Overpopulation drives boats
The debate around asylum seeker policy has become increasingly divisive this election year. William Bourke and Dr Jane O’Sullivan from the Stable Population Party say there are larger issues at play.
Labor, the Coalition and the Greens have all missed the mark on asylum seeker policy. Why? Because of their failure to acknowledge the underlying issue of overpopulation.
In simple terms, human overpopulation occurs, if the number of people exceeds a region’s environmental carrying capacity. We must therefore be mindful of the population size that a region’s environmental resources – like arable land and water – can sustain indefinitely.
Kevin Rudd recently observed that the world has changed since the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention was created.
Then, potential refugee flows numbered only tens of thousands; now they are tens of millions.
While the global population has ballooned from 2.5 billion to over 7 billion people since World War II, political tussles have given way to protracted ecological resource show-downs. Overpopulation is now the leading cause of conflict.
Human nature is the same the world over. People are compassionate and tolerant while their own lives and livelihoods are secure. But any scarcity of resources soon leads to intensified competition, either contained by rigid and intolerant hierarchies or devolving into conflict between groups. It doesn’t matter whether it is religion, ethnicity or political affiliation that identifies “us” and “them” in these conflicts. They are essentially misdirected anger, and their political or military resolution does not solve the underlying resource scarcity.
Egypt is a case in point. It allowed population to reach twice the size it could feed domestically, while using oil revenue to buy food. As soon as Egypt became a net importer of oil, tensions erupted.
Syria’s conflict was triggered by a lack of water, as ever-intensifying agriculture sucked the wells dry.
Naturally, the poor farmers suffered first and blamed government cronies with large commercial farms and more pumping power. However, their absence would barely have delayed the shortage. Across the cereal belt of the Middle East, northern India and China, falling water tables threaten similar tensions.
Many of the nations of Asia and Latin America that were poorest 50 years ago are now peaceful and developing. They embraced voluntary family planning, stabilised population and stemmed the dilution of resources. Sri Lanka was one of the early adopters, in all regions except the Tamil north where high birth rates continued to deepen the scarcity of land and livelihood. This opened a conspicuous divide in wealth between north and south. A continuous outflow of job-seekers to other regions fuelled resentment. Yet none of the interventions have addressed this crucial barrier to peace and prosperity.
By stabilising their populations through voluntary family planning and empowerment of women, nations protect their food, water and energy security, improve infant and maternal health, maximise resilience to climate change, avoid labour exploitation and free up investment to develop and build prosperity.
Australia should certainly show compassion to those who come to us for help, but not to the extent that it causes greater harm. If our compassion provides an incentive for ever more people-smuggling or overpopulation it is counter-productive.
As a sovereign nation, Australia does have the right to be less populated than other nations. We have a duty of care to Australia’s endemic species and natural environments, as well as to future generations. Being an overflow area for overpopulated regions serves no one; it only ensures that we all become degraded and conflict-ridden together.
Refugees are not a major source of Australia’s population growth yet. You would never know it by listening to the major parties obsessing about asylum seekers, but they are still only around 10 per cent of our total permanent immigration program. The population growth agenda, which both the Coalition and Labor are keen to keep out of public discussion, is mainly about the big end of town’s insatiable appetite for ever more customers and of course an abundance of cheaper and more compliant labour.
Having said that, the scale of our humanitarian program must be contained. Without doing so, according to Foreign Minister Bob Carr, we could end up facing over 200,000 unauthorised arrivals per year. This is equivalent to the total size of Australia’s enormous permanent ‘legal’ immigration program. In a climate where government austerity is hurting many of the most vulnerable Australians, they have a right to know that asylum seekers and refugees do not command an open cheque book.
What is also yet to enter the public discourse is our complicity in the circumstances that generate refugees. Most notably, we are complicit by our neglect of aid for family planning. While the government commits more billions to re-hash a Pacific Solution, we could only find an extra $25 million for international family planning programs. Although it is pleasing to see the recent doubling of Australia’s overseas aid for family planning to $50 million a year, this is still a drop in the bucket (just one per cent) of our total foreign aid program of over $5 billion.
The hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on resettling each refugee, including expanding Australia’s infrastructure to accommodate them, could stop hundreds or even thousands of people becoming refugees in the next generation by preventing unwanted pregnancies.
Some 220 million married women who would like to avoid or delay pregnancy lack access to effective family planning, and around 40 per cent of all pregnancies are unintended. If women had the power to make these decisions, they could avoid many of the 80 million unwanted pregnancies each year. We could also greatly reduce abortions and maternal deaths. There is no easy solution and some complex cultural issues to navigate, but there are plenty of examples of successful programs that have changed local attitudes and outcomes. They just need scaling up — a lot.
The Pacific Solution is at best only a band-aid on proximal symptoms of the problem. As global citizens we need a global solution targeting the root cause — unsustainable population growth in our finite world. This should be the primary focus of Australia’s foreign aid, supported by vigorous diplomatic endeavours to focus the UN on the global population issue.
Through partnership, example and assistance, Australia should help other nations to live well and plan their own future within their sustainable resource base. Rather than aiming to resettle ever increasing numbers of people, our policy aim should be to relieve the pressures that force migration in the first place and help people live in peace and harmony in their homeland. This is, after all, the first preference of genuine refugees and a basic human right.
With over 45 million refugees and internally displaced persons world-wide – and growing – Australia and the handful of similar nations can never hope to make a material impact by resettling more people. This has no positive impact on global overpopulation. A new United Nations report says the number of displaced people grew by 2.7 million in 2012 alone, while total global population grew by around 80 million. India for example, grows annually by the total population of Australia.
Generally only the most privileged of asylum seekers make it to our shores. Do we owe them a greater moral responsibility than all those who wait in camps? If the cost of resettling a few greatly diminishes our capacity to help many more people in their own region, how is this for the greater good?
The whole refugee debate is awash with moral confusion and moral manipulation. Australia has developed a vocal moralising class, and whilst generally well-meaning, most have seemingly no concern for the most critical issue of all – sustainability. Sustainaphobia extends to our major media organisations and means there is virtually no public discussion of Australia’s true long term carrying capacity. For example, how does Australia support ever-rising numbers and maintain prosperity if a growing population becomes gradually dependent on imported resources in a world increasingly constrained by resource shortages? How does a larger population secure the foreign exchange to pay for imports like cars, clothes and computers as our capacity to export mineral resources and food diminishes over coming decades?
Anyone questioning rapid population growth or increases to our already generous refugee or migration programs is branded selfish, or worse. We should not cower. We should clearly distinguish between the moral high horse and the moral high ground. We must not run away from the intellectual debate on population and ecological sustainability, by abandoning a stable population objective as the Greens did in the face of Pauline Hanson’s 1990s race-related rhetoric.
The Stable Population Party does not support knee-jerk increases in the refugee resettlement program. The quota has only recently been increased from 13,750 to 20,000 per annum. Already some are advocating doubling it to 40,000. In recent days, we’ve seen glib claims in the Twitterverse about Australia having “boundless plains”, including from the leader of the Greens, Christine Milne. This is alarming language from the environment party, and perhaps demonstrates why it is critical for ecological sustainability and the environment to not have all its political eggs in one basket.
Australia already has the highest per capita permanent resettlement of refugees and asylum seekers in the world. We have a proud and generous record of refugee resettlement, with over 700,000 refugees taken in since World War II. Nobody can objectively argue that our sovereign nation is not already doing its bit.
As outlined above, money could be better spent helping many more people. Neither human dignity nor a healthy environment survives overpopulation. Australia has increasing concerns over food, energy and water security. Our biodiversity is falling, while we need to lower greenhouse gas emissions to limit climate change. With our own significant growing pains, and growing refugee numbers, steeply increasing Australia’s refugee resettlements is not a “sustainable” solution, as Sarah Hanson-Young asserts.
Where does it end? There is never a clear response to this fundamental question. There seems to be a belief that wealth is an inherent property of this continent, infinitely expandable to all comers, not a fragile balance between our resource base and our needs.
Australia must become part of the global population solution, not part of the problem. We should lead by example and upgrade from being an immigration nation to a mature, stable and sustainable nation.
We live on the driest inhabited continent on Earth. Our overwhelming and primary moral responsibility is to pass on a sustainable Australia to our children and grandchildren. There is also no way that Australia, with its high per capita consumption, can look other nations in the eye and call for population stability, ecological sustainability or even reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, if we are expanding our own population in defiance of all evidence of its costs to us and to the planet.
The Stable Population Party would work with government of any colour to ensure orderly refugee arrivals. Refugee policy should be part of a consistent population policy, not a scapegoat to distract the public from mass immigration. The immigration and baby bonus-fuelled population growth initiated under Howard and escalated by both Rudd and Gillard is crippling the nation with congested infrastructure, unaffordable housing and intractable state and local government debt. They have failed to deliver its promised economic benefits, all the while jeopardising our long-term sustainability.
In our view, the total permanent immigration program should be brought down to the level of emigration – around 80,000. New Zealanders should be included in this quota – their entry is currently unrestricted and swells our population by up to 50,000 per year. Within a balanced migration program, clearly there is little scope to expand the refugee quota without creating hardship for people seeking family reunion and limiting the global recruitment of high-level skills.
Population pressure has always been the main driver of migration flows. It has been said of Australia that we are all immigrants, if not today then yesterday or the day before. We might better say we are all victims of overpopulation. But tomorrow, we can choose not to be. We can think better, not bigger.
This blog was first published on the Independent Australia website and is reproduced with the kind permission of the author.
Dr Jane O’Sullivan is an agricultural scientist and the Queensland SPP lead Senate candidate. For more information about the Stable Population Party visit www.populationparty.org.au.

William Bourke founded Sustainable Australia in 2010. It is a centrist political party which campaigns for secure jobs, affordable housing, better planning, and a sustainable environment and population for Australia.
Tabitha
August 9, 2013 at 5:34 am
Overpopulation drives boats
Congratulations on a brilliant essay! At last some exceptionally intelligent commentary on what is a very emotive issue. Well done to the authors for pointing out what should be surely obvious to all and providing practical humanitarian solutions. William and Jane are exactly the type of people we desperately need to become involved in decision making. I wish them and the Stable Population Party all the very best in the upcoming election.
klaas.woldring
October 23, 2013 at 5:20 am
Your article
Your Party's basic premise that "over population drives boats" asylum seekers is extra-ordinarily simplistic and mostly false. To me it presents as an excuse to curb the flow of refugees and asylum seekers to Australia that would appeal politically to some people who oppose boat people but who don't want to be accused of racism or xenophobia. If you were to argue that underdevelopment drives boats you would be on somewhat stronger ground in the case of African countries. How that underdevelopment has come about would be an interesting inquiry that would show that it has much to do with lack of overseas aid or the misallocation of such aid. It also would have much to do with the failure of the Doha rounds where the EU and the US are doing their utmost to protect their farmers' interests. For the rest refugees and asylum seekers are mostly desperate people fleeing from countries that are involved in serious civil strife. In some cases that civil strife has been caused or aggravated by the highly unwise involvement of Western powers, including Australia, causing untold loss of life and economic dislocation. Iraq and Afghanistan are foremost examples. I would think that Australia has a moral responsibility to rapidly accept such people. Parking boat people in Pacific destinations for years to come, without even being resettled in Australia, is a very costly and stupid solution. These people can contribute to the Australian economy in various ways rather than wasting their lives in detention camps. Refugees have a very good record of achievement in Australia. This country can easily accommodate 40,000 boat people per annum for a period of tremendous movement of people in the world. This may not last at all but at the moment the need is very great. Migration is the result of many factors, one of them is war or fear of war. The population of very densely populated countries like Japan and the Netherlands will only be moved to migrate if their economies are in tatters – following a war – but not even then in the case of Japan. It is simplistic to argue that overpopulation is the principal driver of migration. Well, by all accounts this country can easily accommodate 50 million people without major problems. We should plan how to do that – particularly aiming at effective decentralisation – rather than parking people in Pacific countries that have great difficulty maintaining their own economies. Australians should ask themselves now how they can end up election politicians that believe in such silly policies. There is a clear disconnect here between the demonstrated values and successes of multiculturalism and attitudes to boat people. We do need other politicians, have a look at my article in this Forum.
William Bourke
October 29, 2013 at 1:23 am
Key points
Mr Woldring's post contains too many baseless asertions and misrepresentations to address, but I would simply reiterate the points: Overpopulation has led to conflict and misery throughout human history. It's simply undeniable. By stabilising their populations through voluntary family planning and empowerment of women, nations protect their food, water and energy security, improve infant and maternal health, maximise resilience to climate change, avoid labour exploitation and free up investment to develop and build prosperity. Australia should certainly show compassion to those who come to us for help, but not to the extent that it causes greater harm. As a sovereign nation, Australia does have the right to be less populated than other nations. We have a duty of care to Australia’s endemic species and natural environments, as well as to future generations. Being an overflow area for overpopulated regions serves no one; it only ensures that we all become degraded and conflict-ridden together. With over 45 million refugees and internally displaced persons world-wide – and growing – Australia and the handful of similar nations can never hope to make a material impact by resettling more people. This has no positive impact on global overpopulation. The whole refugee debate is awash with moral confusion and moral manipulation. Australia has developed a vocal moralising class, and whilst generally well-meaning, most have seemingly no concern for the most critical issue of all – sustainability. And add… There is no study showing that a sustainable long term population of "50 million people without major problems" is possible. In fact the opposite is true. In 1994 the Australian Academy of Science published its findings on population. In considering the resource needs of our cities, and Australia's supply of water, minerals and arable land it concluded: “In our view, the quality of all aspects of our children's lives will be maximised if the population of Australia by the mid-21st Century is kept to the low, stable end of the achievable range, i.e. to approximately 23 million." As Australians see their quality of life deteriorating due to population growth pressures, this advice has proven to be very sound. Further, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to relocate just one refugee to Australia. This money spent as appropriate foriegn aid could help hundreds or even thousands of people to live sustainably and in peace and harmony in their homeland. Which should we prioritise? One, or hundreds? To spend this money on just one person is simply amoral and counter-productive. Finally, I would ask Mr Woldring to state clearly where Australia's population growth should end, and how. I would like to hear his plan.
laurencestrano
November 5, 2013 at 11:40 pm
OVERPOPULATION?
Human overpopulation is a function of resources (land, labour ,capital and enterprise), resource management, infrastructure, economic growth and the level of prosperity in the main. It is never really possible to place a finite level on what comprises a level of ideal population and when overpopulation occurs. It is easy for politicians to do so however to make sweeping statements depending on electoral favour. We do know the more people the more demand there is for all of the requirements for modern living; i.e. economic growth is stimulated until you reach a stage of diminishing returns, and that is really when overpopulation can be said to occur. At that stage we would have depleted all resources per capita.
We cannot say people leave their country of origin because of overpopulation as there are many reasons, not least of which is the belief in the grass is greener elsewhere. Syria's conflict was not triggered by a lack of water and hence overpopulation. Falling water levels alone do not bring tensions to a boil. Poverty is frequently endemic where there is abuse of power and frustrations due to many factors. Voluntary family planning similarly is not the panacea. In Australia's case here we have a vast land and a relatively small population which beggers the issue: use it or lose it. Only now are we looking to the development of the far north and acknowledging that we could expand significantly our food and resource base. To suggest the scale of our humanitarian program and the level of spending on family planning should be contained is isolationist thinking at its worst. To suggest our foreign aid policy should focus on containing population growth in itself runs counter to humanitarian aid.This for example would mean focussing on the Islamic population and extreme catholics who traditionally have large families.
To limit Australia's population intake of migrants to a finite number is also difficult. It is best to leave the job to Immigration who can assess individual cases. What is worrying is when there is a lack of population homogeneity and harmony. What can be problematic is the level of criminal activity and the evidence of persons being present in Australia who do not adhere to acceptable criminal codes and who act contrary to normal Australian cultural practices and thereby create problems for Australia and are contrary to Australia's national interest.