Egypt

Back in 1994 the UN had a major conference about the issue of global population, in Cairo. Unfortunately there was no international agreement reached about the need for countries to stabilise their populations, and we have seen since then global population, which for most of human history was less than one billion, increasing by a billion every 13 or so years. We are now at 7 billion and tracking for 9 or even 10 billion by mid-century.

Ironically one of the countries which has suffered most from the failure of the Cairo Conference was Egypt itself. In 1948 Egypt’s population was less than 20 million. It added a further 20 million by 1975, and another 20 million by 1994, the time of the Conference, and another 20 million to reach 80 million by 2011. The UN says that continuing high fertility rates would see Egypt reach 100 million by 2025 and 140 million by 2050.

In fact Egypt’s birth rate for the last three years exceeds the UN’s “high” projections. The number of births in the 1990s was 1.6 million on average. This increased to around 1.8 million births in the first decade of this century. There were 2.4 million births in 2011 and 2.6 million in 2012, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics. Back in 1950 Egypt had the same number of births as Italy. By 1977 it had the same number as Italy and France combined. By 2000 it matched the combined total of Italy, France and Spain, and by 2012 the combined total of Italy, France, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The consequences of this rapid population growth are plain for all to see – violent, debilitating conflict over access to scarce resources. The world’s leaders need to tell Egypt’s leaders that they need to stop focussing on today’s battles for just long enough to draw attention to the underlying problem, and the need to reduce their birth rate to more traditional levels. If they do not, it is entirely predictable that there will be more conflict and misery in future, not less. It is entirely predictable that many people will seek to escape the conflict and misery, ending up in boats headed for islands in the Mediterranean and other destinations. It is also predictable that religious leaders will urge the world to be compassionate and welcoming – religious leaders from the same religious organisations that worked hard at the Cairo Conference in 1994 to scuttle and undermine attempts to stop rapid population growth.

Institute of Public Affairs Cheerfulness

The Institute Of Public Affairs, a mouthpiece for the views of large companies, is strikingly upbeat about the modern world. Its latest publication, in a cheerful article titled Richer, Better, Cheaper, proclaims that free markets are making the world a better place, concluding that products are becoming cheaper, better, and more accessible for everyone right across the income spectrum.
 

Much as I wish to join in with their happiness, I find it hard to reconcile with the almost daily proposals to make things more expensive, on the basis that we can no longer afford things which in the past were free. There are proposals to introduce a new charge for visits to the doctor. There are proposals to introduce a charge for visits to hospital emergency wards. Infrastructure Australia says we should start charging motorists to use the roads, and get rid of the “entrenched culture” of treating infrastructure as a free public good. There are claims that we can no longer afford to keep Medibank Private or Australia Post in public hands, and no longer afford to keep Qantas in Australian ones. Furthermore it is none other than the Institute of Public Affairs which advances or supports such ideas.

 
It seems to me that if we can no longer afford things which we used to be able to afford, then perhaps ordinary Australians are not getting richer after all. Not that this actually worries the IPA, which represents the wealthiest Australians, who have most certainly been getting richer.

Extraordinary Call for Increase to Migrant Worker Program

It is astonishing that the Australian Industry Group is calling for an increase in Australian migration from 190,000 to 220,000, through an increase to our permanent Migrant Worker Program. First it is astonishing that they think the number should be lifted by 30,000, when as recently as twenty years ago the entire permanent Migrant Worker Program was less than 30,000.

Secondly it is astonishing that they want to increase the number of migrant workers when we are already unable to find jobs for Australian workers, including those who have come here on previous permanent Migrant Worker Programs. Last month unemployment increased by 3,400 to 712,500 Australians who cannot find work, and this number is forecast to increase.  Official forecasts are that the jobless rate will rise within about 18 months to 6.25%, and stay there through to the end of 2016-17. More Australians will be out of work than at any time during the past decade, and far more than during the Global Financial Crisis.  The forthcoming closures of Ford and Holden, job losses at Qantas, concerns for jobs at SPC Ardmona and Alcoa, the resources industry construction workforce winding back – all the indicators are that many Australians, including migrant workers, are looking for work or will be looking for work in the near future. They are entitled to our first consideration.

The Australian Industry Group says that increasing migrant numbers is needed to “support positive growth in our population”, and refers to relatively low levels of natural population growth. This is incorrect. For each of the past thirty-six years I have gone back to check this, births have exceeded deaths in Australia by over 100,000 – we have natural population increase by over 100,000 every year without any migration at all. In any event, population growth is not a good thing. It is putting great pressure on our environment, quality of life, housing affordability, traffic congestion etc.

 
The permanent Migrant Worker Program, referred to as “Skilled Migration”, should be used to bring workers with skills that it is not possible to find in Australia,  not used as a catch all scheme – recently we even saw calls to bring in truck drivers from overseas.  It should not be used to drive population growth, not used to put downward pressure on wages and conditions, and not used as a substitute for genuine action to train and skill young Australians. If we are fair dinkum about reducing unemployment, and fair dinkum about increasing workforce participation, we will reduce migrant worker programs, not increase them, and build and use the skills of out-of-work Australians.

The Changing Nature of Power

Some commentators are correctly observing that the nature of political and other power has changed a lot in the past couple of decades.

Nick Reece, Public Policy Fellow at the Centre for Public Policy at Melbourne University, says “From boardrooms to battlefields, from churches to nation states, being in charge just isn’t what it used to be”. He says power is moving from states to non-state actors and from state control to market forces. “In a deregulated economy, politicians haven’t controlled interest rates, the exchange rate, wage levels or prices for decades. Nor do they hold sway over industries like they did when they were protected by tariffs or regulation or even owned by the government”. (The Age 21/12/13)

Lord Paddy Ashdown, former UK Liberal Democrat leader, writing in the New Statesman (15-21 November 2013) points to the changes in global power taking place. “We are reaching the beginning of the end of six centuries of the domination of western power, western institutions and western values”. He says “Power is not only shifting laterally, but vertically, too. It is migrating out of the structure of nation states and into the global space, where the instruments of regulation are few and the framework of law is weak.”

He points out that those institutions growing in power and reach – the internet, trans-national corporations, international money changers and speculators, international crime and terrorism – operate oblivious of national borders and largely beyond the reach of national regulation and the law.

This decline in government power brings with it, of course, a declining capacity to solve people’s problems. Nick Reece makes the astute observation that the gap between public expectations and the capacity of politicians to meet them leads to “a sharp decline in trust and confidence in political institutions”, and that this is a global phenomenon. He says “Almost every advanced democracy in the world has a deeply unpopular government that is unable to deliver on its policy agenda”.

This is a very significant insight. But how can this unhappy state of affairs be altered? Nick says governments and political parties should campaign to increase political participation. But political participation has declined precisely because governments have surrendered power and are no longer capable of solving problems – given this, why would you bother?

The author Christian Caryl has also noted an increasing gap between rich and poor, with wealthy elites gaining immense sway over the political process. He says that in the United States 40% of political campaign contributions in 2012 came from one hundredth of 1% of United States’ households. The rest of the population feels increasingly divorced from meaningful participation. Christian Caryl says the erosion of alternative power centres, such as labour unions, contributes to a sense of rising cynicism and disengagement.

I think the Queensland academic Jane O’Sullivan has identified a key cause of the problem in her work on the burden of infrastructure provision on rapidly growing populations, which I have written and spoken about previously. In cities with population growth of 1% per annum or faster, no Council, State or Federal authorities are able to keep up, and many people cannot get basic problems solved.

Population growth also diminishes democracy, as pointed out by the late Professor Al Bartlett of Boulder Colorado. As towns and cities grow, people are no longer listened to as much as they used to be. They often respond to this powerlessness by disengaging from the political process, or with increasing resentment that can be seen in increasing incivility in our political discourse, or simply increasing incivility in our society full stop.

To stop the gap between the governing and the governed from becoming ever larger, and protect the quality of our democracy, I believe we need to stop the rapid population growth, and that countries should each seek to stabilise their populations. Only in this way can we retain the quality of our democracy and arrest the drift towards powerlessness, apathy and incivility.

The other thing we should do is recognise that although large corporations like disempowering governments and citizens, it’s not a good thing. We shouldn’t go further down this path. This means no to privatisations, and no foreign ownership of essential services. It means no to “investor-state dispute resolution” clauses in our trade treaties, which enable foreign corporations to sue the Australian Government if it takes decisions that disadvantage them.

 
And it means no to the silly idea I saw recently of amalgamating and reducing the number of Councils in Melbourne or Sydney. Larger Councils have increased the distance between Councillors and ratepayers, and even larger Councils will only increase the distance still further, leading to ever-more alienated and dis-satisfied citizens.

Proposal for Foreign Truck Drivers is Unsafe and Unnecessary

The Australian Trucking Association (ATA) has proposed adding truck driving to the list of occupations eligible for Australia’s temporary migrant worker program (“457” visas).

We are seeing an unacceptable number of deaths as the result of speeding, fatigue and poor maintenance caused by employers setting lunatic deadlines and keeping trucks on the road too long. A 2012 industry survey of drivers in the biggest supply chain, Coles, showed that 46 per cent of drivers felt economic pressure to skip rest breaks, 28 per cent felt pressure to speed and 26 per cent felt pressure to carry illegally overweight loads.

As the Transport Workers Union (TWU) has highlighted, Bureau of Statistics figures show there are plenty of people looking for work in the sector, but long hours, tight delivery deadlines and poor pay deter drivers from taking the jobs. Bringing in foreign drivers unfamiliar with Australian roads and road rules, and under unreasonable deadline pressures, risks an increase in the number of accidents involving heavy vehicles.

There is no shortage of Australian drivers. The underemployment data at August 2013 shows that 34,500 people were looking for work in transport, postal and logistics. As acting national secretary of TWU, Michael Kaine, says, “This is not an industry that is one that there's a shortage of people looking for work, this is an industry that needs to get those pressures lifted so that there's an attraction and retention rate in the industry for drivers”.

 
The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal was established to address these pressures and to mitigate safety issues in the Australian road transport industry and on our roads. It should be retained, rather than abolished as the Liberal Government wants to do, and we should continue to employ Australian drivers and give them decent wages and conditions. Cheap food and other supermarket items aren’t so cheap if it’s a member of your family involved in the next truck crash.

Unemployment to Rise - Time to Cut Migrant Worker Programs

The rapid increase in Australia’s migrant worker programs over the past decade has been justified with the claim that Australia is short of workers.

This claim is now clearly false. The latest unemployment rise, along with the certainty of job losses at Holden, Ford and Qantas, and projections that the resources industry construction workforce will collapse over the next 4 years, shedding more than 78,000 jobs by 2018, make this clear.

We are now being told that the jobless rate will rise within about 18 months to 6.25% from the current 5.8%, and stay there through to the end of 2016-17!

This means more Australians will be out of work than at any time during the past decade, and far more than during the Global Financial Crisis, when unemployment peaked at 5.9%.

Last month unemployment increased by 3,400 to 712,500. Surely we must give the over 700,000 Australians who are out of work, and the Holden, Ford and Qantas workers who are going to lose their jobs, our priority.

We should reduce both the permanent migrant worker program and the temporary migrant worker programs to the levels they were 10 or 20 years ago. That way the jobs that will be created in the next 5 years will go to Australians who are out of work, or who face losing their jobs.

If we are fair dinkum about reducing unemployment, and fair dinkum about increasing workforce participation, we will cut migrant worker programs and build and use the skills of out-of-work Australians.

Support Domestic Australian Meat Industry

The recent diplomatic disagreement between the governments of Indonesia and Australia and the prospect of Indonesia moving away from live export from Australia, is more evidence of the need to support domestic processing rather than live animal export.

As I have said previously, live export is not only a failure of ethics, it is a failure of economics. One of Australia's biggest cattlemen, Jack Burton, has failed to get support from the Federal Government for investment in onshore processing to reduce the industry's dependence on live exports.

Mr Burton said he had been trying unsuccessfully for several weeks to speak to Federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce about Government support for an abattoir in the Kimberley. His Yeeda Pastoral Company, which has about 60,000 cattle on seven stations covering about 1.2 million hectares, is building a $20 million abattoir with capacity to process about 50,000 cattle a year between Broome and Derby. Mr Burton wants to expand the project with Government backing in preference to selling off more equity to overseas investors.

 
With the industry concerned about the fallout from the Indonesian situation Australia needs to diversify itself, away from live export to a chilled meat trade that will create jobs in the struggling manufacturing sector. Minister Joyce should accept Mr Burton’s request to speak about this economic opportunity.