A bigger Australia: Opinions for and against

People and Place

Volumn 18, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 25-38

  Betts, Katharine ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ELECTION; IDEOLOGY; METROPOLITAN AREA; PARTY POLITICS; POPULATION GROWTH; PUBLIC ATTITUDE;

AUSTRALIA;

EID: 77957005483     PISSN: 10394788     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Australia to 2050: Future Challenges (Third Intergenerational Report), Department of Treasury, Canberra, 2010, pp. viii, 10
2. K. O'Brien, 'Prime Minister Kevin Rudd joins The 7.30 Report', 7.30 Report, ABC TV (transcript), 22 October 2009
3. K. Betts, 'Population growth: what do Australian voters want?', People and Place, vol.18, no.1, 2010, pp. 49-64
4. The previous article and the current article is restricted to those respondents who answered the key question: 'Do you think Australia needs more people?' In the pre-release data 90 respondents were recorded as missing on this question. Subsequent manual inspection of the forms and data cleaning has reduced this number to 51. Total responses to the survey have also increased from 3142 in March 2010 to 3243 in June 2010. Thus the number of valid responses to the key question has gained both from late processing of questionnaires and from data cleaning, increasing from 3052 to 3192.
5. Large random samples are not always weighted in this way. If initial inspection of a sample's distribution on key variables shows that it is already representative, this step is unnecessary. For example, of the nine Australian Election Studies conducted from 1987 to 2007 only two (1993 and 1999) required weighting. Personal communication from Ian McAllister.
6. In the pre-release data 75 per cent of women answered 'no' to the question 'Do you think Australia needs more people?' and 62 per cent of men answered 'no'. In the final-release data the respective percentages were 78 per cent and 65 per cent.
7. Overall there is a slightly higher proportion of voters saying Australia does not need more people in the final-release, weighted file than was the case with the pre-release data. This is especially the case with the ACT, where the final release file has added five more cases and this, together with the weighting, produces a higher level of support for stability than before; previously only 50 per cent in the ACT wanted stability, with the final-release data 65 per cent prefer stability.
8. While distances traveled to work have remained relatively stable since the mid 1990s, or have even declined, there is evidence that the time spent commuting has increased for Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide. See State of Australian Cities 2010, Major Cities Unit, Infrastructure Australia, Canberra, 2010, p. 104.
9. For media reports and commentary see: S. Lunn, 'The daily commute keeps getting longer', The Australian, 4 June 2009, p. 3;
10. 'Crowding out a way of life', Daily Telegraph, 18 May 2010, p. 20;
11. A. Ferguson, 'Congestion to cost region $3bn a year', The Australian, 29 August 2009, p. 7;
12. J. Dowling and C. Lucas, 'Bursting at the seams', The Age, 11 November 2009, p. 15;
13. J. Gordon, 'Congestion the ultimate cost of people ingestion', The Sunday Age, 28 February 2010, p. 17.
14. Nonetheless even when birthplace and qualifications are controlled for the associations shown in Table 2 do not entirely disappear; data not shown separately here.
15. Re graduates, see work on the new class in K. Betts, The Great Divide: Immigration Politics in Australia, Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney, 1999, pp. 10-20, 71-95, 154-191.
16. Re NESB immigrants, see ibid. pp. 226-228, 235-249.
17. As well as the data in Table 2 see Editorial, 'All of Victoria must deal with growing pains', The Age, 16 June 2010, p. 16;
18. P. Gardiner, 'Population cap warning', Noosa News, 4 June 2010, p. 2;
19. P. Austin, 'They will come-so Brumby to build in the bush', The Age, 16 June 2010, p. 7;
20. S. Nicholls, 'O'Farrell helps families to relocate and over-55s to downsize', The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 June 2010, p. 5;
21. 'Qld may need second capital: Bligh', AAP Bulletins, 30 March 2010. Of course the possibility of their resisting growth depends on their reasons, but only 11 per cent of the reasons for preferring stability given by voters in non-metropolitan regions concerned cultural diversity (as opposed to 10 per cent of the reasons given by the pro-stability camp as a whole). Overall their reasons for preferring stability were very similar to those given by all the voters in this camp.
22. Twenty-three per cent of people giving their ancestry as Australian were pro-growth, compared to 24 per cent of those born in Australia, and 77 per cent were pro-stability compared to 76 per cent for the Australiaborn.
23. This may reflect the fact that they arrived during the heyday of political multiculturalism which could have encouraged them to see support for further immigration (especially family reunion) in symbolic terms. For some, such support became sign of respect for NESB-born migrants in the community. See Betts, 1999, op. cit. Later arrivals under the Howard Government would have experienced a more pragmatic approach from federal politicians.
24. Sixty-five per cent of higher income NESB-born non-graduates preferred growth as did 61 per cent of those who were graduates.
25. See for example, K. Betts, 'Cosmopolitans and patriots: Australia's cultural divide and attitudes to immigration', People and Place, vol.13, no.2, 2005, pp. 29-40.
26. See Betts, 2010, op. cit.
27. The News Poll can be downloaded from .
28. See K. Betts, 'Demographic and social research on the population and environment nexus in Australia: explaining the gap', Population and Environment, vol.26, no.2, 2004, pp. 157-172.
29. In a few cases the responses differ by one or two percentage points. For example, in the pre-release data 36 per cent of the pro-growth responses were 'we need more people for economic growth' compared to 34 per cent in the final-release data. Among the pro-stability responses 24 per cent of responses in the pre-release data were 'we should train our own skilled people ...' compared to 25 per cent in the final-release data.
30. See K. Betts and M. Gilding, 'The growth lobby and Australia's immigration policy', People and Place, vol.14, no.4, 2006, pp. 40-52.