14 October 2020
Subjects: VIC lockdown; population; partner visas .
CHRIS SMITH:
Welcome back. Australia is forecast to finish the decade with 1.7 million fewer people than what was originally predicted. It comes as a result, of course, of the lasting effects of the coronavirus pandemic. But could this be an opportunity for Australia to reconfigure infrastructure, our cities, and catch up with regional development as well? I spoke with Population Minister Alan Tudge a short time ago.
[Excerpt]
Minister, thank you very much for your time.
ALAN TUDGE:
Pleasure.
CHRIS SMITH:
Before we talk about the changing face of population in this country, can I get a feeling from you, someone who is in lockdown in Melbourne, about how the different states have managed the pandemic, in particular the comparison between Victoria and New South Wales? How would you sum that up?
ALAN TUDGE:
There’s no comparison. Sydney, which I’ve not been to for many months now, what I understand is effectively open. And the Premier is just announcing that you now have 500 people for outdoor music events, more people at cafes. No one’s wearing masks. And it’s the exact opposite here in Melbourne. You still can only go five kilometres outside of your zone. People wearing masks the entire time, including in your office. You’re only allowed outside your home for two hours per day, and there’s no end in sight. Meanwhile, though, when you actually look at the numbers, Chris, New South Wales has managed an average of 10 cases for some time because they’ve got a very capable tracing capability in place. Whereas here in Victoria, we’re down to about 10 cases on average per day, but we’re still in firm lockdown and I think it’s in part because the State Government doesn’t have that confidence in the tracing capabilities. I just wish they’ll take a leaf out of Sydney’s book. Do what you’ve done in Sydney, copy it here so that we can ease the restrictions.
CHRIS SMITH:
Yeah, those easing of restrictions in Sydney for this Friday have been reversed just in the last few hours. But it’s a point worth making. The data between those two states now is awfully similar, and I just don’t understand why they aren’t open. But can we get onto this?
Sorry, go on.
ALAN TUDGE:
Well, I can tell you, Chris, I think that, Daniel Andrews is just set in his ways. And I think there’s only one of two ways that he’ll actually change his direction. Either a) we’ll get a revolt from the Labor MPs. Or b) there’ll be a legal action taken against some of these restrictions. And there’s already been some legal action which was taken against the curfew. Surprisingly enough, the curfew was dropped five hours before it was due to go to court. And I suspect it might be further legal action against other restrictions which were in place which seem disproportionate to the risks involved.
CHRIS SMITH:
The curfew was a total sham. And then we saw that survey today in the Herald Sun, the overwhelming majority of Melburnites, they want their city open. They want to be able to move freely now that they know that the virus is virtually in hand.
ALAN TUDGE:
They certainly do, Chris. And, you know, the most devastating data which came out today was actually in The Australian newspaper pointing out the significant mental health implications here in Victoria. Now they are national but here in Victoria, we’ve had 77 per cent more people calling Beyond Blue than the national average.
Which is extraordinary. We hear in our electorate offices every single day of people suffering from mental health conditions or their family members suffering. This is the real concern which I have in terms of the ongoing lockdown and people not being able to connect with their friends, their family, elderly people isolated, not seeing anyone, and for literally months on end with no end in sight.
CHRIS SMITH:
Yeah, those figures are frightening. Can we get on to population? The McCrindle Research is telling us that by the end of the decade, we’re going to be 1.7 million less in population than what we had forecast. What are the repercussions for that?
ALAN TUDGE:
Well, it has significant economic implications if your population growth slows, because as people would know, population growth is a significant economic driver for the country. It’s not the only thing but we’ve been having population growth really since federation, about 1.6 per cent per annum. This financial year, it will drop down to 0.2 per cent, the slowest level since World War 1. And that’s largely a function of the fact that we closed the borders and it means we haven’t got migration coming in. In fact, we’ll net outward migration over the next year or two. That is, more people leaving the country than coming into the country.
CHRIS SMITH:
But I can hear a lot of viewers right now, I can hear a lot of viewers right now saying: well, we needed a pause. We needed our states and territories to catch up in terms of infrastructure, roads, hospital beds, et cetera. We needed a pause. Would you agree?
ALAN TUDGE:
I think in Melbourne and Sydney in particular, Chris that many people knew that the infrastructure wasn’t keeping up with the rapid population growth in those two big capitals. One of the silver linings is that we now have the opportunity for some of that infrastructure to catch up and we’ve put more money into the infrastructure as well. In some of the other cities and the regional areas, they’ve always wanted to grow faster. And so one of our challenges pre-pandemic was the distribution of the population growth. And indeed, that will be an ongoing challenge, I suspect, post the pandemic as well. But we expect Sydney this year has zero population, well New South Wales to zero population growth. Now, that does have economic implications, particularly for sectors like the construction sector and other sectors which do rely upon significant population growth to sustain those jobs.
CHRIS SMITH:
So, the budget tells us that in two years’ time, all of that will be negated by another increase in population. And we’ll get back to some of the rates we had prior to the pandemic. Given that, are you doing enough, do you think, to make sure that the feds talk to the states and so that infrastructure goes hand in hand with the number of people we bring into the country?
ALAN TUDGE:
I think that’s a very good point, and it’s actually one of the reasons why Scott Morrison’s created a portfolio, which I have, which links up population with infrastructure, because the two need to be tied together. In essence, the population creates the demand for the infrastructure and that has to keep up. In fact, in the ideal world, actually, Chris, you’d build the infrastructure in front of the population growth. Now, we’ve been having constructive discussions for over a year now with my state counterparts and the state treasurers over developing up these frameworks so we do better align population growth with infrastructure.
CHRIS SMITH:
Excellent.
ALAN TUDGE:
And I think we’re getting there, and I think we can do this better, and we need to do this better. But as you point out, this pause in the population growth for a few years actually does give us the opportunity to catch up on some of the infrastructure.
CHRIS SMITH:
One brief point just before we let you go in terms of residency, Australian residency. You will prioritise, in the short term, those who are already in the country, will you?
ALAN TUDGE:
We will be doing that, particularly with the partner permanent residency visa, where we expect about three-quarters of those permanent residency visas given to the partners will be to people already here in Australia. In that way, it firms up and secures the ongoing stay here in Australia, because obviously the number of people coming in will be limited over the next couple of years.
CHRIS SMITH:
Ok, I thank you for your time, Alan Tudge. Minister, all the best.
ALAN TUDGE:
Thanks very much, Chris.
[ENDS]
