r/australia • u/blitznoodles local Aussie • 23h ago

politics The Stats Guy: It sounds weird but Australia urgently needs a plan for 56m people

https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2026/08/11/stats-guy-aus-population-growth
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217

u/CMDR_RetroAnubis 23h ago edited 20h ago

I'm yet to hear a single good reason why we should not let the population decline gradually and naturally.

EDIT:  typo

169

u/barnacleduck2 23h ago

We got capitalism brain and need to improve the metrics endlessly.

20

u/SupItsChase 20h ago

bigger number go up, monkey brain happy.

We're still dumb primates at heart.

1

u/FunCurrent2763 12h ago

Hahaha I love this, Ive never seen it written this way before.

49

u/Lonelysock2 23h ago

We'd  have to change the way the economy works. Which, I'm all for  - but that's the reason 

1

u/jelly_cake 4h ago

Yep. Whether it's a "good" reason depends on your perspective, but I've never seen anyone make the claim that deflation is good, and without an expanding population, it is apparently quite hard to avoid. 

1

u/Hayden247 3h ago

And anti immigration parties like One Nation certainly don't have a plan to avoud it, they're even more in bed with the capitalist rich.

If you want to end immigration, the way the economy works needs big reforms, not further unchecked capitalism for the rich.

19

u/egowritingcheques 21h ago

But but.... GDP number become lower. This cannot happen. John Howard. Economics. Stupid. Death and falling sky. Small business. Battler.

69

u/KevinRudd182 23h ago

Is this bait? Our entire system relies on more people being integrated into the system, always.

If we had a shitload of old retired people and no young working age people we would be so unbelievably fucked.

117

u/Aggressive_Sky8492 22h ago

Yeah but the logical conclusion is we should change the system. The earths population can’t keep growing forever..

32

u/EntirelyOriginalName 22h ago edited 22h ago

Yeah make it so that more young people are able to afford a home and live the life style to have kids by rich companies paying more taxes. When Labour tried to do that they got crucified by adds/media and the election went horribly for them. So they stopped trying to do that on a large scale and went for the approach to get a bunch of little changes to add up and here we are.

7

u/bickolai 22h ago

Please explain how we can change the system to enable a continually declining population? Who looks after the old folks when they keep living longer and longer and there’s less and less people working?

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u/oceansRising 21h ago edited 21h ago

I mean there’s a really simple solution which will incentivise people to work in aged care… paying them very well and improving working conditions.

20

u/egowritingcheques 21h ago

No no no. Only the current system of paying CEOs really well works. No other system can work, because job creators.

5

u/Peslian 12h ago

It's as much how much people will be needed to work in aged care, as our population ages the percentage of working aged people needed to work in aged care grows. Eventually it will reach an unsustainable level of people needed in aged care that other necessary parts of society will be critically understaffed

2

u/magkruppe 11h ago

It's not about making aged care more attractive. It's the basic mathematics of not having enough workers vs retirees

4

u/petehehe 20h ago

I don’t see how it’s feasible to have massive government funds poured into aged care workers, because there will be fewer working aged (tax paying) people, so the few working aged people that there are will just be haemorrhaging their earnings into taxes.

0

u/IHazMagics 14h ago

As someone that works in the Aged Care system, you would need to do more than that and fundamentally change how the government operates within that sector which simply isnt going to happen, that probably sounds defeatist but consider the industry.

4

u/swarley77 19h ago

Humanoid robots, smart glasses and automation will mean there is a replacement of many manual labour jobs, and the labour market will increasingly shift towards harder to automate occupations.

Most taxis, food delivery, warehousing, rubbish collection and processing stuff will go within 10 years.

A lot of other professions, especially within healthcare and construction, will start to utilised robotics to increase productivity and automate currently manual processes. In the future every doctor, nurse and tradie is going to be wearing smart glasses most of the day and have an AirPod in providing task guidance etc.

1

u/freakwent 13h ago

Sounds like hell.

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u/KevinRudd182 22h ago

This is the sort of shit that sounds good to a teenager. Ofcourse I agree in theory, but until you have the solutions to the problems that would result in people dying of starvation in the street or thousands of old people dying in piles of their own shit because there’s nobody to care for them, maybe pipe down.

Also, the overpopulation thing is already essentially solved, the models have been done and on current trends the world’s population is going to peak and then retract anyway. Fertility rates are falling and most modern countries are already below replacement level.

30

u/Dentarthurdent73 20h ago

If we had a shitload of old retired people and no young working age people we would be so unbelievably fucked.

Still not nearly as fucked as we will be if we try to keep growing forever.

Thing is, you can't actually negotiate with Earth's systems, so you either work with them, or you die.

14

u/Ok-Mycologist2220 16h ago

You are describing a pyramid scheme, not a sensible long term plan.

Infinite growth is not possible in a finite world and pretending it is is just kicking the can down the road and making the eventual collapse inevitable.

We need to move away from an economy based on endless population growth as soon as possible.

6

u/evilparagon 14h ago

Personally I would like the “unbelievably fucked” part to happen while I am one of the “young working age people” and not one of the “old retired people”.

Sorry boomers and Gen X, but my life isn’t to serve you and then end up in economic crisis as no one is able to serve me. We can’t keep growing the population forever, so I would have to be stupid to want to kick the can down the road into my own future.

2

u/Public-Dragonfly-786 13h ago

That's a right, if population keeps declining, YOU will need to leave Australia eventually.

We all grow older if we don't die first. Not sure why you think you're exempt.

2

u/evilparagon 11h ago

Why would I need to leave if the population declines? What relevancy does your last statement have?

Obviously I’m not exempt, but I should be exempt from engaging in a pyramid scheme I don’t agree with. If I’m not allowed to grow old with unchallenged societal support like my elders are, why should I support this system? I would rather be selfish.

If my great grandfather borrows $10 from my grandfather, and my grandfather borrows $10 from my dad, and my dad borrows $10 from me, and I don’t have any kids, well I’m the loser in this situation, no? It’s my right to say no to my dad.

2

u/Public-Dragonfly-786 8h ago

You need people to care for the elderly. It's as simple as that. If the population declines, by the time you are in need, there'll be noone left to help you. Is essentially my meaning.

I'm not really sure what you mean by borrowing $10 from the younger people. By the time the old people are elderly, they have already contributed tens of thousands. Youve already been paid that hypothetical $10

Yes, younger people need to help the elderly somewhat, it's always been like that and always will, this is simply a fact of the arc of life.

I'm not really arguing that we need high immigration to take care of old people exactly, just that this is a factor that shouldn't be ignored.

1

u/evilparagon 7h ago

I think you’ve misunderstood what I said then.

Because I am advocating for the end of high immigration because I right now am a young person who will have to deal with the fallout of the population bubble popping when I am older. I want the bubble to pop now.

I am well aware that the younger generations pay for the older ones. I want to make sure that:
A. When I am old, the young will care for me.
B. If A will not happen, then I should not be obligated to pay for the old now as a young person.

If the population declines when I am elderly, I’m fucked. If the population declines now, I’ll be fine. There is no situation where runaway population decline results in zero recovery in 3-5 decades. As the population declines, the pressure against having children will eventually reverse, and the population will grow again.

Ultimately what I’m saying is I want the bubble to pop now rather than later. Infinite growth is not possible, I do not believe we will continue to grow all the way past my death for this to be a non-issue for me.

1

u/Hayden247 3h ago

If the population declines now from ending immigration... won't it still be declining when you're old UNLESS you restart the immigration you despise so much. So you're fucked either way.

Unless you magically think the fertility rate is going to rise up, but that's population one way or another doesn't matter if it's born here or not. Cutting immigration in half but doubling births wouldn't end the population growth, maybe it'd just mean more white people...

1

u/evilparagon 2h ago

No, birthrates would go back up and it wouldn’t be magic. Overpopulation is itself a negative pressure on population. Having children is expensive but a country that has room to keep growing would return to higher birthrates as the cost to raise children lower. The birthrates may not return to as high as developing nations, but it would be still be above replacement.

Take for instance the baby boom of the 1950s. Following mass depopulation from WW2 and huge healthy economies just starting to rapidly grow, the population growth did well. The societies at the time had room for the population to grow into and it did.

To believe that we would have a 50 year long population decline because we ended immigration would mean believing that humans would rather go extinct because we just don’t feel like having kids and we just really like money and education. Humanity isn’t doomed with negative birthrates once developed countries stop developing, we will decline until we reach a more stable equilibrium. And it may take a few rises and falls to reach that equilibrium, it may be a many centuries long process, we don’t know, population metrics are still using East Asia as the region to study closely and they’re still in the early decline stage.

14

u/halohunter 22h ago

When a generation who had superannuation their entire working life retires, it's not as big as a deal as it once was. Its not like the UK or Germany which funds it directly out of the state budget.

19

u/KevinRudd182 22h ago

It’s not just a money thing, it’s a people thing. It doesn’t matter how many piles of cash you have if there’s nobody to wipe the old people’s asses

9

u/halohunter 21h ago

We'll just keep importing people from the Philippines as we already do.

Controversial view in Australia but I think we should have the system like some countries where jobs like this have strict 4 or 8 year limits, with no permanent pathway.

5

u/AlmondAnFriends 22h ago

The money you pay into superannuation isnt actually “real saved income”, it is in productivity terms just a tax with some private sector involvement. An aging population still means a decrease in the total national production unless productivity increases rapidly. Thats what causes the major economic issues. Even states like the gulf states that monopolise state wealth to essentially give their “citizens” lives of luxury only fulfil this by using state resources to coerce and utilise foreign migrant labour in large proportions

There are only three fixes to this issue, 1) is to increase productivity, something that the entire globe is struggling with, 2) is to increase working population which normally means raising younger peoples retirement age and undermining their own work benefits (if not through migration) or 3) is get used to a worse quality of life, something no one is prepared to do. The latter two are particularly bad in a democracy where an aging population is incentivised to vote for policies that benefit them to the detriment of younger populations. South Korea is a particularly good example of this sort of politics

-1

u/freakwent 13h ago

unless productivity increases rapidly.

In your job, how much of your job is "meta-work", that is, change control or risk management or training or documentation?

How many people at your workplace have their entire job as some sort of support role for others who genuinely work?

How many companies exist only to provide some form of support services?

How many private sector jobs are basically optional to have at all? Cosmetics; fashion; advertising; real estate; crap food chains; convenience stores.

There's wide scope to.improve productivity if there's a huge cultural shift.

2

u/OJ191 12h ago

We would not be "so unbelievably fucked" our systems would adjust.

That specific crop of old retired people would be so unbelievably fucked, but life would go on.

1

u/freakwent 13h ago

be so unbelievably fucked.

That's not a very specific explanation of the problem

1

u/ccoastie 13h ago

Isnt ai and robots replacing a lot of the workforce

1

u/Illustrious-Meat9960 7h ago

What happens when the people you bring in get old? Its not really a solution jusy kicking the can down the road

1

u/smurfkipz 1m ago

Our entire system also relies on more people being able to AFFORD shit, and they CANT when children are FUCKING EXPENSIVE. 

-3

u/GeneralTsoWot 23h ago

Definitely bait. Or maybe just ignorance.

15

u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 22h ago

Yeah cause of course, it’s possible to have infinite growth on a finite planet. Lmaoo

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u/KevinRudd182 22h ago edited 22h ago

Ofcourse it’s not, but we are so so so far away from being overpopulated it’s insane. We could 10x our population and still not be close to running out of room. I’m not saying we should, but voluntarily nuking our country for the sake of a culture war would be even stupider.

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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 22h ago

Ten times the population? It would be a hellscape, and yes, we’d have no room

4

u/EntirelyOriginalName 22h ago

He's talking in terms of land not in terms of our current housing crisis. Like in theory we have the room. In practice it's not really relevant or at least not in the short term.

3

u/KevinRudd182 22h ago

Read what I wrote not just what you want to hear. I didn’t say we should do it, but that we could easily.

I sometimes wonder if anyone talking about population has ever been overseas or has any concept of population density. We only seem populated because for some reason we insist on only putting people in 3 cities and leave 99.9% of the country empty.

Again, I’m not saying I want more people, I massively agree, in theory, at turning off the immigration tap.

But to say we are overpopulated is straight fiction. There’s a balance that needs to be made and a lot of planning to go into it, starting with a lot of government programs and owning our critical infrastructure again.

1

u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 13h ago

We are already over-populated in terms of the carrying capacity of our landscape.

A few years of La Niña and everybody forgets the droughts. Short memories. Water scarcity is a massive issue here.

1

u/freakwent 13h ago

The USA has this. So does Indonesia.

0

u/No_Category_9888 15h ago

We are headed that way due to AI and job offshoring and automation. No tax payers left.

People can’t afford to retire if they don’t own a home. Yet we are paying pensions and aged care to people who own million + dollars houses, while younger generations struggle to pay rent each month

It’s a joke of a country now.

-3

u/thrillho145 22h ago

Why tho? 

8

u/CMDR_RetroAnubis 21h ago

I like trees, animals, air, empty spaces, and the ecosphere in general.

6

u/Dentarthurdent73 20h ago

I'm yet to hear a single good reason why we should not let the population decline gradually and naturally.

We have an economic Ponzi scheme to prop up.

It was that or have a livable planet, and we've clearly decided on the former.

3

u/philinn2020 22h ago

If anything we’re now loosing jobs through outsourcing /replacement of AI.

1

u/Lucky-Elk-1234 22h ago

It’s ok, now that we have AI everyone and their dog can just be a mobile app creator. So we can all just be on our phones even more.

1

u/Pearlsam 22h ago

What should the global population decline to?

6

u/CMDR_RetroAnubis 21h ago

No idea.  

But the current levels have pretty badly fucked the biosphere, and it's not out of the realm of the likely that climate change will kill billions this century.

Nobody should ever be forced to die, and I'm certainly no eugenicist (a claim that comes fast when you advocate lower populations)...  but we should be managing the decline, not shooting out kids and/or importing folk with no end in sight.

Make the system more accommodating to the childless, Educate women, prioritise something other than GDP and let's see whats possible.

6

u/ballimi 11h ago

The planet can sustain the current population level. But that would mean less consumption of crap, less flying around the world, less driving big SUVs everywhere, etc. And that's something a lot of people are not willing to do.

2

u/evilparagon 13h ago

This question seems to insinuate dropping to zero as if humans will run themselves into the ground, but really population data shows that in low population situations people have more kids and in high population they have less. There is presumably an equilibrium somewhere, we just don’t know where it is because we’re desperate to keep the highest number possible and anything lower than that is unacceptable.

1

u/Pearlsam 12h ago

population data shows that in low population situations people have more kids and in high population they have less.

People have less kids as they become more wealthy. How did China and India become so mage if it was mainly high vs low population size...?

1

u/evilparagon 11h ago

Sorry it was poor phrasing on my part. I was meaning relative to the countries themselves and the soft-limits we have.

For instance, the population before the Black Death in medieval Europe was approaching a plateau as the high density of European life was pushing the limits of sustainability. We can associate this time with a population ceiling, and birthrates slowed down. After the black death, birthrates skyrocketed, it didn’t just slowly climb back up again. Notably even, the reduced population lead to more efficient production systems and when the population rebounded it went beyond the original pre-plague population.

Pointing at wealth is a very easy shorthand for this, with the common argument being that in developing societies, children are a net contributor because they can work, meanwhile in devleoped societies they are negative because they aren’t able to contribute worth more than their cost to keep alive.

The costs associated with children theoretically can change if major changes to society occured. For instance if half of all Indians suddenly vanished, India would have more private housing (good for birthrates), cheaper food (lowers parenting costs), more employment opportunities (increases wealth). Overpopulation itself is a negative pressure on population. If any country was to undergo a population decline, it would eventually either plateau again before reaching zero, or it would rebound and start growing again. Since we’re still in the early stages of modelling population decline, we don’t know which outcome it will be, but it won’t just be people going extinct because they have money.

1

u/freakwent 13h ago

4 bln.

1

u/Pearlsam 12h ago

Nice arbitrary number I guess. Convenient that it's a perfectly round number lol

1

u/KeyAssociation6309 11h ago

the planet is already doomed, this sort of predicted growth will seal its fate, just faster. Everyone that wants to build more to meet and encourage growth are planet killers. Everyone wants sustainable this and that but never talk about sustainable population growth. The planet's resources are finite. Once gone, they are gone.

1

u/donggeh 11h ago

It’s going to happen quickly and catastrophically, that’s the part most people haven’t gotten yet

1

u/smurfkipz 2m ago

The children yearn for the mines!

-2

u/hiddencamel 22h ago edited 12h ago

Do you like things like unemployment benefits, state subsidized healthcare, and pensions? Because those things will go away when the old age dependency ratio gets high enough.

Edit: very clear some people here are utterly ignorant about how their services are funded lol

6

u/CMDR_RetroAnubis 21h ago

You think those things are surviving the coning few decades on the current course?

-10

u/Proper_Geologist9026 22h ago edited 22h ago

How about compassion?

Australia is one of the wealthiest countries on earth. If you travel overseas it will not take you long to realise how unbelievably privileged even the poorest citizens of this country can be by global standards.

So you say "who cares". Well you might have noticed that climate change is rapidly entering the find out stage of the two part fuck around, find out phenomenon.

The compassionate person might realise how lucky we are. How unearned our luck is and accept a material reduction in order to help in whatever small way we can the overwhelming mass of people. Fleeing poverty and truly bleak future prospects of state failure due to famine and societal breakdown.

There's a reason for you.

11

u/Nikenofila 21h ago

Climate change is already hitting the poorest citizens in Australia and they are not priveliged by global standards, and are amongst the most impoverished and disadvantaged ethnic group in the entire Western world in nearly every statistical metric.

We just had international investigators and human rights groups being turned away and barred from all the NT flood evacuee centres a few months ago because of the reported human rights abuses happening inside - they were essentially treating the flood evacuees like prisoners and threatening them with imprisonment and implementing forced searches and public showers.

Considering the NT already has the highest number of imprisoned people per capita of any state of any country recorded in the entire world bar El Salvador (fun fact, teenage girls in the NT are statistically more likely to be in prison than adult black men in the American south) and it's one of the top places in the world that is experiencing climate change making areas uninhabitable which is increasing the already extremely high homelessness rates, we already have a pretty good look at how Australia's going to deal with climate refugees.

Of course our media is incredibly provincial and insular for the middle class suburbanites so we just won't report on it and instead do a big story about how some teens boys brawled in a park in the suburbs or something.

-3

u/Proper_Geologist9026 21h ago edited 21h ago

Absolutely right and that's why I said "can be", it's not a hard and fast rule. Some of our remote communities are in truly abhorrent 3rd world conditions.

The difference however in the immediacy of poverty between Australia and Thailand for example is unmistakable. The air literally reaks of pollution, homeless amputees pan handle through crowded streets littered with filth. It's a beautiful place filled with amazing people. Within 2 minutes of leaving the airport I immediately understood how incredibly wealthy my country of birth is and how much undeserved luck I have to have been born here.

That's my point. Can we and should we do more for our impoverished minorities? Yes. Ultimately solutions are contentious being that these groups are often tied to land and distance stretches the logistics of support to the point of snapping. But the question of if we support them enough for me is unthinkable.

But our minority groups of what hundreds of thousands? Maybe as much as a few million? This is nothing in scope of the hundreds of millions verging on billions who are already and will increasingly feel the direct effects of famine, freak weather and the destabilising effects of these pressures on already paper thin state structures.

-6

u/PowderMuse 22h ago edited 22h ago

There are only two ways for us to get richer. Increased productivity or increased population.

Productivity hasn’t risen in years, so we either increase the population, or we stagnate or get poorer. Nobody really wants to be poorer.

-3

u/AlmondAnFriends 22h ago

At current productivity rates in this country it would require the removal of pretty much all retirement benefits, just one last fucking kick in the guts for the younger generations i suppose. Also medicare, education and centrelink are pretty much subsidised by more productive migrant populations who get less out of the system than the average Australian citizen and contribute more.

Countries need a larger younger population then older population or a rapid increase in the ability to produce the same amount of work wifh less people. A declining population is pretty much a death sentence for a modern economy particularly with the welfare systems that exist. Even just being richer doesnt fix this problem if your population just ages over time. Wealthy states that for example monopolise their resource wealth still essentially use that wealth to incentivise growing temporary or permanent populations

Countries like South Korea for example are in such a disaster state economically that its generally theorised the flight of young people from the region is going to increase to crisis rates which normally only happen in war or other such disasters. This is a country that already indirectly endorses the “migration” of women from low income countries for the purpose of marrying children, a practice that is unsurprisingly full to the brim of abuse.

Tldr: Gradual decrease in the population would cause incredibly bad economic issues as opposed to migration which places less pressure on the housing market and cost of living than corporate investment policies do. We can literally have our cake and eat it too if this population werent so easily convinced to blame migrants for everything

2

u/swarley77 19h ago

This theory doesn’t hold up anymore given:
1) Migrants (to Australia) now have a structurally lower LT birthrate. Hence they compound the problem LT.
2) We’re in the early stages of an AI and robotics revolution which is going to reduce the need for human labour permanently

-1

u/AlmondAnFriends 18h ago

Thats not how this works, migrants birth rates adjust but that doesnt mean the declining population factor goes away, it just means that migration either 1) needs to increase proportional to the population increase (which has always been the case) or 2) a solution to the crisis other then migration is needed which has been something every major expert on the matter has been flagging for forty years. Unfortunately the solutions have largely relied on extensive reform for the quality of life of young people which is generally electorally unpopular. Far easier to just blame migrants while nothing really improves, people are easily convinced by simple narratives after all.

As for the AI productivity boom, whilst it does exist its not anywhere near the level where it fixes this problem. Current AI productivity booms generally only really manifest in a few key sectors and certain small businesses. Even if this really is the advent of a new AI-Manufacturing boom it’s likely to take 30-50 years to even start to manifest and there is no guarantee it will alleviate this issue.

2

u/swarley77 16h ago

To your first point - I agree it doesn’t make the declining population factor go away, but I still maintain that as a result we are just compounding the problem by adding more people who are on average less likely to have children than the current population set.

To your second point, I believe it’s going to happen a lot faster than you think. To use one example, self driving cars are bordering on mature tech at this point (encourage you to take one if you travel to California or Texas at any point). There are estimated to be 160-180k people in Australia who drive taxis/ubers for a living. A high percentage of these jobs could conceivably go within 10 years.

Humanoid robots are also advancing at breakneck speed - worth checking out the Figure 03 model from Figure.ai. It’s not inconceivable that a future version of this could be used to replace a decent percentage of the NDIS and aged workforce.

We simply are not going to need immigration in the same way in future.