WHO WE ARE: Growing Too Fast and Too Furious

WHO WE ARE: Growing too fast and too furious

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 21/12/2008
It may go down in history as the year we started to wonder if we were going nuts. A survey by the Bureau of Statistics revealed that 45 per cent of Australian adults -- 7.3 million of us -- have suffered a mental disorder at some point in their lives and 20 per cent, or 3.2 million, have experienced a mental disorder in the past 12 months.

Apparently this mass breakdown was not caused by money worries. The interviews with people in a sample of 8,800 households were done months before any global financial clouds appeared in our blue skies. They had no way to know we were approaching the end of ten years of economic sunshine, a decade in which real household income had risen by 20 per cent.

Just when we were supposed to be at our most relaxed and comfortable, one in five of us was experiencing panic, anxiety, depression, phobia, drug dependence, or obsessive compulsive disorder, with women more likely to be anxious and men more likely to abuse alcohol.

That was probably the most shocking thing Australians learned about themselves this year, but this possibly connected story came a close second: Australia is now growing faster than India and Indonesia.
There was a time when we worried about the Asian population explosion and thought the Indonesians were breeding so fast they'd have to invade their neighbours. Now they can feel the same way about us. Our population is growing by 1.7 per cent a year, while Indonesia is growing by 1.2 per cent and India is growing by 1.6 per cent.

What's going on here? Three forces came together this decade in a perfect storm that caused our population to rise by 359,000 in the 12 months to June 30, the largest annual growth ever recorded:

1. We started breeding like bunnies. In the last financial year, 287,500 babies were born. Our fertility rate is now 1.9 babies per woman, up from 1.7 in 2001 (when we worried that we might not be replacing ourselves). Thanks a lot, Peter Costello.

2. We welcomed 443,200 new residents. With 229,700 people departing permanently, that gave us a net gain of 213,500 immigrants this year, an all time record. Some 70 per cent of them came in the "skills stream", which means they are filling jobs older residents can't or won't do.

3. We're staying alive. There were 142,000 deaths in the last financial year -- 29.4 per cent caused by diseases of the heart and blood vessels (so put down that donut), 28.8 per cent per cent caused by cancer, and 7.9 per cent caused by diseases of the respiratory system. That may suggest we're not taking care of ourselves, but last year we had the lowest death rate ever recorded: 6 per 1000, compared with 7.6 per 1000 in 1997.

So if you look at the Bureau's population clock today, you'll see that there are 21,340,000 of us. If the current growth rate continues, we'll reach 22 million by 2010 and 34 million by 2050 -- or 16 million more than most scientists think this continent can sustain. There's no way to predict how many of those will be worrying about going nuts.

Is there a link between the rise in mental illness and the rise in population? Go to Comments to discuss

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin). For regualr updates on Australian attitudes, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.