The leading businessmen have become campaigners for a small population and criticise economists for promoting economic growth at all costs and politicians for lacking the courage to talk about constituents’ worries about the growing population.
Mr Smith said Australia’s immigration policy was like a “Ponzi scheme" to support our ageing population. “What we’ve been told is that the way you solve the ageing population problem is to have more immigrants now," he said.
“Of course they get older, so you need even more [immigration] . . . [but] you are not going to solve the problem by the way we are looking at it now."
A report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Does Size Matter? published on Tuesday, projected the nation’s population 20 and 50 years from 2013.
More retirees than school children
It projected the population in 2033 at 31 million under the current growth rate and 25 million on zero immigration. In 2063, 42 million on the current growth rate and 24 million on zero immigration. Currently about a fifth of the population is school-aged and 14 per cent are at retirement age.
However, with current population trends, there will be more retirees than school children within 20 years.
The ABS report found that if the population was reined in with zero net migration, there would be 70 dependants (old people and children) to every 100 workers by 2033. If Australia continued on its current population growth rate, there would be 59 dependants for every 100 workers.
The ABS said these population trends have implications for future governments as older people tend to cost more to support than other age groups.
According to Mr Smith and Mr Turner, politicians and voters must put aside the fraught issue of asylum seekers and racism to talk about the appropriate rate of immigration and population growth over the next 100 years.
“We’ve got a population the size of Canberra being added every year and we’ve got to build a city to house them, Mr Turner said. “I would say we’ve got to drive it back to between 75,000 and 80,000 [migrants]," he said.
Rate beyond developing countries
Mr Turner said Australia’s 25 per cent population increase since 2000 propelled the rate beyond that of many developing countries. The Australia Institute has estimated an extra 400,000 Australians a year required an additional 61 public primary schools, two public hospitals, 25 residential aged-care homes, and 145,000 houses.
A 2013 Galaxy poll of 1000 people for News Limited found that the majority are overwhelmingly against a “Big Australia", with 70 per cent hoping the population does not hit the 40 million mark projected by 2050.
As Mr Smith and Mr Turner called for a more “balanced" economic and population growth, the Australian Bureau of Statistics’s population clock estimated the nation had 23,563,177 people. This was based on: one birth every 1 minute and 42 seconds; one death every 3 minutes and 34 seconds; a net gain of one international migrant every 2 minutes and 14 seconds – leading to an overall total population increase of one person every 1 minute and 20 seconds.
Mr Smith said the current model of capitalism was based on waste and greed, and Australians may need to be more efficient, buy fewer goods and work fewer hours. “Are we to be like locusts, because that is where we are heading," Mr Smith said.
The Australian Financial Review