What the 2021 Budget tells us about Australia s population directions
Independent Australia
13 May 2021, 16:52 GMT+10
The Government appears to have again postponed the Intergenerational Report to an unspecified later date. But it did update its population assumptions in the 2021 Budget which again highlight its eagerness to get the population rising strongly once international borders re-open.
The revised population projections in the 2021 Budget are in Table 1 below:
Table 1: Population forecasts in 2021 Budget
After the silliness of the 2019 Budget when the Government forecast fertility rising to 1.9 births per woman from 2021, the Government has regained its senses and is now forecasting fertility falling to 1.61 births per woman in 2020-21 (down from a record low of 1.65 births per woman in 2019-20).
Still, could there be a successful treatment for the level of psychic pain afflicting a Treasurer required to deliver a budget burdened with the most immense debt and deficit in Australian history in dollar terms, and the greatest as a proportion of gross domestic product since World War II?
Even the famous budget tree in the parliamentary grounds had discarded all pretence at jollity. Normally a cheering riot of glorious red autumn leaves on budget day, it stood naked and shivering, stripped of its foliage by unkind Canberra headwinds.
The most significant riot of red to be found around Parliament on Tuesday was in the voluminous Budget Paper No. 1, in which could be found the gory truth of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the national economy, and the big-spending strategy underway to effect a recovery.