Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) has welcomed news that Australia's fertility has fallen to 1.5 children per woman, dismissing media claims it represents an economic crisis.". Australian National University demographer Liz Allen said on ABC radio, "Once we hit this figure, we are basically staring down the barrel of no return."
SPA national president Peter Strachan says such catastrophism is completely unwarranted.
"Europe's fertility has averaged around 1.5 for decades now, with very low population growth, and most EU nations have performed better than Australia on per capita measures of economic performance," says Mr Strachan.
"A lower Australian fertility rate means that the sustainable level of immigration might be slightly higher. With fertility at 1.5 we can receive 90,000 net migrants per year to maintain a stable population, compared with only 75,000 net migrants when fertility is 1.6.
"However, recent government policy has meant net migration was running six or seven times too high, at over half a million a year.
"What is sad is that people are choosing not to have children because they can't afford decent housing. Ultimately, if Australia stabilises its population, then housing will become more affordable and the fertility level may well go up. But that would require much lower immigration levels than we now have.
"Australia's immigration rate is currently so high that, even if we had no children at all born in Australia, the population would still grow," says Mr Strachan.
"This is the absurdity of scaremongering. Australia is not running out of people. The real threat to our economy is our very rapid population growth rate, over 80 per cent from immigration. The infrastructure bills are crippling. More and more people fall through the cracks due to unaffordable housing and overstretched services.
"While it can be a bonanza for property speculators, no country has improved living standards for the poor while the population growth exceeds two per cent.
"In contrast, no country has yet seen any reduction in its proportion of workers as a result of ageing or population decline. The "crisis" is a myth devised to scare ordinary people into accepting higher immigration to pump corporate profits, while squeezing their living standards and trashing our natural environment."
Chart: Australia's fertility is now about the average in the developed world, while our net migration rate is well ahead of other countries Far from recruiting too few people, our problem is population growth.
