Immigration picking up the slack as Australia’s fertility rate sinks to all-time low

Talking about Australia’s population can get you into trouble.

Want to talk about immigration? You might be labelled racist.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Australia’s fertility rate hits historic low

Don’t ask if someone is thinking about having kids. You never know what couples are going through in efforts to have a child, or why they have chosen not to.

But there are some conversations as a nation we’ve got to have.

This week, Australia’s population hit 28 million. We’ve added 10 million people since 1995.

At the same time, our willingness to welcome little bundles of joy into the world, has dissipated. That’s apart from the Peter Costello-delivered sugar hit in the tail end of the Howard years: the baby bonus, and the cry to ‘have one for your wife, one for your husband and one for the country’.

The fertility rate has plummeted to 1.48. That’s how many babies are being born for every woman of child-bearing age. Couples aren’t even replacing themselves – let alone growing the population.

“We simply are in a situation where now is just too hostile for people to consider bringing children into the world,” ANU demographer Dr Liz Allen said.

The cost of living, the housing crisis, the energy crisis, the childcare crisis, the climate crisis – take your pick of the reasons. When you add them all together, too many couples are simply saying it’s not worth it. They don’t even see it as a choice.

And that’s bad news.

“This indicator of births tells us something quite striking about what’s happening generally in Australian society,” Dr Allen said.

“Social cohesion is most definitely fraying.

“I’m concerned from a human perspective of what some are calling this a human catastrophe.”

Because without children, there are no young workers for the future to carry the load of caring for those who need it. Their parents and grandparents.

“You need a population growth, a level of it, that keeps the economy growing,” finance expert David Koch says.

“If we didn’t have immigration, the Australian economy would have been in recession for about the last two years or so.”

Australians are having fewer children. Immigration is the only thing keeping our economy from going into reverse.

If that’s got you thinking about Australia’s future, that’s why we want to talk about it on 7NEWS this week.

Our politicians can’t agree on much right now: how to solve the housing crisis, whether house prices should go up or come down, whether immigration should go up or come down, whether wages should go up or come down, whether climate change should be acted upon or ignored. All factors that are considered in when people think about the size of their families.

With so much global upheaval, with the chance to shape an Australia we’re all happy to be a part of, perhaps we should consider not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.