Australia’s population debate should move beyond arguments over growth and migration to a larger question: what population can a capable, inclusive and ecologically sustainable country support?

Australia’s population debate is trapped between two inadequate positions. On one side are governments, business organisations, property interests and universities accustomed to the economic activity generated by population growth. On the other are organisations such as Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), which correctly insists that endless population growth cannot be reconciled with finite land, water, infrastructure and ecological systems.

SPA’s latest newsletter makes the second case forcefully, sometimes too forcefully. Its dismissal in advance of the ABC’s immigration forum as a “sham” and its description of opposing voices as “zealots” producing “garbage” risk obscuring an argument that deserves serious consideration.

The central point is difficult to dispute. Australia cannot sensibly debate housing, water, transport, energy, biodiversity, hospitals or schools while treating population growth as though it were simply something that happens. Population is substantially shaped by government policy, particularly migration policy. Demand matters as well as supply.

Housing makes this obvious. It is simplistic to claim immigration “caused” the housing crisis. Australia has constructed a housing system distorted by tax concessions, financialisation, land speculation, inadequate social housing, infrastructure shortages and low construction productivity. But the opposite proposition, that rapid population growth has little effect on housing affordability, is equally implausible. When hundreds of thousands of additional people require somewhere to live while supply responds slowly, rents and prices come under additional pressure.

Yet........

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