What do we do?
Well, welcome back to the science exchange here in Adelaide, where we're discussing
the science behind the headlines of population.
Only last month we topped 7 billion people on the planet and we're asking what's the
science behind population growth and the effects of population growth.
Now we've just had a great discussion with our panellists Graham, Udoi and Barney and
now it's time to throw it over to the media.
We've assembled a panel from the media to discuss how questions of population have been
dealt with in the media and what they have learnt from the discussions that we've had
so far tonight about the science behind population growth.
Please first of all could you welcome here tonight the senior creative writer from the
Australian radio network Tom Bourne.
The acting editor at the online option site The Punch, Tori Shepard and science journalist
at the Adelaide advertiser Claire Petty.
So just briefly going around the panel, how did you guys report the population reaching
7 billion last month, Tom, did you do anything with that startling day?
I personally know, what I do believe there was a little bit of a conversation as part
of the radio and it's pop culture, there probably would have been a little bit of conversation
with the breakfast team, particularly given Snowy and his desire for overpopulating the
planet single-handedly.
I think there was also something that was reported, just a piece in the news broadcast
but they're not massively in depth news broadcasts, we're not that kind of station.
Tori, The Punch.
I went straight to Graham, so as soon as the story started gaining some legs I thought
he's the go-to man for a lot of the demography side of things so we got him to write us a
straight piece and The Punch is more about starting the conversation and seeing where
it goes from there.
So I think opinion was a really interesting way to get into it because it gives it the
space for people to elaborate and take it further and post links of their own and see
where you end up.
And Claire, you were actually on leave, I gather.
Yes, I was on holiday so I was more of a consumer of the media and I remember listening to a
feature-linked documentary on Radio National and also hearing speeches on the science show
but I did a quick search trying to access the advertiser's records to see what we did
and in the end at least identified a feature-length report from Mark Kenney which is a political
reporter, Canberra Bureau, so he normally does all the, you know, Gillard does the other
type stories and he reported on the Thursday prior to the Monday milestone about the report's
release coming up and went into quite some detail but also quoted the Australia Institute
Richard Dennis.
I think it would probably meet your expectations, it covered a lot of the issues, it was quite
meaty, Tori said she also remembered seeing lots of picture stories celebrating, we saw
that baby is maybe the seven billionth baby.
There was some pretty appalling stuff around, there was a family, I think in the Philippines
who claimed theirs was probably the seven billionth baby so, yeah, embarrassing to say, but that
wasn't the advertiser so that's a good thing.
Was there coverage across the media that was of the sort of depth that we heard earlier
on where it's not just about seven billion people, it's about consumption, it's about
the distribution of resources, did they come into the reportage that you saw on the issue?
I think people pick one issue at a time, honestly, so often you'll see population climate change
or you'll see population and labour shortages or you'll see, so the media being what it
is or most of the mainstream media just doesn't have the space to talk about it holistically,
which is a real shame because obviously listening to these guys, it's pointless to do otherwise.
And we're also prone to looking for the silver bullet which is much loathed by the scientists
as well.
There was a, well, let's start, part of a series of reports I suppose on SBS and stations
like SBS and the ABC are very important for getting this sort of reporting out, as I was
saying before.
On our station we wouldn't have done that so much because so much of it is, so much
of media is about what people want to listen to, I mean, or watch or read.
We can't force people to sit down and do this, so we have to put something out there that
people want to consume because that's obviously how we get our advertising dollars and that's
how we get paid.
But the government-funded stations that pour the resources into bringing this sort of science
to the foreground, from what I saw on SBS, they do a good job.
And what about the diversity of perspectives within science as we brought out in the discussion
earlier?
You know, you have everything from, we're all going to die through to we can populate
forever and there is some justification either end.
So is there any scaremongering in the reportage as far as you could see or?
They do make headlines.
They're great, I don't know, they sell papers.
Not from what I saw on the SBS, I mean, as I understood it was a series of reports and
I caught parts of the two.
And yes, one was climate change, all was economic growth, so an interesting deal.
There's also a smaller scaremongering I think that goes on and that's appealing to people's
everyday life that, you know, this is why you're in a traffic jam today, it's the seven
billion people or, you know, scaremongering about immigrants or, you know, asylum seekers
because a couple of boatloads are going to tip us over, that sort of thing.
So that's where a lot more of the scaremongering comes in rather than your Nathusian scenario.
How did you guys view the media coverage over the last month or so of seven billion people?
Is there any news article that sticks out in your mind and why?
In fact, it's interesting, I was reading the newspaper item that particular day, Australia
as well as India.
One of the things I pointed out to Australian was a bit of a misleading statement in the
media, it says, today is a seven billion baby, but it's not the seven billion baby, it's
a seven billion living person on earth.
In fact, the world has seen 110 billion babies so far in the history and it was pointed out
in Australia, big head Australian, the big heading seven billion baby in the world and
I looked into Indian newspaper, every US seven billion baby, it's not, it's a completely
misleading statement.
But is that, just plain devil's advocate though, Yudhoy, is that really a fundamental
point or is that just a great little piece of pedantry that you picked up on?
I think it's a mix of both probably, I mean, to the general people to see how much population
we have seen in the world is basically 110 billion, it's not the seven billion, so we
have gone through a history of 110 billion in the human history, which is amazing and
you have, when you relate it to some of the policy issues, you have to know the history
and the facts, you know, sometimes otherwise you can go completely wrong, you know.
Graham, how did you find the reportage?
I found it okay actually, I think with population, most change is incremental, you don't sort
of wake up and the population is massively different than it was yesterday, but over
a period of time it changes and so it's gradual and so it takes something like the seven billionth
person to actually draw attention to what the issues are and so a lot of the issues
which were raised in the media were ones which wouldn't be raised otherwise other than for
the fact that that seven billionth person on the earth was there, so to me it was a real
opportunity to get a lot of these issues out there and I think it's pretty unfair to expect
a depth of coverage in a news service, so it's got to be enough to get people to maybe
seek information further and I thought from that point of view it was okay, but I really
take Tory's point about migration, I think the media coverage of migration in Australia
is poor, I think it is totally misrepresentative of the situation and particularly focusing
as it does on asylum seekers, I think it goes beyond reporting public opinion, what it does
is create public opinion and to me it is something that I think is quite poor, but seven billionth
not a problem.
Scientists like me are usually looking a bit past that and into what the next set of projections
are and the idea that around that time there is another set of UN projections or from a
reputable authority coming out and saying nine billion, you know, maxed was a bit of
a lost hope when we were going to go to 10, so that the scientists when he or she is looking
at this instantaneous slice through, as Grana Yudai say, one demographic moment when we
spend all of our lives thinking of structures and 100 year runs and things that change slowly,
it was a fair coverage, but you know, ho hummish from my not overly given great depth I agree
on the science show and a couple of ABC specials that ran for about two or three weeks, so
they only get to the 100,000 that listen.
So far we have got thumbs up on the SBS and ABC.
Not that I want my old job back, we were talking earlier and it has come out today about we
are dealing with a complex system here and talking about the one policy lever when we
have got to be trying to tell people about how we, you know, fiddle with about ten big
policy levers and don't have a crash or a fight, you know, a wholesale catastrophe in
between these.
I think one of the challenges of the future around the population debate is how we get
across complexity in 800 word op-ed for example, I know you can't get in 200 words up, but
that's where we are going I think.
The debate around the basic stuff, how did you feel about going to Bishop Pell or going
to Tony Abbott or going to even Tim Flannery, I mean Tim Flannery is not a demographer,
was it fair for them to come in and talk population, was your nose put out of joint, how did you
feel Graeme?
No, certainly nose wasn't out of joint, no, but I think the population debate is not
just for demographers, to me it's a debate which every citizen has got a stake in and
there's no particular discipline that's got a, you know, got rights over it and where
you're dealing with population, I think it's good that they've gone outside of demographers
because we're talking about, you know, what are some of the implications and that's really
good if we go beyond looking at what the numbers are to what the implications are and I think
going to a broad range of people is fine, now whether it might be those people in particular
I'm not sure.
I was going to say because surely, you know, there must be some qualification on that because,
you know, personally the idea of anyone advocating 400 million people for Australia is I find
terrifying and they're not doing it from the basis of any rational evidence.
No, I think one could question those particular individuals but I think the point of it just
being something for demographers to comment on, you know, I disagree, I think it really
is something which is of much broader significance.
Yidoi, were you happy with the, I probably have a similar opinion like cream, I think
it has, everybody has the right to, so it's a population issue for everybody should know
but I think a better understanding of the population dynamics help, it's not just the
number.
But did it help necessarily?
I mean, when you go to certain shock jocks, I mean, the way that they would, or did portray
the whole question, it was all about, hey, we've got, now that we've got a billion Indians,
how many of them are on their way here?
You know, I mean, surely that must have rankled?
Yeah, that's true, I mean, sometimes it's very much political as well, the number games,
you know, this has come out with some kind of numbers, you know, that get some advantage
of it to popularize things, you know, I remember very recently I was in another, I was not
a panel member but I was attending a discussion, a very young lady, it was in the art station,
the discussion on that failure, the lady said, she was very energetic, very enthusiastic
and she said that we should aim for five billion, global population, very soon, and it was,
I don't know how it is possible, I mean, those kind of statistics, we have, what we
know we have around seven billion now, as demographer we know it is inevitable that
we will have around 9.7 billion, whatever the success story, around 9 to 9.7 billion,
so we have to be very practical, that we are going to add another 2.5 billion, then see
from here, rather than kind of thinking very uncertain things, that this is certain, almost,
then how you go forward from that, now from seven billion all of a sudden you are talking
about the five billion, where these two billion will go, how come it is possible, all of a
sudden you cannot just say they will disappear, when I asked her in the question, what is
your opinion, how you are saying that in the near future we should have five billion, where
these two billion will go, whereas the reality is that we are going to add another 2.5 billion,
so look forward from there, what is that, instead of giving very kind of bizarre statistics,
so that is a bit scary, that is why I am saying that it is always good to know the internal
kind of dynamics, how populists and dynamics work, that helps to address it better.
Barney, were there people coming into the debate that you wish didn't come in?
Ah well I think George Pallan, 400 million, some people shouldn't be given air, but more
to...
That would bring the population down.
More to the point, you know, I think the media that is allowing those sort of things
should be able to be following up with a series of structured questions that in themselves,
not just get it, they have got to be well briefed themselves so they can ask the underpinning
question, well what will this mean for water greenhouse, and you know even for example
Adelaide's own Senator Penny Wong, you know, in dealing with greenhouse issues of which
he had a part in the previous portfolio, you know, it just seems incomprehensible, can't
understand that Australia cannot meet a greenhouse target and have a large rate of population
growth simply by decoupling the dollar from the energy, whatever, you know, and no one
ever hammers them on it, you know, no one would knowledge hammers them on it about, you know,
not only the dynamics of the demography, but also the dynamics of the stock turnover of
the electricity generation and so forth, and whether we are going to have consumptions
of Adelaide households to allow South Australia to meet each energy and greenhouse targets,
you know, always it's too shallow, they don't follow up with the bits of the equation which
if they are going to be a journalist they should understand those things.
How about you guys when covering something like population, are there, without naming
names are there people you would avoid or people that you don't think should be brought
into the discussion, I mean you've got to present both sides of the argument and everyone's
got a voice, are there limits to that?
Yep.
Well it's a big discussion that we often have, you know, do you let climate change
deniers have a voice, do they deserve 50-50, well I don't think so, you know, 9-11 truth
it's, there are certain people that, you know, that's not balanced to allow those people
the oxygen that you might want to deprive some other people of, now I'm not in a reporting
role at the moment, I reckon Claire's probably well placed to talk about are there people
who, if you've got a press release, that was some quotes from someone, but you knew they
were all kind of wrong, no?
I've actually been told off before for censoring certain aspects of debates, particularly around
climate change, I've been told, you know, Claire you're not, you're not the filter,
you need to give people an opportunity to have their say, that kind of thing, because
I have tried to avoid reporting on those that I don't, like as Tori says, I don't want to
give them air, I don't deserve it, but that's apparently not my role.
It's a very difficult balance though, because, you know, how much should journalists be
filter, how much should we go, oh Lord Monkton's here, I don't want to give, there's someone
I don't want to give oxygen, but it's high profile, it's news, what he says is news,
so I think it's really difficult, and I guess everyone makes their own decisions on a day-to-day
story-by-story basis.
What about you Tom?
Again, I can only speak from, I guess, a commercial station point of view, and in that, more than
anything what they tend to do is throw the phones open to the every person, and just
get their thoughts, feedback, and they're talking about people who certainly don't have
the facts, figures, and the knowledge to back up what they're saying, it's the stuff that
they've been fed.
And we're kind of touching.
That's a different situation though of, you know, throwing it open in a talk-back situation
to say it's the morning of the announcement of 7 billion people, and you've already lined
up two people to talk about it, one's a demographer, and one's a social philosopher, and suddenly
the demographer falls over, and you're left with one talent, and you wanted two, and you're
scrambling on the phone.
I mean, is there any port in the storm?
Do you put anybody to wear?
Well, what you could do is you could pre-record something like that just to make sure it goes
to wear, but the other thing is you've got to make sure it's snappy and entertaining
and fit it in two minutes, that's the reality of it.
Seven billion people in two minutes, folks, talk.
Sadly, sadly, like I said, that's why I've got a lot of time for the ABC and SBS, and
the ability of them to put together terrific reporting packages, and I'm a big fan of documentaries
and those sorts of things, they're terrific.
I guess, and this is me thinking from a market point of view now, the opportunity is there
to jump on the back of news stories as they come along, so Christmas is coming, and we
all know there's going to, then there's a sale straight afterwards, and boy, that's
a big news story, how many people are going to be lining up in a Rundle Mall?
Okay, well, that's going to be the case.
Let's start talking about consumption.
As Dr Sikir was discussing, there's an opportunity to start speaking about those sorts of things
and piggybacking off the things that are newsworthy.
I think one of the issues which is really important in all this is that very often the
scientific commentators aren't trained in the ability to be able to get the message across,
and I think there's a tendency to always point finger at the media who's dealing with
maybe 20 different issues during a day, and it's supposed to get across them, and in fact,
I think scientists really do have a responsibility for being able to present their findings in
a simple way in which it is brief and which is to the point, so I think if we're going
to do this properly, and to me, the media is absolutely crucial, because these are issues
which we have to have an informed debate, too much of it is interest groups, too much
of it is people pushing a barrow, what we really need is the sort of information about
the real impacts on the environment, those sorts of issues, that has to be out there,
and getting that sort of halfway point between the experts and the media in such a way as
a message gets across to the community which is informed, but comprehensible and digestible.
It takes both sides, I think.
Can I just say, and I'm sure Claire would agree, Oscience Media Center has been an enormous
boon in that, and you know, long may they help us, geez, I don't know, how many times
a week?
All the time.
Yes, the lifeline, that's what I call it.
And you're not saying that just because you've got half the Oscience Media Center sitting
right behind you?
I do, I do.
Not just because of that, but they have helped me out so often.
It's okay, blind plugs and sucking up, we allow it here, the other eyes.
But seriously, that's in those moments when you've got access to all the crazies, but you
want the scientists to give you a quick grab, and you don't know who to call, it's like
who are you going to call, Science Media Center, it's like, Ghostbusters.
I wish every state had one.
Oh, they do.
I don't think they know about that, they just wear half into it.
They do a terrific job.
Look, let's move along because now it's your time for questions from the audience.
James here has a microphone, and if you have a question, if you can indicate to James,
in fact, if we can start out with the gentleman down the back, who you had a question a little
while back.
And if you have questions at the top, apparently the routine is, if you shout them down to
me, I'll relay them.
Oh, you have a microphone up there.
Oh, even Axlindra.
Thank you, my apologies for interrupting earlier, the question was, is it the media's responsibility
to engage in this argument, or are they just reporting what the politicians say?
I'm thinking of the asylum seeker debate.
As with all things, it's both, and I think the politicians are equally blameable in that
argument in terms of the populist positions that are being put forward, but I don't think
the media is blameless in that whole area, but I think that is one classic case of a
population issue where there is, we're crying out for a more balanced, informed view in the
community.
And I don't have any doubt at all that the community's view on asylum seekers is being
shaped more by this representation of the issue rather than what the facts are surrounding
it.
Do you have another question then?
Yes, thank you to the expert panel being most informative, and also to the media who've
been most informative, but it raises, for me, the idea that the expert panel has recognised
that in Australia what we need to do is curb our consumption.
And I don't think it's an accident that the non-commercial ABC and SBS did the best balance
coverage on this, and I just wonder if the commercial media is in a position when they're
coming up to the Christmas sales, the Christmas, pre-Christmas period, and the New Year sales
to actually try to inform the Australian population that they should be looking to conserve their
consumption.
So I see this as quite a dilemma, and how do we overcome it?
Yeah, let's put this one back to the media panel.
Tom, are you part of the problem?
Yeah, actually this does come straight back to me.
Because being a commercial network, our money comes from advertisers, and the advertisers
are generally people trying to sell stuff, and boy, they want to sell a lot of stuff,
and even the rotten stuff by that, and in fact, give us some money, you can come back
next week and get some more stuff, it's what they want.
How much does that actually shape what goes out on your radio station?
Maybe it might be gentler if you were to say a hypothetical commercial station.
No, no, no, I'm okay with it.
Look, it does, it does, because we need money, we've got budgets to make, we've got people
that need to be paid, a lot of them are stakeholders and people like that who get a little bit
more than me, but let's skip over that.
But yeah, they want money in, they want money in, and there's people out there who, there's
a pie, everyone wants the largest slice of it they can get, so it's an ugly beast and
it is what it is, but like Dr Hugo was saying, it's a complex problem, there's no silver
bullet.
Where do you start?
Claire?
I don't know that that's necessarily true for the advertiser.
We did like a 10 part series, 24 pages each or something crazy about climate change, but
in context of consumption in 2007, there was quite a lot of information in there, and we
also do quite regularly feature articles on the, what they call the issues page, explaining
ecological footprint and consumption and how many plants we're going through every year
and all that sort of thing.
I think that's quite divorced from us trying to sell products, but I don't think anyone
makes that connection, but if you were starting to try and talk about changing the economic
model for which we're all always aspiring for growth, then they'd probably just like
have a brain freeze and not be able to cope with that idea.
But on a daily basis, we still have a line between editorial and advertising.
I mean, I know a lot of people don't believe that, but you know, we go in every day looking
for the best stories.
We don't go in worrying about anything else.
So you think that in the commercial media, you can have a separation of the commercial
imperative of the organization and the editorial content?
Absolutely.
I don't think they've been very...
Even when they're in conflict?
They haven't intersected in my time at the advertiser in five years.
Okay.
We have another question from the floor.
Yes, could I put a few figures to the panel, because I think the discussion tonight has
been somewhat misdirected, and I'd make a bold statement that the global population
is not going to hit 9.7 billion or anything like it.
Hunter-gatherers, like most other creatures, are about 10% efficient.
So they had to collect about 10 kilojoules for every one they expended in their hunting
and gathering.
In contrast, in modern industrial agriculture, we spend about 10 kilojoules to put one kilojoule
on the table.
Our agriculture is about 1% as efficient as the agricultural methods of hunters and gatherers.
That is only made possible because we're using vast amounts of petroleum.
80% of our energy that goes between the farm and the table comes from petroleum.
Petroleum is running out.
Something like 17% to 18% of Australia's primary energy goes into food production.
Australia is not now living sustainably.
So we can distill this down to a question of, are we living beyond our resources there?
We are living grossly beyond our resources, and I'd put it to the panel that what we might
be doing is for Australia to set up a model of sustainability and sell that to the rest
of the world, rather than just simply trying to compete with the rest of the world.
Let's take the first part, or the first question first, we are living unsustainably by massive
use of energy resources in food production.
Huge problem, and Australia already spends $20 billion a year in oil imports, and most
of our diesel comes from Singapore, from the Jurong refineries.
And if a terrorist does a good hit there, we almost stop Australia running within 10
days.
The food issue is one that, if Adelaide or any city around were thinking about it, you've
got to keep basic food resources, I'm not talking about wheat fields, but veggies and
all that stuff.
It would be a wise thing to keep it within kooee, so to speak, and within kooee is with
...
Another metric.
Another metric, within 20Ks of where most people live, or some, I talk about in people's
backyards, if they're only 30% self-sufficient in green leaf veggies, we'd be getting somewhere.
So this oil issue, no politician will touch it, and it's not suddenly going to disappear,
but a coals truck arriving at the coals, or I shouldn't mention their brand names.
Well, not the ABC, you know.
Well, coals or woolly truck arriving with that day's food, these things, it could be
a sharp, sudden snap or a slow decline.
So this applies equally, not, in fact, developing countries can probably survive a lot better
in a high price oil era than we can in our developed countries.
So it's a real issue, and as John probably alludes to, a lot of our nitrogen fertilizer
comes from petroleum source as well, so the ability to steam up South Australian grain
yields by putting the anhydrous ammonia or the urea on will probably become a very high
priced input as well.
Graham, if I could get you to tackle the second part of the question, and that is that should
Australia be making itself into a model of sustainability to lead the way for the rest
of the world?
Definitely.
And to me, Australia's got such enormous advantages that are being squandered, and that to me
would be a very admirable thing to do, and it would take some enormous changes.
And one of the things that worries me a bit in the discussion about reducing consumption,
because, you know, what John said, you know, says, we basically have to change not just
the level of consumption, but the way we consume, and that to me is absolutely fundamental.
And I think it's very easy to say, well, that's the government's responsibility, or
it's the media's responsibility, but it's individual's responsibility, because the only
way in which it's going to change is for individuals, people, reducing the amount that they consume
and the way in which they consume.
And I don't think we, as a society, take this on as an individual responsibility.
We'll all sign up to it as a collective thing, which the community has to do.
But, you know, until we get that cultural change that day-to-day individuals are going
to make that difference in the way in which they do things, I don't think we're going
to get very far.
But leadership from government and signals and the way in which we organise our society
is absolutely crucial, but I don't want to neglect the fact that we all have to change
as individuals.
The leadership from government to paraphrase Gandhi, I think that would be a wonderful
idea.
You have actually touched briefly on the relation between demography, population and economics.
Perhaps there's no better example than two countries in the world now that have the lowest
fertility rates, Italy and Spain, and indeed are at the verge of economic collapse, accepting
that they may be slightly less effective in what they do than the rest of Europe or the
rest of the western world.
Is this telling us something about the inadequacy of the economic system in a state of maintaining
the population stable?
Should we really take some insight from this dangerous situation in which we all live?
This is a declining birth rate despite the best efforts of the former Italian president.
That is something of a conundrum, isn't it?
There are two cases where you have very low birth rate and there are economic basket cases.
And I think one could add, not an economic basket case just yet, but a country in trouble
is Japan with a very, now a declining population.
But I think of withdrawing too long a bow to say that the economic troubles are demographically
sourced, I think what they do point to, though, is that the balance between your working age
population and the dependent population is a factor in the economy.
It's not the only factor and it's not the overriding factor, but it's an element that
has to be factored in.
And this is, I guess, my argument in the Australian case.
I think when we're looking at sustainability, at the environment and population, it shouldn't
just be the numbers, it's the population, not just in terms of age structure, but training
and education and all those sorts of things as well.
But I think the point made is an important one, but I think it would be a very long bow
to draw to suggest that demography is the result, is the cause of the economic demise.
Do you talk about it?
No, I think it's a very right point, I mean, there has been a fear factor, I mean, with
this population decline, probably will lead to kind of economic collapse.
I went to Germany a couple of years back to attend the international conference and there
was a famous demographer who was a keynote speaker.
He was very angry with the German society, he said, so low fertility here.
And he was also linking it not only to the economic fear factor, but also he was linking
it to the kind of cultural identity.
He says that in the future there won't be German society anymore, because we are shrinking
now in reality, where the German culture would be.
And he said German society has become so child unfriendly, and he noted an example, he said,
if you go to some German restaurant, it seems, it says, dogs are welcome, not kids.
So that's a whole social...
So, I mean, there is a fear factor, definitely, very right, and I don't know how much...
And how much of this is just a correlation without necessarily causation?
I mean, you could also say Spain and Italy have high consumption of olive oil, maybe
that's got something to do with it.
I was going to jump in and say there's, you know, part of living, you know, within the
nation state in a globalised economy is that you've got to live within your means too.
And if you have a black economy in Italy which, you know, does 40% of the economy or something,
and they don't collect taxes, and yet people want to retire at 60 and live out their long
lives with grappa and spaghetti, you know, you have to get, as Graham says, a sage of
the all the time.
You have to have all of those elements lined up to ascribe it to a low fertility rate is
erroneous.
All right, I gather we've got another question down the back.
I'm a little bit puzzled by a bias, it seems, in the conversation regarding population and
consumption.
Nobody, for example, is talking about reducing Australia's population by 50% within 50 years.
And in fact, we've been told that we need to maintain a low population growth in order
for the economic health of our economy.
But the politicians are talking about cutting consumption by 50% in 50 years.
And we have an economy that's 70% dependent on retail consumption.
So isn't it a bit disingenuous to start saying that, oh, yes, we can just cut consumption
and everything will be fine?
And on the other hand, to say, oh, any decrease in the population will be a problem.
Seems to me that there's a great bias towards favouring cutting consumption and against
any thought of, well, even stabilising the population.
I guess I'll take that one on in terms of 55% or up to 60% of our GDP, if you take that
as a measure, comes from consumption, what we do down the mall, and in this big splurge
that we're getting ready just before Christmas.
Now, but GDP can come from many issues because tax hire and take that back to 50 or 45% and
put a lot more money, for example, into the low carbon transition, which in itself would
make jobs and economic enterprise and value adding.
And so just at the moment, and I should also add that this consumption splurge to the last
15 years or so has led us to be, as a nation, households, 170% their debt is 170% of their
disposable income each week or over the year, I think that is.
And so there are many levers again.
The consumption one is one and we don't have to take us back to the dark ages to allow
the rapid transit, the better cities, the rivers that flow free, all those sorts of
things to be invested in and engaged.
But yeah, we do have to tighten our belts with and we can't have a flat screen telly
in every room.
I mean, I should add, I mean, I certainly wouldn't be looking at reducing consumption
as being some magic bullet as to solve everything.
I mean, to me, the whole issue that I'm trying to push is to put all of these things together
and it's just as much a magic bullet to say reduce population as it is to say reduce consumption.
To me, all of those things have to be done together and if you were to ask me what I
would see as being the preferred future for Australia's population, it is definitely as
a stable population, one that's not growing.
But in getting to that state, we may have to go through some periods of minor growth
in order to achieve that state with a balance between our working and non-working age population.
But to me, the science hasn't been done of looking at all these things together.
We've got all of the silos of different pieces of information about the impacts on the environment,
the problems with our resources, food security, which was rightly raised as an absolutely crucial
issue, but we've got to put those things together.
Okay, we've got two more questions and then we'll round it out and we're going up to
the mezzanine now.
Hello up there.
Okay, we mentioned religious and cultural constraints on fertility.
I was wondering if you think government policies can work in line with the need to limit our
growth considering the influence exerted by religious groups particularly in trying to
limit things like abortion and contraception?
Who wants to tackle this one?
You were asking about the influences from religions on issues like abortion and contraception
that are running against good population policy.
I'll take it if no one else will.
Go on then, Tori.
What have you got to say about that?
I think particularly in the pockets that you were talking about before, where you're talking
about Africa, pockets of Asia, so on and so forth, you have Catholicism and Islam and
some really odd cults getting around and they often have a much stronger influence on what
people do in their day-to-day lives and say what the government policy is.
I don't think there's an easy answer to that, but certainly education is part of it and
having NGO groups in there who can work out a way to deal with those cultural sensitivities
and make a change to how people again act in day-to-day lives, well then that would
be a really important thing to do.
You were saying that 25% of pregnancies are unintended pregnancies, so that's a whole
lot of unintended pregnancies right there that I think it would be really important
to tackle and I think we have to be culturally sensitive about things, but we don't have
to be so politically correct, we don't talk about ways to tackle it.
I think it's a very good point, Tori, when we relate it to the developing countries,
now the law of conversion is going on to kind of Catholic society.
What I found, because my PhD was on one of the tribal communities in India where a huge
conversion to Christianity has occurred in the last 100 years and what happened in there
is they believe in what the religious priest says very literally and don't believe in modern
contraception, they will exactly do that and that's not the case in probably the western
part of the world.
Many Catholic societies you will find very low fertility, but this is a big issue in many
developing countries including Africa and also in some parts of Asia, but I think with
the education improvement in education, those religious barriers will fade away at one point
of time, but at the moment, yes, there's a big influence.
And the last question is, where is it, you had another question for, no you didn't, oh
that case, we've come to the end then.
Well, that came out of nowhere, then the ladies and gentlemen, we've had a fantastic discussion
tonight and I hope that we've all learned something about the science behind population
and the way that it's conveyed in the media, the shortfalls and also the successes in doing
so.
It wouldn't have been anywhere near as interesting discussion without this fabulous panel I've
got on the stage, so please, a big round of applause for Graham, Udoi and Barney.
And while you've got the tapping going, let's hear it for our media panel, Tom, Tori and
Claire.
I'd also like, before you put your hands away, a big round of applause for our guys on sound,
the guys behind the bar, James who's been coordinating the whole event tonight, our
volunteers who've helped make it work, these things don't happen by themselves, it's a
great scene that's made it work, so let's give them a big round of applause.
Thank you all very much for coming along tonight, enjoy your evenings and keep your eyes open
for the next science behind the headlines.
Thank you very much.
