Crispin Hull notes correctly that ‘High population growth puts strain on economies and people’s incomes and access to infrastructure and services’. It doesn’t matter whether high population growth comes from net migration or natural increase – it creates problems if the rate of growth exceeds the rate at which infrastructure and services can be provided. There are many countries, particularly in Africa and the Mid-East, where population growth is very high, but it mostly comes from high birth rates and not migration. Here in Australia, our fertility rate is low (just below 1.5 children per woman) but net overseas migration very high – at last count 301,000 per annum. So, our main lever for lowering population growth is to reduce immigration.
This week, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council said we needed to have built 250,000 homes last year to keep pace with demand, but fewer than 200,000 buildings were commenced. It’s not just homes for the 400,000+ new people every year (net migration plus natural increase), we have to deal with 120,000 homeless and the backlog which is also in the tens of thousands.
Reducing net migration by a third immediately to 200,000 would take the pressure off.