Эксперт: Австралия нуждается в прозрачной системе прогнозирования населения вместо текущей хаотичной политики

The startling story of Australia's population forecast from almost 30 years ago that proves just how wrong we've got it on immigration: PVO By PETER VAN ONSELEN, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS EDITOR, AUSTRALIA Published: | Updated: Australia doesn't have a population policy, that's our reality. Instead we have a patchwork of visa programs, chronically wrong immigration forecasts courtesy of Treasury, and more often than not a rolling infrastructure crisis when the people actually arrive. Governments tinker with visa settings without ever deciding how large, or how fast, Australia should grow. Housing, hospitals, schools and transport are treated as afterthoughts. The country's policy-making is back to front and its failures have turned the immigration debate into a deeply divisive one. Labor has spent its time in power explaining away migration blowouts. Both major parties traditionally tout the supposed economic benefits of large scale migration while dodging any serious debate about how or why. It's a bipartisan failure. The result is a collapse in public trust, which shouldn't be surprising. Voters are lectured that immigration is an economic necessity, yet they experience it as a per-capita recession, by being locked out of housing markets and when using choked up infrastructure. Few Australians would deny the importance of immigration. The issue is at what scale and what type. The fix isn't to just simplistically brand immigration as inherently good or bad. It is to build a rigorous framework where population settings are honestly modelled, democratically chosen and competently delivered by whoever is in power. At the end of last year, Australia's population hit 27.8million, growing at 1.5 per cent annually. We are now a country of over 28million. At that pace, the nation hits 40million by 2050, 50million by 2065 and 60million by 2077. To give you a sense of just how hopelessly wrong immigration forecasts have historically been, and therefore why we haven't always had the infrastructure that's needed ready to go, consider this: In 1998 the ABS forecast that our then population of 18.5million would hit somewhere between 23.5 and 26.4million in 2051. It's 2026 and we have already exceeded that by two million people! No wonder immigration has become a bitterly divisive issue in recent times. In 1998 the ABS forecast that our then population of 16.5million would hit somewhere between 23.5 and 26million in 2051 - we are two million ahead of that projection already From where we are now, hitting 40million just over two decades from now means expanding national capacity by 44 per cent. Fifty million requires an 80 per cent scale-up, and 60million more than doubles the size of the country. Reaching 40million requires about 5 million additional dwellings. A population of 50 million requires 9 million more homes, and 60million demands nearly 13 million more. And that is simply to accommodate population growth. It does nothing to clear the existing backlog we aren't meeting, nor does it replace ageing stock or account for shrinking households, which would require even more new homes to be built. If you then think about needs such as hospital beds, more classrooms, water supply (especially in the AI age) and the pressures on the power grid, it's easy to see why better planning in the important area of immigration wouldn't be a bad idea. And because Australia is ageing, some services need to ramp up even faster than the population, aged care being the obvious one. But there is a way to fix the never ending failures up until now. Treasury's Centre for Population must publish a comprehensive 'Population Choices Paper'. Instead of hiding behind a single, highly contestable central projection, it should map alternative futures: what does Australia look like according to variously projected growth? And what might each growth option mean for housing, the tax base, increasing congestion and per-capita GDP? The modelling must also stress test varying fertility and mortality rates. Treasury currently assumes fertility dips to 1.42 before rebounding to 1.62 and remaining there. That may prove correct, but it is just an assumption. Population growth isn't solely driven by the immigration rate. Political Editor Peter van Onselen says Australia's immigration system simply isn't working Once a government commits to a trajectory, what happens next should be pretty straightforward. If we are heading under or over the goal, adjust the immigration rate as we go. A static immigration quota is ridiculous precisely because the target must constantly recalibrate based on demographic realities. Announcing a permanent immigration intake is a political sleight of hand when students, temporary workers and backpackers can push the real rate well beyond what is headlined as the number, sometimes by as much as double it. Population policy is inherently political, we know that. So before every federal election, the Centre for Population should publish a common demographic baseline. Parties would then nominate their preferred number and have the consequences modelled against identical assumptions. Whether a party champions higher or lower immigration rates would highlight what the future population of the country will in time look like, if they get their way. Higher migration advocates would no longer be able to hide behind aggregate GDP while ignoring housing and congestion. Lower migration advocates won't be able to dodge questions about workforce shortages, the ageing of the population or a shrinking tax base. Every platform would face the exact same model from which voters could make up their minds. This approach also highlights just how integrated the governmental response to population fluctuations needs to be. While the Commonwealth controls the immigration rate, the states have most of the powers to impact housing and infrastructure. Which is why national cabinet is the forum that needs to debate and discuss these issues, not just any one tier of government. Accountability requires annual reporting, tracking targeted versus actual growth, migration forecasts versus reality, and promised versus delivered infrastructure requirements. Material failures would demand proper public explanation, something we just haven't seen up until now. The goal isn't to strip politics from the immigration debate. It's to make the politics honest and accountable. Australia needs a permanent and transparent system through which governments can offer different population choices, voters can understand their consequences and the public service can implement what their political masters tell them to.