PARTY OF PRINCIPLE? THE GREENS AND POPULATION POLICY Natalie Sloan and William J. Lines The Australia Greens were once an environmental party with a clear vision of the role of population size and growth in increasing environmental stress in Australia. During the late 1990s they abandoned this vision for new goals centred on social justice and international human rights. This increased their vote among a narrow section of the electorate — educated urban elites. But it deprived Australian politics of a voice that speaks for the Australian environment. The Australian Greens is a political party a) Managing our own population that prides itself on being, and is widely growth in accordance with more equi- perceived as being, a party of principle. table consumption patterns in relation But they have been contradictory and to the international context; and convoluted in determining exactly what b) Redirecting the bulk of aid towards those principles are, particularly as they eradicating poverty and towards those relate to population and immigration. programs which empower women.2 Originally promulgated in 1995, the These motherhood statements remained party’s population policy was revised in unchanged in the 1998 and 2002 revisions. 1998 and again in 2002. With each revi- The 1995 policy had also advocated action sion the Greens altered their principles, towards achieving a ‘sustainable lessened their commitment to limiting population’ through managing per capita population growth, and increasingly consumption levels and the use of emphasised technology and human inge- technology. It also claimed that developing nuity as the solution to the problem of countries had increasingly adopted the ensuring ecological sustainability. They consumption patterns of industrialized replaced concern about population and countries, resulting in overgrazing and environmental degradation with a social over cropping.3 The 1998 and 2002 docu- justice, global human rights platform. ments elaborated this argument and Subsequently they increased their vote — emphasised ecological responsibility to but chiefly among a narrow, elite future generations and to non-human segment of the electorate: the most highly species. educated. There the consistency between the Three headings — principles, goals three documents ended. In 1995 the and short term targets — form the Greens proposed a policy that would ‘sta- Greens’ policy shell. In 1995, under the bilise [Australia’s] population numbers at heading principles, the party outlined a a level which is both precautionary and domestic and global policy based on ecologically sustainable’.4 Sustainability, ecological sustainability, intergeneration- it suggested, was determined by resource al equity, and social justice.1 The declara- use and technology as well as by tion cited the need to apply the precau- population size. The 1998 and 2002 revis- tionary principle in evaluating the human ions omitted all reference to the size of the impact on the environment and advocated population as a determinate of that Australia contribute towards a glob- sustainability. ally sustainable population through: The 1998 document states: People and Place, vol. 11, no. 2, 2003, page 16 Development of population policy should and accepted in the wider society. be based on research which includes While the policy revisions refer to the modeling of consumption and impact in Earth’s carrying capacity they also claim order to determine a sustainable that the relationship between people and population. The process of determining the environment is complex. According population policy should be open and to the Greens, carrying capacity is ‘medi- consultative.5 ated’ by economic, social, political, cul- After abandoning reference to popula- tural, and technological considerations.7 tion growth in 1998 the current policy Also, government must develop popula- (2002) goes further and explicitly repudi- tion policy with wide input and which ates the idea that population size and respects human rights. These revised growth matter: principles increased the distance between An Australian population policy should population issues and conservation. consider the distribution of human Other changes further qualify the settlement rather than just concentrate party’s concern about population. The upon population size at the national level. policy headed ‘immigration’ in 1995 The continuing de-settlement of rural became ‘immigration and refugees’ in areas must be considered in the light of 2002. In the former document the Greens ecological sustainability and efforts must recognised the environmental implica- be set in place to reverse it in those areas tions arising from population increase where settlement is ecologically benign. through immigration. But the addition of The ecological and social viability of refugees to the policy heading (and to its areas expected to experience great growth content) focused attention away from the needs to be safeguarded, and appropriate environment to human rights. planning processes set in place.6 Immigration, the Greens maintain, The Greens’ current policy thus must be seen within a broader population focuses on population distribution rather policy, which is non-discriminatory, than on an overall national population honours international obligations to policy. Moreover, the 1998 and 2002 accept refugees, and centres largely on revisions discard 1995's first short-term humanitarian and family reunion criteria.8 target of ‘a program to stabilize global These principles have remained population’ and place the emphasis in- essentially the same, but related goals and stead on increasing Australia’s contribu- short-term targets have been extended tion to global aid, family planning, repro- and altered. For example, before the ductive health, and to empowering policy launch for the 1998 federal women. election campaign the Greens, The 1998 and 2002 policies are more immigration policy proposed that involved and explanatory than the 1995 ‘Australia’s voluntary immigration policy. Growing complexity points to a program be reduced as part of a strategy progressive fudging of the issues and the to achieve eventual stabilisation of the increasing timidity with which the Greens Australian population’.9 Subsequent tackled population as well as the fact that policies dropped this strategy entirely and concepts such as sustainable develop- made no recommendation to reduce ment, the precautionary principle, immigration. In fact the targets now intergenerational equity, and ‘green’ openly encourage immigration: technologies have become more common The Australian Greens will work for: People and Place, vol. 11, no. 2, 2003, page 17 a) a policy of multiculturalism that and cultural needs. However, the new celebrates our Indigenous and immigrant policy also proposes that family reunion history and welcomes further be extended to all interdependent immigration.10 relationships, including same sex and Early policies expressed the belief that intersex relationships, and that funding the presence in Australia of people from for public and civil sector agencies different cultural backgrounds enriched providing services specific to migrants society. However, the most recent ‘immi- (including asylum seekers and refugees) gration and refugees’ policy does not be increased.14 mention cultural enrichment. Instead, it The Greens began obscuring the con- claims that while immigration may con- nection between population and environ- tribute to the population pressure on the mental deterioration during the renewed Australian environment, ‘this concern is debate about immigration reform which tempered by our humanitarian obligation followed the 1996 election of the Coali- to accept refugees and by the social and tion government. Contradicting their economic benefits that immigration pro- existing population policy, they opposed grams can bring’.11 The current policy every government measure designed to reiterates the idea that the voluntary im- better target the selection of family, migration program should be based pre- skilled, and humanitarian categories. dominantly on humanitarian and They also resisted all measures to control family-reunion categories but, in keeping the family migration category despite the with the new emphasis on economics, fact that, in 1996 when the legislation regards the skilled migration category as a was introduced and in 1997 when it was legitimate component of immigration. reintroduced, the Greens’ immigration In their 2001 federal election cam- policy clearly stated that the voluntary paign the Greens launched an immigra- immigration program should be tion and refugee policy that rejected the reduced.15 In 1997, when questioned by idea of zero-net population growth. The Senator Harradine, the Greens leader, focus, they said, should be on consump- Bob Brown said he supported current tion, not numbers, and Australia must levels of immigration — again contra- address immigration as a global citizen, dicting his party’s policies.16 not as a closed state.12 Brown also argued against a 1996 Indeed, globalisation has proved a Federal government proposal to issue particularly seductive idea for the Greens. personal bonds of up to $30,000 to ensure By shifting the focus offshore the Greens that a special category of new migrants convinced themselves there was no settle outside capital cities. Yet, in 1998, Australian population problem. But this the Greens changed their population is a form of denial. As Garret Hardin