Fairness and sustainability through population policy

Dr Liz Allen

Australia has a future filled with great potential. That great potential, however, is not guaranteed: work needs to be done to ensure it is achieved. Australian governments have breezed through history on a bit of a wing and a prayer, without much in the way of preparedness or strategy when it comes to population-related matters. Luck has had a lot to do with the nation’s success.

Preparedness and responsiveness are integral to the future of the nation in maximising the potential of Australia and its people. It is people, after all, who form the foundation of our society. The myriad risks confronting us—from economic recession and inequality to environmental crisis—require urgent actions to safeguard the nation’s wellbeing.

This chapter considers how population policy and demographic drivers can help to ensure Australia is a socioeconomically strong, fairer and sustainable society for future generations. The challenges of the future posed by the nation’s demographic composition will be best transformed into opportunities via a coherent and connected suite of policies aimed at investing in appropriate immigration, education and training, and gender equality.

Contemporary context: Challenges and opportunities

Australians are living longer and having fewer children than ever before. A baby born today can expect to live to around the age of eighty-three years,1 and on average women have 1.7 children;² this is about an additional eleven years of life and approximately one fewer child per woman than fifty years ago.³ Australia’s gains in increasing life expectancy at birth, and gender equality momentum in education and employment, have resulted in a population structurally ageing and not replacing itself.⁴

Below-replacement-level birth rates (of around 2.1 births per woman) and a population growing increasingly older are not problems in and of themselves; rather, the adverse consequences they present the future of Australia are substantial. We are faced with a real risk that the socioeconomic wellbeing of the nation may go backwards. The trouble with an ageing population that is not replacing itself is that insufficient numbers of people are entering the workforce to replace those retiring. In the immediate future, Australia will need enough people to fill around 600,000 jobs,⁵ which is well in excess of the potential numbers of locals entering the workforce. The pool of people in the workforce is a crucial means by which the government can fund the everyday functions of essential services and vital infrastructure. The proportion of Australians aged sixty-five and over is expected soon to represent around a fifth of the population. Our population is rapidly ageing, with the proportion of people aged 65+ in 2038 expected to be more than double the rate of 1998.⁶ It sounds crude, but without sufficient numbers of people in the workforce paying individual income tax, Australia’s future generations risk lower standards of living than those to which the nation has become accustomed.

Our demographic prospects also pose great challenges to existing social equality, with the potential for inequalities to deepen if those in the workforce are not sufficiently supported to do the things traditionally believed to underpin the great Australian dream: to buy a home and settle down. Settling down might also include having children—the basis upon which the future of Australian society is formed—and perhaps one day retiring. Home ownership, family and retirement may prove to be far too difficult for younger generations. The fact that home ownership is declining swiftly, particularly for younger people and those with young children, is especially troubling in the context of greater insecurity in employment.7 The sad reality for too many young Australians is that it takes the Bank of Mum and Dad (or their death) to break into the housing market. Meanwhile, tax incentives are given to property owners to buy multiple properties, increasing the proportion of investors to owner-occupiers, meaning renters are effectively funding property speculation.

Sitting alongside these socio-demographic challenges are the risks posed by climate change. The uncertainty of the social and economic future of the nation is compounded by the uncertainty of what lies ahead, especially pertaining to the vital non-renewable resources required to sustain life. The interdependent connection between the nation’s demographic future and climate change is evident in the real fear of the future evinced by those embarking on parenthood, many of whom are limiting their family size or deciding not to have children at all. Fewer children in a below-replacement demography means less economic capacity to fund the technologies and innovation required to meet the immense challenges of climate change.

Australia has limited choices to prepare for the future if the nation is to be best placed in the global community, and ensure fairness and sustainability in our domestic economy. The actions required are pretty simple, really, but it will take hard work to enact them. Fortunately, we can look to past successes in preparing for the future. In fact, opportunities can be made of the challenges confronting us. We have the opportunity to make world-leading strides in the area of climate change, particularly concerning emissions.

A common factor to making opportunities of both our demographic and sustainability challenges lies in immigration. Immigration as a means to ensure socioeconomic strength, fairness, and sustainability for future generations comes down to the safety net migrants deliver to the nation’s economic bottom line. Migrants provide the necessary economic stimulus for Australian governments across all jurisdictions to afford the needs of the nation. A population policy can help safeguard the education and skills needs of the future as well as provide the people power required to help ease the work-life pressures on parents (especially mothers).

Planning for a fair and sustainable future

Every single one of us has a stake in the future of the nation. In order for the country to meet its potential and the needs of its citizens, active population policy is essential. A cohesive plan for Australia’s future population has the potential to bring together the necessary pieces of the population policy puzzle to strike the required balance. A population plan will not be easy: it will require commitment and hard work. Ideology might pose the greatest problem in advancing a fit-for-purpose plan.

The National Cabinet, established during the COVID-19 crisis, offers a good basis on which to build and advance a population plan. The need to secure Australia’s future wellbeing is one thing upon which we can all agree; a plan for the future could be formed initially on a mission statement of sorts. Concrete policy actions could then be built from the basis of a broad statement of common goals. The act of setting out common goals would allow for public transparency and accountability.

The purpose of a population plan for Australia is not about setting numerical targets of size and growth, and certainly not about imposing limits; rather, it requires us to identify the necessary supports and mechanisms for achieving socioeconomic wellbeing, fairness and environmental sustainability. These fall into three parts: the policy action, the purpose of that action, and the elements of implementation.

A cohesive population plan for Australia8

Action	Purpose	Elements
Adopt a whole-of-government, joined-up approach	Connect the disparate policy portfolios to have population-related elements across policy and practice, working together to achieve coherency in approaches and outcomes	• Break down the siloed approach to policy and planning, where population matters sit across multiple government administrative responsibilities, by requiring communication about population-related issues. • Position population matters at the heart of policymaking and funding processes by incorporating a deliberative approach to population and population-related matters in all planning considerations: consider the population elements and outcomes. • Develop an actionable checklist to ensure population considerations have been made in planning and policy decision-making.
Take a cradle-to-grave perspective	View people and population-related matters as a whole-of-life endeavour whereby individual participation in society is premised on quality health and education developed throughout life	• Recognise that individual and community wellbeing is fundamental to full participation in society, including employment. • Approach health and education as passports to quality of life; adopt equity principles for policy in health and education. • Ensure health care is accessible and equitable for all. • Invest in education—from early childhood (including the establishment of universally accessible child care) through primary and high school, and through post-school qualifications. • Take action at a policy level to promote and enforce family-friendly practices in the workplace to empower parents/carers (especially women) to better balance the pressures of caring, personal care and paid work.
Assign responsibilities, guarantee funding	Identify the core policy areas requiring connection across government, and assign responsibilities to ministers	• Establish an accountability framework for population-related policy areas, with clear lines of responsibilities set out and communicated to the general public. • Allocate funding in accordance with the accountability framework. • Provide timely reporting on the functioning of the accountability framework and achievements against the funding and practice.
Rank infrastructure priorities	Determine priority of major infrastructure projects and communicate these publicly	• Develop a long-term strategy for the development of infrastructure projects to especially include projects in the medium- and longer-term future. • Infrastructure development should prioritise projects (including physical and social infrastructure) that contribute to the social and economic wellbeing of Australians (especially among minority and disadvantaged groups). • Prioritise projects that secure environmental sustainability through emissions reductions. • Publish budgets and timelines regularly in an accessible format to be reported to the general public.
Communicate strategy	Develop and communicate population strategy to the general public using a variety of techniques and mediums	• Adopt an open and transparent approach to a population plan for Australia, using innovation narratives to articulate the socioeconomic imperatives of a fair and sustainable Australia. • Hold town hall meetings (online and in person) to encourage participation from across the Australian public to communicate the national priorities and help promote inclusivity.
Track achievements	Issue a regular and timely report card tracking socioeconomic indicators, linking funding and milestone achievements	• Develop a blueprint for the future with clearly defined goals and milestones to advance fairness and sustainability through the population plan. • Identify and report against the goals and milestones in a similar exercise to that of the global Sustainable Development Goals.
Support research	Identify and invest in opportunities for research into environmental sustainability to ensure water and food security	• Support and appropriately fund a program of research on population-related issues through existing funding arrangements with universities and the CSIRO and/or through the establishment of a dedicated stream of population strategy research. • Invest in the development of science and innovation in accordance with international best practice.
Promote evidence-based practices and policies	Invest in national and sub-national data collection and infrastructure to inform policy and practice	• Invest in peer-reviewed research conducted by appropriately trained researchers, and use this to inform policies and practices. • Identify need for harmonisation of data collections and capabilities to best enable timely, consistent and appropriate data to inform policy and practice across a range of socioeconomic and population-related indicators. • Use research to inform international migration intake.
Establish an independent centre for population	Establish and adequately fund a centre responsible for overseeing the whole-of-government approach to population policy, which is independent of direct government interference	• Develop and model a population centre on the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare or Australian Institute of Family Studies to provide governance, research, reporting and stewardship over the national population plan. • Appropriately staff a centre for population to meet the interdisciplinary needs of a broad suite of policies concerning population and population-related matters, including researchers and public officers. • Empower the independent centre for population to make decisions concerning immigration intake, removing the political aspect of the migration program.
Nonpartisan agreement on population plan	Agree on a timeframe, longer than election-based government cycles, for the implementation and review of a nonpartisan plan	• Develop an overarching plan for the future, seeking majority support across stakeholders (political, industry and experts). • Write a mission statement setting out the goals and achievements necessary to progress the population plan. • Identify and set commonly agreed timelines for major milestones (such as infrastructure projects) outside of the traditional three-year election cycle so that major nation-building projects do not suffer from political short-termism.

The way forward

To secure a fair and sustainable future, Australia must rely on planning, not luck. We cannot afford to just wing it and hope for the best. A comprehensive and cohesive population policy could help prepare for, and respond to, the needs of the nation. At the very least, developing and articulating a clear vision for the nation would help to ensure that our future prosperity is shared by all. We have nothing to lose, and much to gain.