Australia is in the midst of a popularly-constructed crisis of population. This so-called crisis, in social terms, is not dissimilar to the many which have come before in Australia’s history. Yet Australia’s contemporary crisis differs in that the focus of the oft-referred-to population debate has come to revolve primarily around immigration and the politics of problematising population.

The problematisation of population occurs in many countries across the world, and is much about immigration and the effects of migrants on settlement areas, particularly as fertility has declined. Constructing population as a social problem means any consideration of population-related matters typically results in the portrayal of population, specifically immigration, as the root cause of social ills. Talk of population has, unhelpfully, come to focus on race and ethnicity. 

Current calls for a population policy reflect wider social concerns which have come to be conflated with population growth (especially due to immigration), including housing affordability, adequacy of public infrastructure, and environmental conservation. A dominant narrative has emerged: inequality is further exacerbated by migration, conjuring nationalist and protectionist sentiments.

The present social and political contexts are such that a population policy is likely for the first time in the country’s recent history. The government has indeed signalled a population policy (focused on migrant settlement) will be put forward with haste. Yet exactly what constitutes an appropriate population policy for contemporary Australia is still yet to be determined. The breadth of population-related issues lends itself to an approach which seeks to embed and contextualise population among wider government business – which requires a whole-of-government, joined-up approach.