The Press THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1943. Population Problems

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23881, 25 February 1943, Page 4

The Press THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1943. Population Problems

The remarks of Mr R. G. Menzies and Mr W. M. Hughes on the importance of population increases in Australia’s post-war development approach, though not on thoroughly firm ground, a problem which has been dangerously neglected. In New Zealand, the only significant reference to it has been Mr S. G. Holland’s recent policy statement, in which he declared the National Party’s intention of pursuing planned immigration. In N no account of the Government’s rehabilitation policy has this problem been mentioned. Yet strategic, social, and economic considerations all weight the need for much larger populations in Australia and New Zealand; and all emphasise the alarming fact that the trend in both Dominions has been towards—and past—a net reproduction rate which will barely maintain a constant population. The effect of this trend is masked by a low death rate (or high expectation of life) and by a low infant death rate particularly; but these economies, as they may be called, run to a limit, and while they operate the higher age groups are increasing and the lower age groups falling. As an illustration of what this process means, the Board of Education, in 1938, calculated that by 1948 the number of children in the elementary schools of England and Wales would have fallen by 1,000,000. Wherever this trend operates, it means that the burdens of production, of maintaining the standard of living, and of defence will have to be carried by a smaller group of young and fit men and women. All plans to raise the standard of living are headed against this difficulty—and the problem of reversing the trend, if they are not to break down.

Mr Menzies pinned his faith to the development of Australia’s manufacturing industries —its “ sal- “ vation in this war ” —and British immigration: “There are plenty of “ people who will come here from “Britain.” It is quite certain that the expansion of secondary and tertiary industries, in which Australia has had a long lead of New Zealand, will be confirmed by postwar policy, not as the barren principle of self-sufficiency or autarchy directs but in pursuit of an economy better balanced and more stable. Such a policy, however, raises questions of direction and proportion and of investment and finance which should be the subject of thorough research. If they are left to be answered by the methods of trial and error, knowledge will come too late and be too dearly bought. Part II of the New Zealand Rehabilitation Act, unfortunately, ignores this danger. Danger of another sort appeared in the readiness of Mr Menzies to follow the line of the “ drift to the cities ” from “rural industries which had never “ paid adequately ’’—and, inferentially, never will—and in Mr Hughes’s assenting prediction that Britain, after the war, will be “too "poor to buy imported food” and, moreover, agriculturally much better able to do without it. It is a defeatist and unnecessary assumption that the prospects of Dominion agriculture are narrow and dark. Policy decisions must not be based on it. The reasons for saying so are practical enough. If it is probable that Britain will produce more of her own food, it is equally probable that her new social policies will greatly expand requirements. Both probabilities, indeed, rate next to certainties. Second, the victory of the United Nations promises, among other things, international economic co-operation. If this co-operation is effective, it will face the fact that the world’s food supplies are not superabundant—as the pre-war gluts suggested—but insufficient, if equitably distributed, for human needs. While Mr Menzies is broadly right in saying that Australian industry must be expanded and diversified to sustain a greatly increased population, he seems to be far too hopeful in looking to British immigration, or indeed to immigration from any source, for the increase. To do so is to overlook (i) the results of modern inquiry into population growth and movement and (ii) the probabilities of their application m post-war conditions. The forces which impelled the large-scale movements of the last century are spent. The impulses might be renewed if the peace settlement were such as to leave either a grave menace of war in Europe or hopeless economic depression. It may do so; but it is not mere wishful thinking that turns from these possibilities to a happier prospect. That is one in which freer trade and scientific industrialisation will support—and require—greater populations than now; and in which security and social and economic betterment will anchor them. Britain will need all the young energy that survives the w'ar; so will every country in Europe. For these and certain other reasons, of a more’ technical kind, it seems probable that the limits of immigration may be numerically narrow, and that, within them, it will be essential to work on principles (i) of wide racial tolerance but (ii) of careful individual or group selection, training, and placing. It follows that Australia’s population problem—and, throughout, what is said of Australia is said also of New Zealand—will not be solved by immigration, though immigration may contribute to the solution. That must be looked for in long-range social and economic policies, more difficult to evolve and apply but more fundamental. “ When the object is to raise the “ permanent condition of a people, ’ said John Stuart Mill, “ small means “do not merely produce small “ effects; they produce no effects “ at all.”