By Stephen Saunders
Last Friday, Treasurer Jim Chalmers quietly let slip Australia’s fifth Population statement, in which he and the Treasury constitute public enemy No. 1.
Treasury’s Intergenerational Report is Coalition chicanery, warmly embraced by Labor. As is Treasury’s Centre for Population and its Statement.
This fifth edition offers nearly 100 pages of pseudo-science and regressive policies.
By page 33, “Subnational Populations”, I was losing the will to live. But here are some fibs and follies. Too bad the joke’s on us.
Treasurer and Population Director wing it
The Treasurer’s Media Release fibs its head off.
The Government is “managing” the trends. Gee, that childish guff annoys me.
The government creates and enforces the trend—the Treasury has carte blanche on population. “Ensuring our migration system works in the national interest”. Hilarious.
“Departures are taking longer to normalise.” Nonsense, as cultivated by ANU Migration Hub. “Migration is forecast to return to around pre-pandemic levels”. No, it won’t. Even if it did, that’s three times the long-term average. Screwing electors and the environment.
“By 2064‑65, nearly one-quarter of the population will be over 65”. Same old ageing-population alarum. “Game changer…policies make it easier for people to have children”. Yeah right, Treasurer, 80% population replacement plus all-time housing duress is bound to trigger the procreative urge.
Our hero is “fighting inflation and delivering cost-of-living relief”. Doesn’t Langton Crescent (Treasury HQ) love the sound of its talking points, which strike a bum note for strugglers, even in wealthy Canberra.
At the Centre, the Executive Director gig has already become a revolving door for Treasury functionaries.
The current Director goes straight onto the front foot. And puts it in his mouth.
World population “would peak in 2084”. By contrast, “population growth in Australia is expected to continue”. Say what? Seriously?
“Our ability to foresee and understand population changes is vital”. Like, always changing upwards. By subaltern order of the Treasurer, on superior orders of the “stakeholders”.
Gillard’s Population Minister, Tony Burke, loved this “population change” doublespeak. Now he’s Albanese’s Immigration Minister.
For demography, enthuses the Director of the 2025 International Population Conference coming to Australia.
Whereas “demography” mostly means aggressive migration lobbying. Generally, but not always (paging Simon Kuestenmacher) taxpayer-funded at our public universities.
Key Points further mislead
Our population is “projected” at 31.3 million by 2034-35. An understatement. And it’s not a projection—it’s Treasury ukase.
But net migration has “fallen” to 460,000 in 2023-24. Policies are placing “downward” pressure on migration. Hardly.
“Australians benefit from migration through higher economic growth, more job creation, improved wages and productivity.” Five porkies in a dozen words.
So, the Crescent, not the 18 million voters, decide that Australians “benefit”. Democracy 101.
“The states and territories are projected to gradually return to their pre-pandemic population growth patterns.” Again, pre-pandemic isn’t normal.
“The combined population of capital cities is projected to continue to grow nearly twice as fast as rest-of-state areas through to 2034–35.”
Doesn’t that torpedo decades of bipartisan bluster about congestion-busting and decentralisation? Ssh, Treasury executives are at work, mind the cognitive dissonance.
Lies (and truths) on National Population
In this chapter, Albanese Labor’s 2.5% population growth is just a “catch up”. Population growth will “fall” to 1.2% by 2034–35.
As the saying goes, they’ve got a bridge to sell you.
While “global population will begin to decline in 2085…Australia’s population will still be growing in 2100”. Endless victory laps for Down Under.
Compared with last year’s Statement, the 2034-35 population projection has been “revised up” by 7,000. That’s not even a rounding error—but try explaining that to economists.
Also, the mid-2024 population continues to be “lower” than the expectations of the 2019-20 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.
How come? When the statement itself admits migration has indeed “caught up”, while death-levels barely shifted. Supposedly, the Coalition applied a lusty “fertility assumption”. Actual birth-levels have been lower.
Lucky break for a Labor Government achieving nearly one million net-migration over 2022–24.
This historic onslaught deserves its own chapter. Instead, for the benefit of “stakeholders” it gets disappeared.
“Sweden and Luxembourg” are the only OECD nations exceeding Australia’s 30.7% overseas born. But many or most nations that succeed have much lower overseas born.
Then the predictable lie: migrants “increase productivity”. When mandarins speak, Australia’s 60-year productivity-fail can never be linked to its all-time immigration highs. Not allowed.
At Table 3, migration will conveniently fall to Treasury’s absolute minimum of 235,000, as early as 2025-26. Another bridge for sale.
While temporary visa holders have been leaving at “lower rates” than pre-pandemic. So what? The mind-boggling 2.4 million visa-holders camped in Australia derive from enthusiastically approved arrivals. Not declining departures.
Onwards to Chart 13, permanent versus net migration. Fine, far as it goes. Yet the whole world knows by now, jet on down to self-destructive Australia. Keep shuffling visas so you can win permanency. They’re highly reluctant to ever send you home – that might be racist.
Also, the Centre’s “partnered with OECD” for crook research on migration’s salutary benefits. Mathias Cormann’s outfit loves this talk—knowing few member nations walk it.
Though birth-levels keep falling, pseudo “leading indicators” and “recuperation scenarios” indicate a joyful recovery. Sometime in the 2030s.
It goes without saying, “scenarios” tiptoe around the Treasury hunger games of immigration and accommodation.
They instead recommend “policies that encourage a more equal division of household labour, alleviate the financial cost of having children, and promote housing security”. It reads like a typical Chalmers fail, doesn’t it?
Yet truth-telling surfaces. Even “without migration” Australia’s population would keep growing “until 2041-42”.
That’s not good enough to satisfy the Crescent’s cruel standover merchants.
Charts 19-22 and Box 7 describe deaths. Evidently, COVID has caused “excess deaths”. Though we’re doing better than many “advanced economies”.
Truly, Australia has the OECD’s “fourth highest” life expectancy. Largely avoiding the American deaths-by-despair narrative.
As the Centre graphs it, longevity keeps rising, until 2034-35. Maybe. Voters, who have zero power to moderate the Treasury medication, might also despair.
Subnational Populations climb – through migration
In the Statement’s second half, population-growth castor-oil always remains obligatory.
State-territory population growth is expected to “settle” at lower levels by 2025–26. In the shorter term, WA and Queensland are growing faster than expected, as Tasmania and ACT suffer statistical “downgrades”. Relative to the 2023 Statement, that is.
Desperate Melbourne, you’re no longer “overtaking” Sydney. Again, capital cities are still growing “twice as fast” as rests-of-state.
As a share of population, interstate moves “have declined” since the 1990s. From a lousy 2% to a littler 1.5%. Households moving can’t alleviate unending immigration. In the officialese of Box 9, “redistributing growth” is a “challenge”.
A notable cop-out is Chart 36, population growth by “distance from city centre”.
This camouflages the environmental ratbaggery. For Treasury, “the environment” means “net zero” and they couldn’t give a rat’s about water security.
Population decision-makers, including the Greens and Teals hypocrites, cluster in leafier enclaves. Less fortunate are their imported wage slaves, like Sydney’s westies. They suffer lesser green amenity and it gets boiling hot. Good luck with your user-pays water, guys.
NSW, you see, is “projected” to remain our most populous state, despite the never-ending “outflow” from [deteriorating] Sydney.
Population growth will “stabilise” around 1.1% with net overseas migration the “largest contributor”. In crass terms, population-replacement.
Victorian population growth “declines” to 1.4% by 2034-35, with net migration again the “largest contributor”.
Similar growth levels apply to Queensland, the big difference being that rest-of-state population matches Greater Brisbane population.
Compared with NSW (10-15%) and Victoria (less than 10%), rest-of-state accrues a sizeable share (30-40%) of the net overseas migration. Unlike NSW and Victoria, Queensland’s a “net internal migration” winner. This too will pass.
By 2034–35, SA population is projected to “increase” from 1.9 million to 2 million. Meaning, it could easily go backwards.
In other words, expect any and every boondoggle to pump immigration and “industry” into this adorably spectacular state for renewables.
My birthplace, WA, is expected to be the “fastest growing state” for population, mainly due to net overseas migration. Though growth “falls” to 1.4% by 2034-35. Maybe.
Drying Perth’s population will sail past 2.9 million (at 2034-35) and go higher. “Net zero” desalination, they reckon, can magic away their water deficits.
Tasmanian population is predicted to “increase” from 576,000, to 599,000 at 2034-35. Maybe.
Again, ACT has experienced “population revisions” since 2021 Census. On these revised terms, population is “projected” to grow from 474,000 at 2034-24 to 541,000 at 2034-35.
By which time, Canberra’s natural increase is gauged to exceed its net overseas migration. I can’t see that happening.
The aftermath
After his Wellbeing Framework fiasco, I wonder if Chalmers is less enamoured of the Statement. It got little coverage.
Okay, it got covered a bit, at renowned migration lobbies news media like ABC and SMH. They parroted Treasury talking points.
The Liberals were all over the statement—not. But then, they were the ones who cooked it up.
Once they regain power, we’re stuck with it for the duration. As one more wieldy weapon for the Crescent to wallop voters.
It’s a crying shame. A Statement like this could even be useful, were it not boilerplate Treasury dogma.
