ALAN JONES:
Well, the man in the eye of the storm's on the line. Tony Burke, good morning.
TONY BURKE:
G'day, Alan.
JONES:
Look, it's obvious to everybody that Kevin Rudd has misread the concern following his declaration last October that, quote, I believe in a big Australia of 35 million people. Now, even you in recent days have conceded there is an awful anxiety out there about high population growth and hopeless infrastructure and planning.
BURKE:
That's right. I think in the introduction you covered the two challenges - the economic arguments about big populations do hold up but there is also a question that we've never seriously asked in Australia, well, programs like your own have asked it, but as a government I don't think either side of politics has ever really grappled with it - and that's what are some of the limits on the carrying capacity of Australia and whether or not we have the infrastructure in place to be able to deal with a higher population.
JONES:
See, the concern I have - I mean, this is a young bloke, this fellow, Tony Burke, he's an ambitious fellow and he's got ability, however, you've got no terms of reference here and Treasury are going to provide you with a so-called advisory platform. Now, Treasury got the so-called global economic crisis wrong, they got revenue projections wrong, they got unemployment projections wrong and Treasury are the authors of this intergenerational report which says that we'd be a population of 35.9 million by 2050 but on the one hand they say 35.9 million but then they say our population will slow to an annual rate of 1.2 per cent in the next 40 years compared with 1.74 per cent in the past 40 years. Now, too bad if they're wrong here as well and if population growth doesn't slow we could be looking at a figure well beyond 35.9 million.
BURKE:
That's right and the figure that's in that report you refer to, that's a projection if population growth slows.
JONES:
That's it.
BURKE:
Now, it's not an ambition, it's not a target that I'm trying to get to or the Government's trying to get to. It is, if we slow immigration we'll get there anyway and the question that I want to be able to ask is, 'how do you actually tailor this to the needs of the nation?'
There'll be some parts of the country that can take more people and it is in our economic interests in those parts of the country to be able to let those businesses get the workers they need.
JONES:
But you can't say to people who are born - going to be born in the next 15 years, look, I know it's wonderful but your mum and dad live at Croydon but we want you to work in Karratha in Western Australia or the migrants arrive into Australia, legitimately, and you say, look, it's wonderful to have you here and you've had the migration ceremony, now we're going to send you to Perth to work. You can't do that. So this argument that, oh, well, we can have migrants in Perth but we can't have them in outer Sydney - Bankstown - is not population policy, is it? We've got to work out what the global figure is that the nation can accommodate when these people are free to settle where they want to settle.
BURKE:
I've got a different view to you on that, Alan. I do believe there is probably more that we can do than we've done in the past in the immigration program in saying, if you're coming to Australia there are parts of Australia where we need you to get your first job.
JONES:
So we'll give you $10,000 to go there?
BURKE:
Well, you know, getting into the door of Australia, you've got a point system, you've got rules that you have to abide by.
JONES:
But when you get here - when you get here, I know your aunt lives at Croydon but we'll give you $10,000 to go to Karratha, is that what you're saying?
BURKE:
No, I'm not talking about cash incentives. I'm saying we can set the rules by which people come to the country if they're coming under those business programs, under work programs.
JONES:
So you're not coming to Australia, you'll come to Western Australia.
Tony Burke:
Those are the sorts of issues that I want to look through, whether or not we can do that more effectively than we have.
JONES:
But see, you've got these - you're going to listen to Treasury - and may I just caution you? These people will bury you unless you go in with a view of your own. You see, the last three years, overseas migration, which is another debate about whether it's too big or too small.
BURKE:
Yes.
JONES:
Two hundred and forty-four thousand. But Treasury says in its intergenerational report that from 2012 somehow it'll be 118,000. How?
BURKE:
The figures that Treasury have gone by are simply projections. There is not a policy that we follow those projections. You've got to have Treasury come up with modelling and say if you change nothing this is where you'd land. If you reduce things a little bit, this is where you'd land. My question, and my job, is to say, where should we land, where should we get to?
JONES:
But do you bring views of your own to this or do we constantly say, well, this is the Treasury piece of paper and here are these people, the unseen bureaucrats are going to, quote, unquote, advise the Minister.
BURKE:
Oh, Alan, I think you know me well enough to know that I'll be driving this and that's why I think it's important that we don't actually have the formal terms of reference. That's what you put together when you're dealing with an inquiry. This is not an inquiry or a review. It's me being given a job to work through what's in the interests of the country.
JONES:
But it's all commonsense, isn't it? We've got a whole heap of people here, stacks of people arriving here, we've got urban management and resources which can't handle it - whether it's traffic or water or schools or electricity or homes - and then you've got your government which is being accused of all talk and no action. The public are saying, well, we want some action on this. There's a mismatch.
BURKE:
Yes, and it's an area of policy that we've never before brought all the different areas of government together on this. I'm determined that we get this right. It's the first time we've tried it. I know some people have said why can't you just do it in a couple of months?
JONES:
But Kelvin Thompson, one of your own people - Kelvin Thompson, one of your own Victorian Labor MPs, says there should be a cap on our population at 26 million. You've got Bob Carr, a distinguished son of Labor, supports those sorts of views. Now, there is very significant division in the party, let alone in the electorate.
BURKE:
And everybody is talking about examples that are real. The person who talks about the congestion where they're stuck in traffic on the M4 and says why on earth would you want to add more cars to this road, they are talking about a very real problem.
JONES:
But you've got business today - you've got businesses saying - today saying, ah, well, if we cut the population growth this is a terrible thing. I mean, if you're going to increase population you're going to have to increase infrastructure and if you want to increase infrastructure, whether it's water or energy or whatever, or housing, you're going to have to pay for it. So higher immigration means higher government outlays which means higher tax. You can't have higher immigration and lower tax, can you?
BURKE:
In part some of this, Alan, depends on where people move to. If people are moving to areas that are highly congested already, then those sorts of challenges that you referred to are exactly right. If people are moving to areas…
JONES:
You see, population grows faster than the GDP. This is the problem people have got now. Population grows faster than the GDT - GDP. Population growth's now what, 2.1 per cent? GDP's not growing at that rate. Then the quality of life of everybody is being diminished. That's what people are up in arms about today.
BURKE:
But think of the other side of the coin, Alan, the employer in Western Australia, in Perth, who's saying, 'I'm just trying to run a small business here. I can't get workers any more because everybody who's got a driver's licence…'
JONES:
Yes.
BURKE:
…is going off and working in the mines. Now, it's not a matter…
JONES:
Well, take some money - take some money out of the building education revolution program and train people for the jobs that are available. We may need - we may need a manpower program as well as a population program to know where the jobs are and how we match the available workforce to the need that exists in the market.
BURKE:
Some of these needs don't just go to training. You mentioned before that even though I've grown up in the city I've been spending most of the last two years out in the country and, a lot of the shortages I get told about are people trying to get someone to pick the fruit at harvest time.
You hear of the tourist operator and they're not looking for highly skilled workers, they're looking for somebody to mind the reception desk and just can't find workers any more.
These are real challenges where we haven't managed to be able to target the needs of population with the needs of business. Instead, people will often get into Australia because there's a national need and then settle in parts of the country where all that's happening is extra pressure on infrastructure and sometimes extra pressure on unemployment. That's not in the national interest. It's hard to coordinate it…
JONES:
Okay.
BURKE:
I do believe we can do this much better than we have in the past.
JONES:
Well, make sure it's not just a smokescreen for pink batts or problems with building the education revolution. I'm sure we'll talk again.
BURKE:
Thanks, Alan.
JONES:
Thank you for your time. Tony Burke.