Attitudes to immigration and population growth in australia 1954 to 2010: An overview

People and Place

Volumn 18, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 32-51

  Betts, Katharine ^a  

^a SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

IMMIGRATION; IMMIGRATION POLICY; INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION; MIGRATION DETERMINANT; POPULATION GROWTH;

AUSTRALIA;

EID: 79957440911     PISSN: 10394788     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (115)

1. For example in 1965 the Vernon Report began by saying: 'Having in mind that the objectives of the Government's economic policy are a high rate of economic and population growth...', Report of the Committee of Economic Enquiry, Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, 1965, p. i.
2. By the late 1960s some questions were being asked. See 'A herd of sacred cows', Nation, 18 October 1969 and some of the chapters in J. Wilkes (Ed.), How Many Australians? Immigration and Growth (Australian Institute of Political Science: Proceedings of the 37th Summer School), Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1971.
3. For a reminiscence of this period see B. Cohen, 'Dangers in growth for growth's sake', The Australian, 6 August 2007, p. 16.
4. But the climate of scepticism passed and by the late 1970s the Fraser Government was committed to higher immigration. By the mid-1990s questions were asked again. See for example B. Jones, Australia's Population"Carrying Capacity": One Nation-Two Ecologies, Report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee for Long Term Strategies, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1994;
5. T. F. Flannery, The Future Eaters, Reed, Sydney, 1994;
6. D. Cocks, People Policy, University of NSW Press, Sydney, 1996. Sustainable Population Australia (formerly Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population) has been active since the mid 1980s.
7. .
8. See for example the Blainey debate of 1984, the John Howard affair of 1988, and the furore that greeted Pauline Hanson in the late 1990s. But all of these debates centred on immigration. They did not focus on its contribution to population growth but on the propriety or otherwise of discussing its racial composition.
9. D. Marr and M. Wilkinson, Dark Victory, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2003
10. P. Sheehan, The Electronic Whorehouse, Macmillan, Sydney, 2003 (Chapters 5 and 6 on the detention of asylum seekers arriving by boat and the children overboard affair).
11. The official permanent immigration program grew from 94,353 in 2000-2001 to 171,644 in 2007-08, 184,450 in 2008-09 and 182,450 in 2009-10.
12. Population Flows: Immigration Aspects,
13. Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Canberra, various issues. But this program excludes New Zealanders and long-term temporary arrivals and does not subtract for departures. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) produces the official migration figures used by government to determine the estimated resident population (and thus electoral boundaries, the apportionment of the GST and so on). The measure used is net overseas migration (NOM), which includes net permanent movement together with net long-term movement (stays in Australia or aboard of 12 months or more). Variants of this measure have been in use since 1959 when it was called net permanent and long-term migration. In 1982 it was refined to account for category jumping and became net overseas migration (NOM). In 2006 further refinements were made; now a long-term mover is someone who stays in (or out) of Australia for at least 12 months in a 16-month period. This change inflated the recorded numbers by around 20,000. The numbers recorded for NOM are shown in Figure 1 for 1982 to 2009. The net total figures shown for 1947 to 1981 are simply all arrivals minus all departures irrespective of length of stay.
14. G. Thom, 'Homes to hit $1m in decade', The Herald-Sun, 20 January 2010, p. 11;
15. G. Megalogenis, 'Housing shortfall locking out thousands', The Australian, 28 April 2010, p. 5;
16. N. Berkovic, 'Report warns of low-income home crisis', The Australian, 28 April 2010, p. 5
17. S. Lunn, 'The daily commute keeps getting longer', The Australian, 4 June 2009, p. 3;
18. J. Gordon and R. Sexton, 'National road chaos looms', The Age, 8 March 2009, p. 1
19. C. Lucas, 'Train system completely off the rails', The Age, 31 January 2009, p. 4;
20. J. Dowling, 'Spike in public transport use', The Age, 4 June 2009, p. 2
21. Pino Migliorino, chairman of the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia.
22. T. Reilly and Y. Narushima, 'Human rights boss lashes "race to bottom", The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 September 2010, p. 4
23. A. Jakubowicz, 'What Gillard's Government can do on cultural diversity', Online Opinion, 15 September 2010 accessed 17 September 2010
24. A. Fisher, 'Is Green Australia the new White Australia?', Catholic Diocese of Parramatta, 18 August 2010 accessed 26 August 2010.
25. B. Delaney, 'Murky agenda behind this green debate', The Age, 27 January 2009, p. 11;
26. S. Perera, 'Population debate hides an ugly racism', The Age, 30 July 2010, p. 17;
27. B. Keane, 'The population debate just got a little bit worse', Crikey, 22 July 2010.
28. A. Markus, Mapping Social Cohesion 2010: The Scanlon Foundation Surveys, Summary Report, Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements, Melbourne, 2010, p. 20
29. From an edited version of his address to the Business Council of Australia published as: P. Ruddock, 'Coalition Government views on population policy', People and Place, vol. 5, no. 2, 1997, p. 8
30. Intergenerational Report 2007 (Second Intergenerational Report), Department of Treasury, Canberra, 2007, p. 15
31. Australia to 2050: Future Challenges (Third Intergenerational Report), Department of Treasury, Canberra, 2010, pp. viii, 10
32. B. Birrell and E. Healy, 'Net overseas migration: why is it so high?', People and Place, vol. 18, no. 2, 2010, p. 59.
33. Kelvin Thomson, MHR for Wills, is one of the few public figures who have questioned the wisdom of this.
34. See .
35. See Productivity Commission, Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia: Productivity Commission Research Report, 24 March, Productivity Commission, Melbourne, 2005, pp. xii, xxxix;
36. Projections of the Populations of Australia, States and Territories: 1999-2101, Catalogue no. 3222.0, ABS, Canberra, 2000, p. 2;
37. C. Young and L. Day, 'Australia's demographic future: determinants of our population', Population 2040: Australia's Choice, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra, 1994;
38. P. Zweifel, S. Felder and A. Werblow, 'Population Ageing and health care expenditure: new evidence on the "red herring", The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance, vol. 29, no. 4, 2004, pp. 652-666;
39. K. Betts, 'Population ageing in Australia: policy implications of recent projections', People and Place, vol. 16, no. 4, 2008, pp. 43-51.
40. Demographic ageing is a product of two factors; lower fertility and increasing life expectancy. (Immigration makes very little difference.) Unless a population keeps growing from natural increase forever its age profile inevitably rises. The only way to maintain a youthful age structure without perpetual growth is to have large families and for most of us to die young. This is the demographic pattern our ancestors escaped from.
41. An older age structure is the outcome of progress not of failure and has little impact on health costs: see sources quoted in L. Dayton, 'Ageing population won't burden system', The Australian: Health section, 11 September 2010, p. 12. Up until the age of 75 net transfers of money and help flow from the old to the young.
42. J. Healy, The Benefits of an Ageing Population: Discussion Paper Number 63, The Australia Institute, Canberra, 2004, p. 19.
43. See Macroplan's Brian Haratsis at a Property Council conference saying that a population of 36-40 million by 2050 inevitable, because of demographic ageing C. Carter, 'Coping with a population rise is vital', The Canberra Times, 19 September 2010, p. 37
44. B. Hoffman, 'To grow or slow-that is the crucial question', Sunshine Coast Daily, 31 July 2010, p. 36. A report from the Committee of Melbourne says that with Australia's ageing population, 'the need for continued migration is widely recognised'
45. J. Dowling, 'Make plans for population to double within 50 years', The Age, 5 August 2010, p. 3.
46. Jessica Brown from the Centre for Independent Studies also cites ageing as a reason for immigration: 'A bigger country is inevitable, let's make it liveable', The Australian, 4 August 2010, p. 14.
47. Alan Kohler writes 'There is almost no downside to a high level of immigration: it reduces skill shortages at the same time as creating employment and helps offset the ageing of the population because new arrivals tend to be young'
48. 'Turning people into gold', Business Spectator, 26 March 2010.
49. P. Goers, 'C'mon Aussie, the more the merrier', Sunday Mail, 9 May 2010, p. 34.
50. Transcript of Dick Smith's Population Puzzle, broadcast ABC TV1, transcript at accessed 28 August 2010
51. K. Betts, Ideology and Immigration: Australia 1976 to 1987, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1988, pp. 53-65.
52. J. C. Caldwell, C. Young, H. Ware, D. Lavis and A.-T. Davis, 'Australia: knowledge attitudes and practice of family planning in Melbourne, 1971', Studies in Family Planning, vol. 4, no. 3, 1973, pp. 49-59
53. The ABS runs an excellent website but my experience as a teacher shows that inexperienced users need a lot of help with it to find answers to their questions.
54. G. Freeman, 'Modes of immigration politics in liberal democratic states', International Migration Review, vol. 29, no. 4, 1995, pp. 881-901
55. See N. Mitchell, 'Transcript of Australian Prime Minister Rudd interview with Neil Mitchell', 3AW, 26 March 2010 (from Reuters Factiva data base). Note 4 above discusses the distinction.
56. And this absence can itself be explained by the vested interest that that the growth lobby has in keeping the topic off the agenda. The term growth lobby includes the business interests that enjoy Freeman's concentrated benefits from immigration-fuelled population growth. In Australia they include property developers, large retail chains selling to the domestic market, and some employers keen to pay lower wages or avoid contributing to the costs of training Australians, as well as the commercial media who also profit from a larger domestic market.
57. K. Betts and M. Gilding, 'The growth lobby and Australia's immigration policy', People and Place, vol. 14, no. 4, 2006, pp. 40-52.
58. Private sector interests have allies in the public sector. Treasury, for example, also supports population growth, probably because it boosts GDP and increases the tax base (which is not the same as increasing GDP per capita). State governments appear to support it for similar reasons, even though they bear the infrastructure costs, and of course they too have close relations with the growth lobby. There is also the concern of some bien-pensant intellectuals that any discussion of demography will quickly deteriorate into racist denunciations of migrants and immigration.
59. Betts,1988, op. cit., pp. 47-52, 101-113, 136-140, 119, 160-168, 172.
60. The Australian runs a regular column in its property supplement by Bernard Salt, a partner in the multinational consulting firm KPMG, whom they describe as a demographer. Salt regularly deals with demographic topics, but more as an advocate for growth than as a disinterested analyst.
61. B. Salt, 'Size does matter when it comes to city services', The Australian, 15 July 2010, p. 33;
62. B. Salt, 'How to keep our consumerist society ticking', The Australian, 22 May 2008, p. 24.
63. Markus finds that 58.5 per cent of his respondents in June 2010 had heard of the population debate. (He considers the fact that 40.3 per cent said they had not heard of it to be significant.)
64. Markus, 2010, op. cit., p. 26.
65. S. B. Hammond, 'Attitudes to immigration', O. A. Oeser and S. B. Hammond (Eds), Social Structure and personality in a City, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1954 (the field work was done in 1948 and 1949).
66. M. Goot, 'Migrant numbers, Asian immigration and multiculturalism: trends in the polls, 1943-1998: Statistical Appendix', Australian Multiculturalism in a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness, National Multicultural Advisory Council, Canberra, 1999. This is online at .
67. K. Betts, 'Dissatisfaction with immigration grows', People and Place, vol. 16, no. 3, 2008, pp. 19-34.
68. The actual response categories were 'too few', 'about right', and 'too low'.
69. Markus, 2010, op. cit., p. 21.
70. Data from two Morgan polls in 2010, March (MGP 4482) and July (MGP 4537), are not shown in Figure 2: the March figures (voters only, N=<670 but actual number not provided) were: 41% too many, 9% too few, 45% about right); the July figures were: 40% too many, 11% too few, 47% about right). The polls are not included because they carried the invalid population question shown in Figure 3 and therefore would have confused respondents. They also had an incorrect figure for current immigration in the prompt 'Over the last year (2008/09) about 170,000 immigrants came to Australia.' (The actual figure for NOM was 298,900), and drew on rather small samples: 670 people aged 14 plus in MGP 4482, and 719 voters in MGP 4537.
71. Markus, 2010, op. cit., p. 21.
72. Unfortunately his Figure 12 is quite undocumented; however the Age/Nielsen polls found that 43% said the numbers were too many in November 2009 and 54% said the same in April 2010. For the 2007 to 2010 period the graph appears to be restricted to the Scanlon data. Markus is aware of the two Age/Nielsen polls, as is clear from Table 1 in A. Markus, 'Public opinion divided on population, immigration and asylum', Policy, vol. 26, no. 3, 2010, p. 9.
73. He also has a note in the 2010 Scanlon report in which he says that he has averaged the data on the proportions saying 'too many' from 'five polls conducted by polling agencies in the period March-July 2010' and found that the average saying 'too many' (46%) is almost identical to his finding (of 47%). One of these polls does not appear to exist: Age/Nielsen 31 July 2010-there was no Nielsen poll on that data which asked about attitudes to immigration; their most recent poll on this question, as of September 2010, was the April 2010 poll (information provided by the Nielsen company). One of the other five is the April Nielsen poll, but another is an Essential Media poll, 5 July 2010, but this was on attitudes to population growth, not immigration (see Table 5 above). The other two are the Morgan polls referred to in note 30. Markus's research is funded by the Scanlon Foundation which has as its mission 'to support the creation of a larger cohesive Australian society'.
74. accessed 30 September 2010. The founder, Peter Scanlon, has extensive property interests which benefit from population growth and believes that the government is not doing enough to sell the benefits of a bigger population.
75. J. Masanauskas, 'Scanlon backs population growth', Herald-Sun, 4 December 2009, p. 74
76. See also MGP no. 235, 21-28 October 1972, and MGP no. 26, 30 March to 6 April 1974 which adopted a similar question to the one shown in Table 1. See also the MGP polls from December 1977 to March 1979 on attitudes to refuges. Respondents had the option of saying that a limited number of refugees should be allowed to stay but, when asked to specify how many, most could not hazard a number.
77. Betts, 1988, op. cit., pp. 58, 61.
78. If the 'about right' category is combined with the 'too few' category to indicate general support for current levels of immigration the picture presented may be misleadingly rosy for those who prefer growth. Researchers who themselves favour high levels of immigration may prefer to present the data in this way. But if they do not also provide a breakdown of the two components they are restricting the usefulness of their results for the wider community.
79. M. Goot, 'More "relaxed and comfortable": public opinion on immigration under Howard', People and Place, vol. 8, no. 3, 2000, pp. 46-60.
80. K. Betts, 'Immigration and public opinion: understanding the shift', People and Place, vol. 10, no. 4, 2002, pp. 24-37
81. The intake for 2001-02 was increased to 105,440 from 94,353 in 2000-01. This was announced in the May budget in 2001. A search on Factiva for the terms 'Howard government' and 'immigration' and 'increase' from 1 January 2001 to 31 December 2001 produced 146 hits, but none that were actually about the increase. Some lamented the lack of an increase, but most of the articles that directly discussed immigration focused on asylum seekers.
82. P. Kelly, 'Restocking the nation', The Weekend Australian, 3 August 2002, p. 28.
83. S. Carney, 'Closer to Asia than you think', The Age, 2 November 2002, p. 7.
84. M. E. Buchanan, Attitudes Towards Immigration in Australia (Research report for the National Population Inquiry No. 3), AGPS, Canberra, 1976, p. 8
85. Andrew Theophanous's, MP, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates: House of Representatives, 31 March 1981, p. 1115.
86. In 2006 Peter Costello, reinforced this view saying: 'Our parents' and grandparents' generations had more children but, nowadays, most parents are content with two or even one. That is why our national fertility rate (1.75 babies a couple) is less than replacement level. Only immigration is making our country grow'.
87. P. Costello, 'Have one for Australia', The Sydney Morning Herald: Supplement, 26 January 2006, p. 2
88. Published in a supplement to The Age, 8 October 2001, sample size 1000 voters.
89. Survey dates: 31 August to 2 September 2001, sample size 1200 adults aged 18 plus;
90. The Age, 4 September 2001, pp. 1, 4.
91. Age poll by Irving Saulwick and Associates, conducted 24 to 25th September, summary published in The Age, 9 November 1977. Data available from the Australian Social Science Data Archives (ASSDA) at the Australian National University.
92. Reark Research Pty Ltd, Attitudinal Survey on Population Issues in Australia (A research report prepared for the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs), Sydney, 1986, p. 5
93. K. Betts, 'The ageing of the population and attitudes to immigration', People and Place, vol. 14, no. 2, 2006, pp. 26-38
94. The full question was: 'Some people believe that Australia will have more severe environmental problems such as air and water pollution, soil degradation and erosion and the destruction of forests and wildlife if it has a larger population. Others believe that with proper management, a bigger population need not harm the environment. Do you agree with the first or second of these views?' The report says that 67% endorsed the second view but does not give the exact proportion endorsing the first view.
95. Reark, 1986, op. cit., p. 48
96. Published as a supplement to The Age, 8 October 2001; original data available from ASSDA.
97. This point was made re the Lowy survey in K. Betts, 'Population growth and public opinion', paper delivered at the Population Reform Forum, Melbourne 7 May 2010. It is also made re all three polls in A. Markus, 'Public opinion divided on population, immigration and asylum', Policy, vol. 26, no. 3, 2010, pp. 7-13.
98. K. Betts, 'Population growth: what do Australian voters want?' People and Place, vol. 18, no. 1, 2010, pp. 49-64 (this analysed the pre-release data);
99. K. Betts, 'A bigger Australia: opinions for and against', People and Place, vol. 18, no. 2, 2010, pp. 25-38 (this analysed the final data).
100. S. Iyengar and S. Jackman, Australian and American attitudes to illegal immigration, The United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Sydney, 2010 (August 16) .
101. American Association of Public Opinion Researchers (AAPOR), AAPOR Report on Online Panels, USA, 2010 accessed 29 August 2010;
102. N. Sparrow and J. Curtice, 'Measuring the attitudes of the general public via internet polls: an evaluation', International Journal of Market Research, vol. 46, no. 1, 2004, pp. 23-44
103. P. Kellner, 'Can online polls produce accurate findings?', International Journal of Market Research, vol. 46, no. 1, 2004, p. 19
104. A. Markus, Mapping Social Cohesion 2010: The Scanlon Foundation Surveys, Summary Report, Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements, Melbourne, 2010, p. 17
105. Kellner, 2004, op. cit.;
106. H. Taylor, 'The case for publishing (some) online polls', PollingReport.com, 15 January 2007 accessed 31 August 2010
107. Kellner, 2004, op. cit.
108. 'Election Poll wrap-Essential wins bragging rights' accessed 28 September 2010
109. Data calculated from Table 1 in Birrell and Healy, this issue.
110. K. Christian, 'FED:$10b not enough for people to go bush', Australian Associated Press Financial News Wire, 10 September 2010;
111. L. Pryor, 'Politics aside, the real sea change is migration to the big smoke', The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 September 2010, p. 7;
112. D. Jopson and D. Snow, 'Buybacks drain life from towns', The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 September 2010, p. 4.
113. Betts, 'Population growth: what do Australian voters want?', 2010, op. cit., p. 58;
114. Markus, Third Scanlon Report, 2010, op. cit., p. 27.
115. In the 2009 Scanlon survey the questions on immigration were preceded by one on voluntary work. The interviewer said: 'By this I mean any unpaid help you give to the community in which you live, or to an organisation or group to which you belong. It could be to a school, a sporting club, the elderly, a religious group or people who have recently arrived to settle in Australia. Have you done any unpaid voluntary work of this kind in the last 12 months?' (from a copy of the schedule provided by Andrew Markus in December 2009). This question clearly sets the moral tone; good people help others, including recently-arrived migrants. This could well make it harder for some respondents to express scepticism about further immigration in the questions that followed.