Australian National University
Regional settlement of migrants benefits both new arrivals and local communities.
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Questions of sustainability
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Tokyo, seen here from the Skytree tower, is home to more people than any other city on Earth but has managed to remain highly liveable.
Brendan Barrett
Brendan F.D. Barrett, RMIT University; Marco Amati, RMIT University
Tokyo has experienced extraordinary population growth but is among the world's most liveable cities. Just how has it managed the pressures of growth?
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Our national wellbeing probably peaked with Australia’s population at roughly 15 million in the 1970s, when this photo was taken in Hunters Hill, Sydney.
John Ward/flickr
Peter Martin, University of South Australia; James Ward, University of South Australia; Paul Sutton, University of Denver
Australia's GPI, a broad measure of national wellbeing, has stalled since 1974. So what has been the point of huge population and GDP growth since then if we and our environment are no better off?
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Australia might have been ‘built on the sheep’s back’ but we can’t eat off it.
Stanley Zimny/Flickr
Bill Bellotti, The University of Queensland
Australia feeds tens of millions, at home and abroad. But if our population doubles by 2061, as some projections suggest, we'll need some smart strategies to keep those people fed.
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Featured jobs
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University of Melbourne — Parkville, Victoria
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University of South Australia — Adelaide, South Australia
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Westpac Bicentennial Foundation — Melbourne, Victoria
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University of Technology Sydney — Sydney, New South Wales
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Featured events
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119 Buckhurst Street, South Melbourne , Victoria, 3205, Australia — University of Melbourne
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Conference Room, The Westmead Institute for Medical Research, 76 Hawkesbury Rd, Westmead, Australian Capital Territory, 2145, Australia — University of Sydney
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Deakin Burwood, Burwood Corporate Centre, Level 2, Building BC, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood., Melbourne, Victoria, 3125, Australia — Deakin University
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Great Hall, Level 5, UTS Tower building, 15 Broadway, Ultimo, New South Wales, 2007, Australia — University of Technology Sydney
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