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Globally, population ageing is one of the most pressing social and policy issues faced today. Over the next two decades, Australian society will face dramatic increases in the proportion of the population aged 65 years and over, as the baby boomers move into older age and fertility levels remain low. Yet population ageing is not a surprising or new trend—demographic changes in the age profile of a population tend to occur incrementally rather than suddenly. As a demographer and geographer, Graeme Hugo drew attention to this trend in Australia’s population more than three decades ago. Throughout Graeme Hugo’s vast breadth of work over the past 40 years, there has been a consistent thread of demographic analysis and academic thought associated with the ageing of Australia’s population. This paper focuses on Hugo’s contributions to academic thought and policy on Australia’s ageing population and the challenges associated with this for both service delivery and health policy as Australian society moves into an unprecedented era of population ageing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Population estimates are rarely constructed for ecological regions. The recent establishment of a Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) generates a need for such estimates. This paper obliges by presenting Indigenous and total population projections for the Australian desert to 2016. The desert is found to be a region of relatively low population growth in national terms, contrary to the experience of many other parts of non-metropolitan Australia where population decline is prevalent. Also noted is the markedly different growth observed for the Indigenous and non-Indigenous components of the desert population, with the former projected to increase much more rapidly over time. It is likely that virtually all of the increase in the desert population over the next 15 years will arise from natural increase among Indigenous peoples. As a consequence, the Indigenous share of the regional population is projected to rise from 20 per cent in 2001 to 24 per cent by 2016, with attendant consequences for social and economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period 1996-2001 has witnessed a refocusing of population growth on Sydney and Melbourne as both cities have developed significant concentrations of so-called 'new economy' jobs and taken on, to greater or lesser extents, the characteristics of global cities. The consequence of these trends, for Sydney most particularly, is population growth. This paper establishes this demographic reality by describing recent demographic trends in Sydney and possible future scenarios for Sydney's population, given differing levels of fertility, internal migration and international migration. A related future trend is also traced—that the number of households in Sydney will grow more rapidly than the population due to changes in household structure. This raises the issue of how and where these households will be accommodated, given the relative land shortage in the Sydney Statistical Division and given that there is no doubt that planners in New South Wales will be attempting to maintain and enhance Sydney's status as a global city. In sum, the paper argues that Sydney planners should be preparing for growth of around one million people in the next 20 years and a further one million in the following 30 years. To maintain that potential future residents of Sydney can be redirected to other parts of New South Wales is a vain hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an increasingly urbanised and ageing world the spatial distribution of an older population is a matter of growing scholarly and policy interest. Much of the research on this topic has tended to draw on one of two key measures: structural ageing, or the ratio of older cohorts to the rest of the population, or numeric ageing, which simply counts the number of older people without reference to the rest of the population. This paper argues that, on their own, these measures have limitations, and that considerable value lies in assessing the interplay between numeric and structural ageing measures. The population ageing matrix, a theoretical framework that classifies the demographic dynamics of population ageing across metropolitan areas, is presented and examined through the case study of Perth, Western Australia. The value of the matrix to reveal patterns and trends missed by analyses of single measures is investigated and areas that are experiencing changes in the composition and size of the ageing demographic are identified. The paper also reflects on the implications of these findings for policy and planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concern about rapid population growth in Australia's large cities and slower growth in many non-metropolitan areas has stimulated a range of government policies attempting to lift non-metropolitan growth rates. However, there is relatively little research on which to base these policies. It would be helpful to understand more about the consequences of current demographic trends continuing and the effects of alternative migration patterns. This paper presents sub-national population projections for Australia over the horizon 2011–2041, basing the projections on more socially meaningful Remoteness Areas instead of common statistical geographies. Three sets of projections were generated: aCurrent Directionscenario in which recent demographic trends are maintained, aRegional Immigrationscenario in which more immigrants settle in regional and remote areas, and aMetro Exodusscenario in which there is increased internal migration from metropolitan to non-metropolitan areas. The future of Australia's population geography is shown to be one of spatially varying growth and population ageing, and continued metropolitanisation. In regional areas rapid population ageing will lower natural increase rates and thus reduce overall growth, resulting in a falling share of the national population. Policy measures attempting to increase the share of growth in regional areas will struggle against natural demographic forces operating in the opposite direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population–environment debates in Australia are at an impasse. While the ability of this continent to sustain more migrants has attracted persistent scrutiny, nuanced explorations of diverse migrant cultures and their engagements with Australian landscapes have scarcely begun. Yet as we face the challenges of a climate changing world we would undoubtedly benefit from the most varied knowledges we can muster. This paper brings together three arenas of environmental debate circulating in Australia—the immigration/carrying capacity debate, comparisons between Indigenous and Anglo-European modes of environmental interaction, and research on household sustainability dilemmas—to demonstrate the exclusionary tendencies of each. We then attempt to reorient them in productive ways, by attending to the complexity of environmental sustainability in a context of immense ethnic diversity. Attentiveness to ethnic diversity offers three important insights: (1) Anglo-European Australian understandings of nature and environmentalism are culturally specific, but other perspectives are possible; (2) tensions can arise when ethnic differences in environmental attitude or practice come into contact; and (3) cultural environmental research offers scope to identify ethnically diverse vernacular sustainability practices that should be supported. Each of these threads requires attention in a context where population–environment debates often overlook cultural complexity, and readily spiral into strident anti-immigration sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Census of Population and Housing is a census of people not places. However, where people live and work can be of major relevance in our search for explaining and understanding their behaviour. This paper argues that the place dimension in the Australian census has not been exploited very effectively in this respect. Three dimensions of the issue are addressed. Firstly, the spatial units commonly used for analysis of census data often are not appropriate to the problem being investigated. The spatial units in the Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) used for census data rarely represent meaningful social, economic and environmental regions. Secondly, the use of a simple urban/rural dichotomy is criticised as being a very blunt instrument to differentiate settlement types. Thirdly, the relationship between people and place in the census is discussed. While for the most part the census relates people to a single location - their place of usual residence - this is only one of the places with which people regularly interact. It is suggested that there is a need to adopt practices in the census which allow a range of population geographies to be defined. In conclusion it is argued that innovation in the Australian census, especially with the introduction of meshblocks and contemporary methodology and technology in Geographical Information Systems, makes it possible to analyse spatially referenced data in ways that can address these three issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the likely future population in Australia to 2050 and is cast within the context of environmental limitations, to which Griffith Taylor alerted the nation in the 1920s and 1930s, and for which he was vilified in several quarters. While acknowledging the relative accuracy of his long-range forecasts, the arguments here depart from environmental determinism, although varying sets of environmental ethics and values are considered in relation to Australia's global responsibilities and international commitments. It is argued that an increase in population to 26 million by 2050 will not place severe stresses on the physical environment, provided environmental and resource management strategies are put firmly in place, and if consumption and resource use practices are significantly modified. An ideological linkage exists between a resurgent Australian nationalism and a number of environmental perspectives, but one which rejects growth and biological diversity among humans while embracing environmentalism. This inward-looking nationalism-environmentalism is seen as harmful both to Australia's moral integrity as a nation, and in local and world citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a tribute to the massive contribution of our friend and colleague Graeme Hugo to the population and settlement geography of Australian rural areas, this paper presents a longitudinal study from his home State. It forms part of a wider study of the long-term demographic relationships between Australia’s rapidly growing regional cities and their surrounding functional regions. Of particular interest is the question of what effect the accelerating concentration of population and economic activity into a given regional city will have for the longer term demographic sustainability of its functional region as a whole. Taking the case of Port Lincoln, regional capital of most of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, it examines the nature of change in the functional region over the period 1947–2011, and investigates the forces feeding, and partly counteracting, the population concentration process, informed by concepts of evolutionary economic geography. In particular it traces the demographic impact (particularly differential migration and ageing trends) of exogenous shocks to the region’s essentially primary productive economic base during the period of major change from 1981 to 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The notion of sponge cities has attracted considerable attention in the media, in the policy arena, and in academia. It rests on the notion that some regional centres 'soak up' population and business from a 'pool' of surrounding areas, thereby appearing as 'oases' of growth in areas of population decline. Specifically, the notion of sponge cities rests on two premises and a deduction: some large towns and provincial cities are growing; surroundings areas are losing population; therefore, the growth results from the relocation of people from outlying farms and smaller towns to the nearby growing centres. Despite its popularity, the notion has largely gone untested. Investigation of migration trends in Dubbo and Tamworth (New South Wales, Australia), frequently cited as sponge cities, over the period 1986-2001 shows that the reality is much more complex than the simple metaphor suggests. The contribution made by the 'pool' to the growth of the regional 'sponges' is relatively minor. This calls into question the value of the notion of a sponge city—and the use of metaphors in social science more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the biopolitics of population decline in Australia. Colonial attitudes toward the feminine, the home and nature; Resistance and representations of natural and domesticated femininity; Australian periodicals in the nineteenth century.