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2009-10-08

Population aging - Australia should not be too selfish

Comments on Bernard Salt “Levers available to make up for exit of boomers”, 8/10/2009, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26179529-5016345,00.html

Salt’s argument sounds good from purely Australia and Australians point of view: to us immigration to solve population aging in Australia. There is no doubt about that logic and policy makers, bureaucrats and even the ABS have been using that argument explicitly or implicitly.

But what are the implications of this Australian story for the rest of the world, especially those countries where the migrations might come from? Would the Australian immigration help them solve their demographic changes?

If the answer is yes, the Australian immigration story is well and good. However, if the answer is no, then the Australian story is a selfish one: it would grab useful workforces from other countries to serve Australians only.

Of course, Salt argued that “Targeted migration aimed at fit young workers is a good deal for Australia, and in many cases for origin nations as well. Migrant workers pay tax and they also send money back to family groups. Total remittances paid from Australia over the last financial year were $816m. Our total foreign aid budget is just $3.8bn.”

Not bad, it sounds. However, it is questionable the $816m figure was really from migrated young workers and I doubt the statistics will be able to show that it was.

The second problem with this remittance story is the more significant problems of “brain drain” in those countries. Even the $816m was credible as the remittances from migrated young workers, it is unclear whether that could outweigh the losses those countries incurred due to the loss of those young worker to Australia.

To conclude, demographic changes and population aging is a wider issue than Australia’s alone and need to be considered in that wider context. Australia should not be too selfish and just consider enhancing only its interest at the expenses of other nations especially developing nations.

Maybe we are not used to this thinking yet. But it is time we approach the population issue holistically than we were used to. We need to consider a win-win outcome for all nations involved.

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