T3ngu
04-09-2010, 02:19 AM
KEVIN Rudd and Tony Abbott have taken complementary disastrous wrong turns in immigration and population policy that threaten Australian national security. Rudd is at fault for losing control of the northern borders. The flood of illegal immigrants his policies have attracted has undermined support for a big immigration program. Abbott is at fault for descending into rank and foolish populism by advocating a cut in the immigration program. His criticisms of Labor's lax border policies are wholly sound.
But why do the Liberals in Opposition flirt with anti-growth policies that are against all their core values? It's bad policy, bad politics and, in this case, it threatens long-term national security. Once, national security was at the heart of immigration and population policy. After World War II we were exhorted to "populate or perish". We couldn't be sure we would keep control of our vast continent with a tiny population. Today such thinking is derided as reactionary and unsophisticated. But population is intimately linked to national security. It's an exceptionally difficult subject to discuss openly because it often involves constructing hypothetical threat scenarios and identifying possible enemies.
But let's take it in a straightforward way. No one has greater faith in the US's resilience, staying power and reliability as an ally than this column but there is no guarantee the US will always provide security for this region and for Australia. Our military needs to be configured for more than the narrow continental defence of our territory because our interests are so much broader, but of course our military has to be able to dominate its own home area.
This is no easy task with a land mass the size of Australia. The defence white paper envisaged Australia with a force of 12 submarines. We now have an army of 27,000 regulars and about 16,000 reserves. And we are acquiring 100 fifth-generation Joint Strike Fighters or F-35s.
Treasury's Intergenerational Report foolishly projected a population for Australia of about 36 million in 2050. This was foolish because the figure seems too big to cope with, as all figures 40 years hence would. But this would involve a muchsmaller percentage increase than we undertook during the past 40 years. We are much richer now so we can afford the relevant infrastructure. So, suppose sometime shortly after mid-century we did more or less double our population from today. In that time we would have got richer in per-capita terms as well. That would mean we could envisage a force of 24 submarines, a regular army of 54,000 with 32,000 reserves and 200 F-35s.
Some people wrongly say that Australia could never take any independent military action on its own. Hopefully we would always have friends and allies. But 24 submarines at our disposal means anyone trying to interfere with us navally is going to need a vast armada that can sustain epic losses. Similarly with 200 F-35s and any hostile air force. You don't need to construct enemies to know that Australia at 40 million, young and strong, is infinitely more likely from a national security point of view to retain control of its destiny than an Australia of 25 million, old and weakening, or even declining.
Even now our population is radically too small in national security terms. During the past 10 to 15 years we have relocated a large portion of our defence forces to northern Australia. There is no real rationale for Darwin to exist other than as a statement that Australia lives in and controls this territory. Insightful demographer Bernard Salt has pointed out how much of our natural resource wealth is vulnerably located in northwestern Australia, where there is no population base.
The huge resources boom we are undergoing has led some to describe Australia as a possible Saudi Arabia of the South Pacific. I can imagine no more revolting a label than that. But think for a minute about Saudi Arabia's national security predicament and what this has meant for the world. Almost all of the Iraq imbroglio of the past 15 years is a result of Saudi Arabia being too decadent and too small in population terms to provide for its security against its avaricious neighbour, Iraq.
The term "resources curse" is familiar to economists. It refers to the syndrome whereby a nation is both blessed and cursed with resources wealth. This wealth makes the currency too strong to allow other export industries to develop and it concentrates economic power in the hands of government and a few companies, giving much of the rest of the economy the morally, economically and politically crippling status of rent seekers.
The best way to avoid this syndrome is to have a big, booming domestic economy full of diversity and internal competition. It's true that rapid population growth poses infrastructure challenges. But the pathetic failure of state governments to provide and manage infrastructure means they all need to be turfed out or reformed. The growth we are contemplating is not big by our past standards. In 1945 there were seven million Australians; in the following 65 years we grew by more than 300 per cent. In 1966 there were 11 million Australians, so in the 44 years since then we have grown by 100 per cent. In the Treasury estimate of 36 million by 2050, we would be growing by only 63 per cent from today. This strikes me as nothing more than a credible minimum.
The idea that Australia has a small carrying capacity is nonsense. Carrying capacity depends entirely on the technology we bring to bear on the situation. The US has a vastly more sophisticated national security debate than we do. In it a new book, The Next Hundred Million by Joel Kotkin, is playing a central role. The US will reach 400 million long before 2050. When it does, a quarter of its people will be over 60, compared with 31 per cent in China. It is this brilliant dynamic of growth and renewal that makes all the hard heads in security predict continued US dominance in security matters. If Australia, with a vastly more challenging security outlook than the US, chooses stagnation and decline, we will invite disaster.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/populate-or-perish-still-true/story-e6frg6zo-1225851108147
But why do the Liberals in Opposition flirt with anti-growth policies that are against all their core values? It's bad policy, bad politics and, in this case, it threatens long-term national security. Once, national security was at the heart of immigration and population policy. After World War II we were exhorted to "populate or perish". We couldn't be sure we would keep control of our vast continent with a tiny population. Today such thinking is derided as reactionary and unsophisticated. But population is intimately linked to national security. It's an exceptionally difficult subject to discuss openly because it often involves constructing hypothetical threat scenarios and identifying possible enemies.
But let's take it in a straightforward way. No one has greater faith in the US's resilience, staying power and reliability as an ally than this column but there is no guarantee the US will always provide security for this region and for Australia. Our military needs to be configured for more than the narrow continental defence of our territory because our interests are so much broader, but of course our military has to be able to dominate its own home area.
This is no easy task with a land mass the size of Australia. The defence white paper envisaged Australia with a force of 12 submarines. We now have an army of 27,000 regulars and about 16,000 reserves. And we are acquiring 100 fifth-generation Joint Strike Fighters or F-35s.
Treasury's Intergenerational Report foolishly projected a population for Australia of about 36 million in 2050. This was foolish because the figure seems too big to cope with, as all figures 40 years hence would. But this would involve a muchsmaller percentage increase than we undertook during the past 40 years. We are much richer now so we can afford the relevant infrastructure. So, suppose sometime shortly after mid-century we did more or less double our population from today. In that time we would have got richer in per-capita terms as well. That would mean we could envisage a force of 24 submarines, a regular army of 54,000 with 32,000 reserves and 200 F-35s.
Some people wrongly say that Australia could never take any independent military action on its own. Hopefully we would always have friends and allies. But 24 submarines at our disposal means anyone trying to interfere with us navally is going to need a vast armada that can sustain epic losses. Similarly with 200 F-35s and any hostile air force. You don't need to construct enemies to know that Australia at 40 million, young and strong, is infinitely more likely from a national security point of view to retain control of its destiny than an Australia of 25 million, old and weakening, or even declining.
Even now our population is radically too small in national security terms. During the past 10 to 15 years we have relocated a large portion of our defence forces to northern Australia. There is no real rationale for Darwin to exist other than as a statement that Australia lives in and controls this territory. Insightful demographer Bernard Salt has pointed out how much of our natural resource wealth is vulnerably located in northwestern Australia, where there is no population base.
The huge resources boom we are undergoing has led some to describe Australia as a possible Saudi Arabia of the South Pacific. I can imagine no more revolting a label than that. But think for a minute about Saudi Arabia's national security predicament and what this has meant for the world. Almost all of the Iraq imbroglio of the past 15 years is a result of Saudi Arabia being too decadent and too small in population terms to provide for its security against its avaricious neighbour, Iraq.
The term "resources curse" is familiar to economists. It refers to the syndrome whereby a nation is both blessed and cursed with resources wealth. This wealth makes the currency too strong to allow other export industries to develop and it concentrates economic power in the hands of government and a few companies, giving much of the rest of the economy the morally, economically and politically crippling status of rent seekers.
The best way to avoid this syndrome is to have a big, booming domestic economy full of diversity and internal competition. It's true that rapid population growth poses infrastructure challenges. But the pathetic failure of state governments to provide and manage infrastructure means they all need to be turfed out or reformed. The growth we are contemplating is not big by our past standards. In 1945 there were seven million Australians; in the following 65 years we grew by more than 300 per cent. In 1966 there were 11 million Australians, so in the 44 years since then we have grown by 100 per cent. In the Treasury estimate of 36 million by 2050, we would be growing by only 63 per cent from today. This strikes me as nothing more than a credible minimum.
The idea that Australia has a small carrying capacity is nonsense. Carrying capacity depends entirely on the technology we bring to bear on the situation. The US has a vastly more sophisticated national security debate than we do. In it a new book, The Next Hundred Million by Joel Kotkin, is playing a central role. The US will reach 400 million long before 2050. When it does, a quarter of its people will be over 60, compared with 31 per cent in China. It is this brilliant dynamic of growth and renewal that makes all the hard heads in security predict continued US dominance in security matters. If Australia, with a vastly more challenging security outlook than the US, chooses stagnation and decline, we will invite disaster.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/populate-or-perish-still-true/story-e6frg6zo-1225851108147