Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bungelung Caalcuttin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 1: Straight Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily Ods. It's Thursday,
Speaker 2: the twenty fifth of January.
Speaker 3: I'm zara, I'm emma.
Speaker 2: Late yesterday afternoon, Australia's population officially ticked over to twenty
Speaker 2: seven million.
Speaker 3: And according to some it's a number that might have
Speaker 3: come earlier than predicted.
Speaker 4: I think the challenge, the goal really should be to
Speaker 4: get migration numbers back to a more historically sustainable pathway.
Speaker 3: But there are others who say things might not be
Speaker 3: exactly as.
Speaker 5: They seem'sts of lots of concern and dare I say
Speaker 5: population panic around whether or not we've reached this twenty
Speaker 5: seven million milestone ahead of schedule or on time or whatever.
Speaker 2: You're going to hear from two experts about what this
Speaker 2: twenty seven million number actually means and why you should
Speaker 2: care about it in today's Deep Dive. But first, m
Speaker 2: what's making headlines.
Speaker 3: Former US President Donald Trump has defeated Nicki Haley in
Speaker 3: the New Hampshire primaries. The result brings Trump a step
Speaker 3: closer to securing the Republican presidential nomination, but former UN
Speaker 3: Ambassador Hailey says she won't be bowing out of a
Speaker 3: race that is quote far from over. It comes after
Speaker 3: Ron DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race following Trump's
Speaker 3: win in the Iowa caucuses last week. The next major
Speaker 3: test for Trump and Haley will be in South Carolina,
Speaker 3: where Haley used to be governor.
Speaker 2: Kim Williams has been confirmed as the new chair of
Speaker 2: the ABC. Williams was formerly the chief executive of News Corp,
Speaker 2: and he'll replace Ida butt Rose when she steps down
Speaker 2: as chair in March. The ABC chair oversees the national
Speaker 2: broadcaster's nine member board and is responsible for ensuring independence
Speaker 2: and integrity at the broadcaster.
Speaker 3: France's Data Protection Authority will find Amazon more than fifty
Speaker 3: million Aussie dollars for invading staff privacy. Amazon France has
Speaker 3: been accused of monitoring its warehouse stuff with an excessively
Speaker 3: intrusive system, and that includes tracking worker's performance through the
Speaker 3: data recorded on handheld barcode scanners. The authority found Amazon
Speaker 3: is in breach of employee and privacy rights.
Speaker 2: And the good news, a ninety nine year old competitive
Speaker 2: swimmer has been in three world records in her age category.
Speaker 2: Betty Brussels set new record times for the four hundred
Speaker 2: meter freestyle, fifty mon backstroke and fifty meter breaststroke at
Speaker 2: a competition in Canada. Brussel said, swimming is my love.
Speaker 2: It makes me forget all my worries and I feel great.
Speaker 6: I love Betty Brussel. The good news we needed.
Speaker 3: As many of us were finishing our workday yesterday. Australia
Speaker 3: hit a new milestone. Our population grew to twenty seven million,
Speaker 3: But in the middle of housing, cost of living and
Speaker 3: environmental crises, is Australia actually equipped to deal with its
Speaker 3: growing population. To find out what this number actually means
Speaker 3: for us, I thought I'd ask the experts to unpack
Speaker 3: this one. Mark McCrindle is a demographer, a social researcher
Speaker 3: and the founder of McCrindle Research, and he joins us
Speaker 3: on the podcast Now Hi Mark Welcome to the Daily OS.
Speaker 4: Oh thanks ever great to be with you.
Speaker 3: Now we're ticking over a pretty significant milestone this week,
Speaker 3: twenty seven million Australians. What does this number really mean?
Speaker 3: Why is this an interesting or important announcement?
Speaker 4: Well, any of these population milestones gives us a chance
Speaker 4: to reflect on our population, our growth, how we're growing,
Speaker 4: and our future. And this particular one is key because
Speaker 4: it's come in record time. We've just had the largest
Speaker 4: annual population increase ever in our history. It does create challenges,
Speaker 4: you know, particularly because right at the time that we've
Speaker 4: hit this new record of annual increase is the time
Speaker 4: of inaffordability around homes shortages and around vacancies for rentals,
Speaker 4: infrastructure bottlenecks. People really concerned about the next generation being
Speaker 4: able to afford a home. We just hit an annual
Speaker 4: increase through migration of five hundred and eighteen thousand in
Speaker 4: the past year. Now, the last ten years, we've averaged
Speaker 4: about two hundred and thirty five thousand annual increase through migration,
Speaker 4: so we're more than twice what has been the recent norm.
Speaker 4: And that's what I think has not only created the
Speaker 4: new record in population increase, but new challenges around affordability,
Speaker 4: housing availability and planning for this growth future.
Speaker 3: We have an aging population here in Australia. I'm interested
Speaker 3: if we know a bit of a breakdown on the
Speaker 3: demographics of our population groups. What are we looking like
Speaker 3: on that front, and what pressures do you anticipate there.
Speaker 4: Well, that's right, you know, this aging curve on which
Speaker 4: we find ourselves is pretty dramatic and we just over
Speaker 4: a decade ago we do only just tipped out of
Speaker 4: the twenties as the midpoint in our population. It was
Speaker 4: in the early thirties. Now are in the late thirties.
Speaker 4: Over the next decade probably edging into forty is the
Speaker 4: median age of our nation. So that's pretty steep aging.
Speaker 4: And the migration numbers don't do a lot to mitigate
Speaker 4: that because the average person coming in is a little
Speaker 4: bit younger than the average age but you know, before
Speaker 4: too long and they're adding to the workforce, but before
Speaker 4: too long, you know they're on the upper end of
Speaker 4: the average age.
Speaker 3: Factoring in the declining birth rate, do you think there's
Speaker 3: maybe a bit of imbalance with the conversation around population
Speaker 3: growth that there is such a focus on migration and
Speaker 3: potentially the negative impacts of overpopulation for migration against this
Speaker 3: other concept that we probably hear a little bit less
Speaker 3: about declining birth rates.
Speaker 4: The birth rates have pared down, maybe we've got about
Speaker 4: eighteen thousand fewer births that otherwise we would have had. Well,
Speaker 4: we've got five hundred and eighteen thousand rivals in the
Speaker 4: last twelve months from overseas migration. So in other words,
Speaker 4: any slight curving of the birth rate is more than
Speaker 4: matched by massive increases in overseas migration. So it's actually
Speaker 4: not doing anything to sustain the population by lowering the
Speaker 4: birth rate.
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask another demographer, doctor Liz Allen. She
Speaker 3: works at the Australian National University, and I checked in
Speaker 3: with her about this relationship that Mark spoke about between
Speaker 3: migration and the Australian population.
Speaker 5: Let's just take a moment and consider where these facts
Speaker 5: are coming from. There has been discussion reflecting on and
Speaker 5: pointing to the Intergenerational Report the igr of two thousand
Speaker 5: and two, so that's over twenty years ago.
Speaker 6: That's a generation ago.
Speaker 5: And more importantly, we have had five intergenerational reports completed
Speaker 5: by the Australian Treasury Department since then each containing population projections.
Speaker 5: So the concerns and the population panic that has been
Speaker 5: used and fueled by a cherry picked data point from
Speaker 5: two thousand and two does suggest that we are ahead
Speaker 5: of schedule. But these are population projections, not forecasts. So
Speaker 5: if we think about two thousand and two, think about
Speaker 5: we've plucked the hell out of our eyebrows.
Speaker 6: We've since learned that that's not a good idea.
Speaker 5: So we can see what was happening in two thousand
Speaker 5: and two, and we know then that the assumptions that
Speaker 5: they may have made based on the trends that they
Speaker 5: were seeing at that time in relation to the population,
Speaker 5: namely around natural increase, the balance between births and deaths,
Speaker 5: and immigration, were perhaps not going to be lived or
Speaker 5: not going to be experienced the way expected.
Speaker 6: So hold on to your population panic pants.
Speaker 5: This population milestone is as expected.
Speaker 3: A lot's been said about migration and its impact on
Speaker 3: population numbers. What's your take on perhaps this idea of
Speaker 3: population panic that you've articulated and the relationship at play
Speaker 3: with migration there.
Speaker 6: So this population panic.
Speaker 5: Don't get me wrong, I think there is a healthy
Speaker 5: element of concern or at least in investment in understanding
Speaker 5: population and population dynamics. But this kind of panic that's
Speaker 5: stirred up and is being stirred up by particular commentators,
Speaker 5: particular elements of the media, lead to people being concerned.
Speaker 6: My largest concern around that is.
Speaker 5: The fact that when we hear the word population, it's
Speaker 5: generally code for immigration, and so we're not really reflecting
Speaker 5: on population in its totality, but rather where that population
Speaker 5: is coming from. And that sometimes means that we become
Speaker 5: a bit hostile to each other and we perhaps are
Speaker 5: not as welcoming as we ought to be. Australia is
Speaker 5: an aging population and immigration is vital to offsetting adverse consequences,
Speaker 5: particularly in relation to a shrinking tax payer base, to
Speaker 5: ensure that our living standards don't go backwards. We've had
Speaker 5: a lot fueling this population panic over the last window
Speaker 5: of time because during COVID, in a so called kind
Speaker 5: of quasi population experiment, well perhaps the natural population experiments
Speaker 5: by where whereby we saw international borders close. During that time,
Speaker 5: we had zero or even negative and in fact, in
Speaker 5: an order of tens of thousands of people negative net
Speaker 5: overseas migration. That meant that we had an excess of
Speaker 5: people leaving the country, anyone who was about to leave,
Speaker 5: perhaps they were finishing their studies in a couple of
Speaker 5: years time, they left, perhaps prematurely. What that then means
Speaker 5: is we've now kind of coming out of these closed borders.
Speaker 5: Things are open up again now, and so we've seen
Speaker 5: these very artificially high numbers of net overseas migration fueling
Speaker 5: the popular panic.
Speaker 6: These will restabilize and will normalize in a very short
Speaker 6: period of time. It's just a quirk of COVID.
Speaker 3: As our population grows, you know, whether or not it's
Speaker 3: growing at a faster rate than expected, whether or not
Speaker 3: there is this impact from migration. We are in the
Speaker 3: middle of a cost of living crisis, a housing crisis,
Speaker 3: a climate crisis. How does a growing population impact those
Speaker 3: already strained parts of our society?
Speaker 5: As you perfectly state, we are in the midst of
Speaker 5: a cluster of crisis.
Speaker 6: It is the perfect storm.
Speaker 5: It's easy to point the finger at people, but the
Speaker 5: reality is in this country we have seen an unwillingness
Speaker 5: to invest in vital infrastructure, in a monetary value and
Speaker 5: to really invest in the well being of people. We
Speaker 5: need now to consider these multiple catastrophic in some experiences
Speaker 5: crises and reimagine things so that we are investing in
Speaker 5: what I think are the four critical issues for Australia
Speaker 5: climate change, housing, affordability, gender inequality, and of course job security.
Speaker 5: We need to consider these things, and more importantly, immigration
Speaker 5: is vital to helping the nation weather this current storm.
Speaker 5: In addition to the economic benefits, people that come to
Speaker 5: this country are literally helping us build this place, build
Speaker 5: our houses, staff, our hospitals, staff, all manner of critical services.
Speaker 3: What do you think would be the most successful ways
Speaker 3: to kind of meet these problems in the middle with
Speaker 3: migration numbers and a skills shortage, do we need to
Speaker 3: see policy and initiative that would bring those things together?
Speaker 5: Without a doubt, Australia needs to reconsider its migration program
Speaker 5: and definitely evaluate whether.
Speaker 6: It's fit for purpose for now.
Speaker 5: Certainly recent research and investigation that the government has instituted
Speaker 5: suggests it's not fit for purpose and definitely change needs
Speaker 5: to occur.
Speaker 6: But we do not need a total stop on immigration.
Speaker 5: I think what we need instead is to kind of
Speaker 5: sit back and consider the demography of Australia in its totality.
Speaker 5: At the moment, we have intergenerational transmission of advantage and disadvantage.
Speaker 5: The bank of mum and Dad is determining whether you
Speaker 5: can own a home or not.
Speaker 6: That's just wrong.
Speaker 5: We should not be seeing that kind of entitlement and
Speaker 5: privilege come at the cost of cohesion in this country.
Speaker 3: I do want to ask you before we let you
Speaker 3: go about the birth rate and trends we've seen there.
Speaker 3: What does a declining birth rate mean for the population.
Speaker 5: So a declining fertility rate in its own right is
Speaker 5: not a problem.
Speaker 6: It actually indicates that people have.
Speaker 5: Greater control over their lives, and Australia is not unique
Speaker 5: in the world. In fact, half the world's population lives
Speaker 5: in an area where they are experiencing what's known as
Speaker 5: below replacement fertility rate.
Speaker 6: We're not replacing mum and dad, so to speak.
Speaker 5: Now, what does keep me at wake at night is
Speaker 5: the notion that young people more and more are saying
Speaker 5: that they cannot achieve.
Speaker 6: Their desire for a family. Why.
Speaker 5: Because the obstacles to achieving their family intentions are insurmountable.
Speaker 6: We have climate boiling.
Speaker 5: We have issues that as this kind of cluster of crises,
Speaker 5: cost of living, housing and so on, mean.
Speaker 6: That the future is uncertain.
Speaker 5: Our young people are concerned and really don't feel secure
Speaker 5: in the tomorrow. That needs to be addressed, because without
Speaker 5: faith and hope for the future, we really have no humanity.
Speaker 3: Liz, Happy twenty seven million to you and all who celebrate.
Speaker 6: Happy twenty seven million.
Speaker 5: And I imagine in a few years time you'll be
Speaker 5: where was I when the twenty seven o'clock ticked over.
Speaker 3: I'm sure we'll be telling our grandchildren that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening to The Daily OZ. If
Speaker 2: you are listening to this one on Spotify, why not
Speaker 2: let us know what you thought about the episode. There's
Speaker 2: a little question box under the show notes, Tim you
Speaker 2: can tell us there what you thought. We'll be back
Speaker 2: in your ears again tomorrow, but until then, have a
Speaker 2: fabulous day.
Speaker 5: Already.
Speaker 1: And this is this is the Daily This is the
Speaker 1: Daily Oh now it makes sense. M