With dog whistles busy in federal politics, either through proposed citizenship and immigration changes or amazingly blond "Australia First" advertising, never mind the overt One Nation xenophobia, it's an interesting time to be recording a population milestone.
A little after Friday lunch, the population clock on the Australian Bureau of Statistics web site ticked over to 24.5 million.
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A population milestone
Our migration success story has provided rich rewards for our economy and reinvigorated our culture. Michael Pascoe comments.
The clock struck 24 million in February last year and, at the present rate of adding a net extra person every one minute and 22 seconds, it will hit 25 million in early October next year. Little Australia – and we are still little – continues to grow up.
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As well as the population clock estimate, the ABS on Tuesday will release its more demographic statistics for 2016.
It's likely to show our population continuing to grow by close to 1.5 per cent a year. It's been higher, notably during the resources construction boom, and it's been lower. It's a relatively high rate for a developed country.
What's unusual is the increasing questioning of immigration's role in that growth.
The ABS estimates there's a birth every one minute and 40 seconds, a death every three minutes and 18 seconds and a net gain of one international migration every two minutes and 18 seconds - the end result being a new person every one minute and 22 seconds.
With housing prices high in Sydney and Melbourne and national wages growth low, the anti-immigration forces are mustering on claimed economic grounds, as well as the usual populist fringe attacking as "un-Australian" whatever the latest wave of migrants might be.
Yet a strong multi-cultural nation is very Australian indeed. Some 28 per cent of us were born overseas, wave after wave absorbed. The sectarian xenophobes are the un-Australian minority.
The simplistic negative economic view of our migration program concentrates on the challenges of population growth. They seize on part of a Productivity Commission report on immigration released in September:
"High rates of immigration put upward pressure on land and housing prices in Australia's largest cities. Upward pressures are exacerbated by the persistent failure of successive state, territory and local governments to implement sound urban planning and zoning policies."
Those who would prefer to live under aspic only see migrants as competition for housing and jobs, not acknowledging that migrants' contribution makes more jobs possible, that one plus one can in fact add up to more than two, that Australia's potential is not a zero-sum game.
The anti-immigration chorus would prefer to reduce immigration rather than build the infrastructure to realise the nation's potential. They downplay or ignore the rich rewards of our economy and culture being reinvigorated.
There are claims and counter-claims on both sides of the migration economic argument, typified by an on-going academic fight over the impact on wages. As the Economist reported:
"What effect do immigrants have on native wages? It's perhaps one of the most important questions of labour economics. It's also one that is largely unanswerable. The problem is that it's almost impossible to separate cause and effect."
That's not enough to stop the arguments.
Australia's particular problems in coping with population growth partly come from the strength of that growth being unexpected. Property analyst Pete Wargent observes there are some 2.95 million more of us today than was forecast by the ABS to be the case in 1999.
"That's not to decry the forecasts, which must be always be wrong to some extent," writes Wargent.
"Rather this is to show the potential scale of the impact from the mining boom on the creaking infrastructure deficit."
So, throw the new babies out with the infrastructure underinvestment bathwater, or rise to the challenge and fix the infrastructure?
When the population clock struck 23 million in 2013, I wrote a piece welcoming 23 millionth Australian on the basis that the person was likely to be a new-born who, by the accident of the place of birth, had just won life's lottery.
For balance and probability, I made the 24 millionth a migrant. As pathetic and self-indulgent as it sounds, re-reading it in the present climate caught my throat and fuelled a little anger.
When there are echoes of the appalling Trump on both sides of our politics, population milestones should be a chance to embrace optimism about this nation, for political leaders to actually show some leadership, to educate and take pride in our story, instead of cringing to court the lowest common denominator, of bowing to the narrow, the ignorant and intolerant.
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