Australia’s water security is at risk due to rampant mass immigration-driven population growth which is continuing at “third world rates”, new research shows.
A report commissioned by Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) and published last month found that water demand is outstripping improvements in the efficiency of household water use, making cities more vulnerable to extended droughts.
The authors said that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find new efficiencies while water demand has exceeded supply by the conventional means of rainfall and groundwater since the early 2000s, all while the continent is becoming dryer.
“State governments and water utilities are turning to desalination of seawater to augment water supply to meet population growth. Yet desalination is hugely expensive. Per litre of water, desalination is at least 2.5 times the cost of rain-fed dam water, which means much higher water bills for households and businesses,” author Dr Jonathan Sobels said.
The report found that future population growth will require adding up to 1,450 gigalitres to annual water supply in capital cities in coming decades – the equivalent of the total volume currently supplied each year to Sydney, Melbourne and Perth combined.
The warning came just weeks after Sydney Water warned that it will increase water prices by 50% over the next five years in response to population growth.
SPA national president Peter Strachan said Australia must bring immigration down drastically rather than using desalination to meet rising demand and assuming that technological fixes will save the day.
“The huge costs of desalination can be avoided simply by stabilising Australia’s population. As this new report demonstrates, it is population growth that is driving water demand. Relying on more desalination to perpetuate population growth will introduce new vulnerabilities to our water security and further degrade our environment,” Mr Strachan said.
“The report questions why State and Local governments simply accept population growth projections dictated by the federal Treasury department. Yet it is the States who are left to fund the infrastructure and provide the extra water. They need to understand that future population growth is a policy choice, not an inevitability.
“It would be far simpler, safer, greener and cheaper to stabilise our population, by bringing annual net migration back to the pre-2005 level of around 70,000, which is what it was before successive recent governments’ foolish experiment with hyper-growth.
“Then we could direct our investments to fixing existing ageing water infrastructure and putting more water into greening our cities and regenerating wetlands.”
Mr Strachan warned earlier this month that the current “third world pace” of population growth was putting pressure on housing, public infrastructure and the fragile environment of the world’s driest continent.
“Australia cannot afford to keep growing by over half a million people, or by almost the population of Tasmania (575,400) each year,” he said.
“Infrastructure costs associated with that number of people damage the economy and add pressure to housing availability and cost, largely caused by demand exceeding supply.
“Australia’s power supplies are approaching physical limits, especially in Sydney. Put another 100,000 people in the Sydney Basin and add a heatwave, and power outages are almost certain.”
According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, 666,800 people immigrants arrived during the last financial year, down 9.8% from last year’s figure of 737,200 – the highest two years on record – with most coming from India, China and the Philippines.
In the year to June this year Australia accepted an estimated 87,600 Indians, 75,830 Chinese, and 36,830 people from the Philippines, while during the 2023 financial year 108,140 Indians, 82,240 Chinese, and 47,220 Filipinos arrived.
But despite mass immigration driving housing and rental crises and being unpopular with a majority of voters, neither major party is prepared to make major cuts, with Opposition leader Peter Dutton has backtracked on a promise to cut migration, while Labor says it wants house prices to keep increasing.
Header image credit: suburbanbloke, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
