Australia lacks a coherent national approach to planning where settlement and growth happens. It's time to take stock of our cities and regions and work together to improve outcomes across the nation.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on population policy
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Australia's skilled migration program simply isn't working the way it is supposed to.
Immigration is neither the problem nor solution in many areas where Australia is off-track, from government debt to environmental action.
Population growth has pros and cons, and the Morrison government's plan is less about a change in immigration numbers than about increasing the benefits and minimising the costs.
Population growth in Australia is a problem mainly because of the lack of a coherent national policy to manage it. The focus needs to be on maintaining quality of life through sustainable growth.
Efforts by governments to redirect population growth to regional Australia have never worked. Even if such policies could be made to work, they probably wouldn't be worth the costs.
Many people think a population policy is about control – like the one-child policy in China, for instance. But modern population policies are about population-well-being.
Top contributors
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Demographer, ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National University
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John Daley is a Friend of The Conversation.
Senior Fellow, Grattan Institute
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Professor and Demographer, Macquarie University
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Thomas Wiedmann is a Friend of The Conversation.
Professor of Sustainability Research, UNSW
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Professor of Environmental Geography, School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW
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Associate, Grattan Institute
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Senior Research Fellow, South Australian Centre for Economic Studies, Flinders University
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Research Fellow, Charles Darwin University
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Practitioner in Residence, The Henry Halloran Trust, University of Sydney
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Adjunct Research Fellow, Monash University
