
Angst Swells as Australian Population Nears 25M - classichasclass
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-31/angst-swells-as-australian-population-nears-25-million
======
antt
For Americans that don't get what the big deal is: Australia has a livable
area about the same size as does California. The rest of the continent is
desert that gets so hot they had to invent new colors to describe it [0].

Even towns in the 'habitable' area get in the upper 40C [115F] regularly
during summer. The last three years have been relatively cool, but in between
2008-2012 there were days where Melbourne and Sydney basically had to shut
down because the heat made infrastructure unusable without damaging it.

There is hardly any water and the cities were designed around cars far more
than any city outside Los Angeles. Add a population that's three times what
the neighborhoods were planned for and you see why Mad Max was thought up
here.

[0]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/01/it...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/01/its-
so-hot-australia-they-added-new-colors-weather-map/319705/)

~~~
reaperducer
_Even towns in the 'habitable' area get in the upper 40C [115F] regularly
during summer_

I'm curious about how "uninhabitable" is defined in this context.

There are American cities of millions of people (Phoenix, Palm Springs, Las
Vegas, etc...) where summer high temperatures never get below 100-110° for
months on end.

They, too, are in the desert, but not classified as "uninhabitable." (OK,
maybe Vegas is uninhabitable... ;) )

Down the road from Las Vegas is a town called Baker, California where the
hottest temperature on earth was recorded. 134°, IIRC. Thousands of people
still live there.

~~~
toasterlovin
Something useful to keep in mind is that all the desert cities of the American
Southwest can only exist because of the Colorado river.

------
mettamage
This might be a bit of an insensitive comment, but alas so be it (not living
up to my nickname unfortunately). I'm too used to this discussion in my own
country and have little sympathy for the other side because in The Netherlands
they have been wrong for 70 years now. The "we are getting too full comments"
come from emotions, not from facts and I have the prejudiced feeling that in
Australia it isn't any different.

Australian planologists should talk to Dutch planologists, and it'll be fine.
I am culturally biased but I think it will become a problem once they reach
about 200 to 250 million. The Netherlands as well: it can still grow a huge
bit before it will hit a ceiling. Yes, it'll get more crammed, it just means
you have to organize yourself better as a nation. But my point: if the Dutch
can live in a crammed space, so can the Australians.

~~~
IForgotUsername
I do still think it's worthwhile for us to have the conversation about growth
rate regardless of what we could handle in the long run.

The only issue is that this conversation keeps getting derailed by racists so
I just stay away completely :(

~~~
supernovae
I agree... its absurd to continually just grow grow grow without looking back
to see if we're losing what makes us humans in the process.

We're getting so stuffed in the USA that national parks are starting to limit
visitors and close gates at capacity - that for me alone is signal that a) we
should take a serious look at our population b) we should do more to preserve
and open more public lands for this growing population.

~~~
klipt
I suspect national park attendance:
[https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/SSRSReports/Park%20Specific%20Rep...](https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/SSRSReports/Park%20Specific%20Reports/Annual%20Park%20Recreation%20Visitation%20Graph%20\(1904%20-%20Last%20Calendar%20Year\)?Park=YOSE)

has grown much faster than population, due to heavy advertising by national
parks and a general increased awareness of visiting national parks as a "thing
to do" on vacation rather than e.g. going to Disney Land.

~~~
astura
And National Parks are an incredibly popular destination for foreign visitors
[https://www.ustravel.org/press/study-more-overseas-
visitors-...](https://www.ustravel.org/press/study-more-overseas-visitors-
choosing-us-national-parks)

------
ppeetteerr
I like how economists are always touting the economic benefits of immigration.
"Sure, government is not coping with the influx of migrants by providing
necessary infrastructure, but at least GDP is up 2.5%."

------
wallace_f
27 years without a recession, a minimum wage of $22/hr, an endless supply of
perfect beaches and natural wonder; a most-developed, low crime, strong social
safety net country not far from Asia for holiday. Sounds pretty good

~~~
0xfaded
Our GDP "growth" is largely because property price inflation is somehow
considered economic growth.

As an Australian, my conclusion is that Australia has failed to diversify its
economy. Money comes in through mining, agriculture, property sales and to a
lesser extent tertiary education. The rest is a services economy, and I think
the joke about Australia being a country where we all serve each other lattes
captures the idea in as few words possible.

I've just left the US, and instead of going home I went to Europe to start my
company. Denmark is amazingly progressive with how it spends its public purse
setting up an environment for innovation. Australia on the other hand seems to
have abandoned any idea of establishing a sovereign wealth fund (mining tax)
and instead blown millions courting US dollars which hasn't succeeded in
turning Australia into a foreign branch of SV.

For a longer read, this is obviously one person's analysis, but I fail to find
a flaw in his conclusions. [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/australias-economy-
house-card...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/australias-economy-house-cards-
matt-barrie)

~~~
wycx
From the link, on economic complexity [1]:

 _Where does Australia rank on the global scale?

Worse than Mauritius, Macedonia, Oman, Moldova, Vietnam, Egypt and Botswana.

Worse than Georgia, Kuwait, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and El Salvador.

Sitting embarrassingly and awkwardly between Kazakhstan and Jamaica, and worse
than the Dominican Republic at 74 and Guatemala at 75,

Australia ranks off the deep end of the scale at 77th place.

77th and falling. After Tajikistan, Australia had the fourth highest loss in
Economic Complexity over the last decade, falling 18 places._

Not the behavior of a modern, mixed economy that many Australians pretend that
we have. We are an anomaly. A third world economy with a first world standard
of living. Will is last?

[1]
[http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/rankings/](http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/rankings/)

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tanilama
25M is really small....what are these angst about. Sounds funny...

~~~
andrewwharton
It's not the gross population that's the problem, it the rate of growth in
population and the infrastructure that's required to support it.

The basic problem is that if infrastructure last 50 years, you have to replace
2% of it every year. Now, for every 1% of population growth, you also have to
(on average) also build 1% more infrastructure, so you need to build 3% in
total, or 50% more than if you had no population growth. But you only have 1%
more revenue to build it with, so inevitably only a fraction of what you need
gets built, hence the problems. And the higher the population growth, the
worse the problems.

~~~
ulfw
What a really odd logic. So then let's bring immigration down to 0%. Woohoo!
Now you still got to "replace 2% of infrastructure every year" with 0% more
revenue. How's that working out for you?

You argue 0 immigration -> 2% infra costs You argue 1% immigration -> 3% infra
costs but also 1% more revenue to use for infra costs

I fail to see your issue

~~~
sb8244
Where is immigration brought up? Poster is taking about rate of population
growth which includes all sources of population.

~~~
taneq
Population growth in Australia is largely immigration-driven.

------
folli
“Strong population growth is a key contributor to economic prosperity”

This is the main ingredient of any pyramid scheme.

~~~
ekianjo
This is especially laughable as a claim when you look at European countries
with high immigration and at best very weak economic growth. How do they
explain that?

~~~
sparkling
I cringe when i hear western european leaders talk about how their countries
must accept immigration from third world countries to "save the economy" or
"stabilize the social service systems". Even if these immigrants end up to be
net tax payers after all the costs of feeding, housing, integrating these
people... well, guess what, eventually they get old too and this circle starts
over.

~~~
Hasknewbie
>> "Even if these immigrants end up to be net tax payers after all the costs
of feeding, housing, integrating these people"

So, I don't know how immigration works on your planet, but here in the real
world immigrants do not get free "feeding, housing" or free anything-else. In
fact a key condition in even the most open/lenient countries is that you must
show proof that you can provide for yourself. Any other way would simply not
make any sense, and I am always in awe at the level of confabulation needed to
believe these nativist fairy tales.

Or maybe you're one of these people who mistake _immigrants_ for _refugees_?

------
Leary
If Australia doesn't have resources for immigration, then what country does?

~~~
antt
The US.

People don't drink land and we get decade long droughts that make California's
look tame by comparison. The majority of Australia has the same hospitality to
human habitation as does the Sahara.

~~~
FireBeyond
Right, the only country that receives less rain is Antarctica. Most of the
country receives less than 24" of rain in a non-drought year (of which, the
last 11 have been).

Many places average 4" of rain a year.

Water supply is a ... challenge.

------
raverbashing
Did Germany really has grown only 1% if we consider migration and the refugee
crisis?

WRT to the article Australia seems to be paradoxically "big" and small at the
same time (it's the biggest country after Brazil), with the big desert areas
making its habitable area much smaller than one could suppose (Japan has a
similar problem, even though it's bigger than Germany)

~~~
rezeroed
I'd love somewhere like Australia to take on a big terraforming experiment.
Even "just" digging a channel from the coast to the middle of the desert.
Fish, crabs find their way in, birds start feeding along the channel,
fertilising the shore, small plant growth, ... or something.

Edit: an example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_\(China\))

~~~
flashmob
They did! Although not on the scale as the grand canal, but still impressive.
Check out the "snowy mountains scheme",
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_Mountains_Scheme](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_Mountains_Scheme)

Quote: "The water of the Snowy River and some of its tributaries, much of
which formerly flowed southeast onto the river flats of East Gippsland, and
into Bass Strait of the Tasman sea, is captured at high elevations and
diverted inland ".

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jl2718
One of the amazing abilities of most higher-order organism colonies observed
in biology is the ability to self-regulate reproduction within an environment.
If native population growth is low, it’s usually for a reason. Native human
population growth is between -2% and 20% annually, excluding war, famine, and
disease. If you have a population of field mice in equilibrium, and you
introduce more field mice, the net population does not increase. The number of
births drops dramatically, and the number of deaths by causes mentioned above
increases from negligible to potentially 100%. It takes a special kind of
westerner hubris to believe that we’re any different. Japanese understand
this, and place blame for lack of growth squarely where it belongs: poor
economic and social conditions for raising a family due to failed programs of
social engineering from the 70s.

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cm2012
Angst is always swelling. 25m or 25b.

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dbetteridge
I just dont get the angst around immigration.

If you're going to get all in a tizzy about crowded cities and beaches, move
somewhere else!

Theres tonnes of places in Australia where you can have beautiful beaches and
no-one else around for 100's of km.

~~~
nailer
Goverment should have points added/deducted for moving to crowded less crowded
cities. *

Adelaide/Hobart +10 Melbourne/Sydney -10 etc.

This might mean companies that need immigrants have to set up offices in
Adelaide and Hobart. Fair enough.

* I'm assuming you read the article re: points scheme

~~~
dbetteridge
I thought I had heard about them doing exactly this, but haven't seen anything
about it in a while.

~~~
magicbuzz
It can be simply achieved via income tax change. There’s already a tax rebate
depending on the degree of ‘remoteness’. But it’s a political hot potato
because the majority of the population lives in three cities.

------
puranjay
Gee, 25M. That's the population of some cities back home.

Australia has all the resources and land in the world to support much, much
more people.

~~~
ekianjo
Land is nothing. Infrastructure is what matters.

~~~
sho
Hit the nail on the head. Decades of underinvestment in critical
infrastructure has left the whole system vulnerable to even small influxes.

Driving down the eastern seaboard of Australia one is struck by the hundreds
of kilometres of perfectly habitable empty space. You could put two or three
Hong Kongs on the coast between Sydney and Melbourne and no-one would even
notice. We just need the damn infrastructure!

Given its land mass, Australia at 25m is a joke. We can support ten times
that. That "uninhabitable desert" is no worse than Arizona really. All that's
needed is a little bit of long-term thinking and investment.

Anyone familiar with my comments knows I'm no fan of "high-functioning
autocracies" like China or Singapore but bloody hell - it would be good to get
them in charge for just a few years and _build stuff_.

~~~
ulfw
You have high taxes. You have lots of income from mining and your rich natural
resources.

Then just build 3 Hong Kongs. What's the problem? Immigrants will be happy to
build their new cities. Hong Kong didn't just suddenly show up. It grew over
time on an island that had basically nothing on it. It's neighbour Shenzhen
was a 10,000 people fishing village and is now a 10 Million metropolis.

~~~
jazoom
I believe sho stated the problem. We have dysfunctional government that only
thinks as far as the next election.

