Introduction

While it is given relatively little attention, population policy is extremely important. Decisions taken now will have economic, social and environmental consequences for many decades. So policy decisions should be given very high priority. A consequence of federalism is that most decisions about population policy are made by the national government, for whom growth is at least a short-term benefit, whereas the social and economic costs of that growth are largely borne by state and territory governments. Refugees are a small fraction of the migrants coming to Australia and refugee policy is largely driven by international treaty obligations rather than government policies, but the heated debate about the treatment of ‘boat people’ has confused the broader issue of population. There is a broad consensus between the major Australian political parties that supports a high rate of population growth, mainly because of the belief that it has economic benefits. The consensus covers both explicit and implicit population policies. The differences at the margin only concern some relatively minor issues. Underpinning the consensus are shared values about the primacy of economic management over social and environmental considerations. While the Green Party differs significantly from the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the coalition parties on those fundamentals, its policies still support a growing population (Lowe, 2012).

There are significant groups opposed to population growth entirely. The organisation Sustainable Population Australia has for many years campaigned vigorously for a goal of stabilising the population (SPA, 2013), as have prominent authors (O’Connor and Lines, 2008), while other interest groups have actively opposed non-European migration (McCormack, 1996). Australians Against Further Immigration (AAFI) was for several years a registered political party and ran candidates on an anti-immigration platform. The 2013 federal election saw the emergence of the Stable Population Party as a single-issue group campaigning on this issue (SPP, 2013). While the party did not achieve its goal of Senate representation, its existence has put the issue of population on the political agenda. This could prove to be temporary, as with previous single-issue groups, like the Nuclear Disarmament Party, or it could represent a turning point in the public debate about population.