The federal government has opened up 27 new offshore petroleum acreages across nine basins in Commonwealth waters off five states.
Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said the 2012 acreage release included large frontier basins suited to exploration programs with numerous targets, along with smaller blocks of high prospective acreage in mature areas.
“The high level of early stakeholder participation led to multiple nominations for many of these areas, which are located in a range of water depths and vary in size and exploration history,” he said.
“The available acreage is supported by data and analysis by Geoscience Australia and all exploration and development activities will be subject to comprehensive assessment.”
The minister announced the release in Adelaide at the industry conference on Monday, saying the exploration release would help maintain energy security and economic growth in Australia’s petroleum sector.
“Today’s acreage release will allow offshore petroleum explorers to seek a larger role in an energy revolution, with a high probability of ongoing major petroleum discoveries in Australia, and more than 40 sedimentary basins yet to be fully explored.”
The acreages are in waters off Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.
Greens senator Rachel Siewert said the exploration leases impinged on several important marine areas around Australia.
“They impinge on areas proposed for sanctuaries under the marine planning processes underway,” she told reporters in Canberra.
Senator Siewert said it was appalling that the federal government had two systems – one for the granting of licences and the other for establishing marine sanctuaries – simultaneously.
“The resource boom will override sensible environmental decision making,” she said.
“It’s crazy to have these separate processes.”
The Pew Environment group said one of the areas was in the Great Australian Bight – already protected by a marine park and home to more than 29 species of whales.
“The strong currents also means that any oil spills would directly hit Kangaroo Island, as well as the Eyre and York Peninsulas,” Pew said in a statement.
A second area, off the coast of Robe, would hit the rock lobster fishing industry in the region, the group said.
Population growth is on the rise again. Photo: Jessica Shapiro
The federal budget papers are missing an important figure: population growth is on the rise again with a 30 per cent surge in net overseas migration over the seven months to the end of March.
And the absence of that figure or any mention of the population growth outlook for 2012-13 looks more than a little suspicious as stronger population growth makes it more likely that the government’s forecast of trend economic growth is indeed achievable in the year ahead.
While Treasury’s Budget Paper No. 1 spells out any number of assumptions that underpin the headline economic forecasts, population growth – a key cause and effect of economic growth – is missing.
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The only oblique reference is to the projections of the 2010 Intergenerational Report, which held that Australia’s population growth was in the process of slowing from its 40-year average of 1.4 per cent.
The most recent demographic release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics is for the year to the end of September, when the population grew by 1.4 per cent with net overseas migration down to 172,500.
Last week’s budget announcements included an increase in the migration “official program” of 5,000 places to 190,000, but that gives little-to-no idea of what’s actually happening with net migration.
For a start, the official program doesn’t count the nearly 14,000 migrants who arrive in the humanitarian program, or a number of smaller categories. Ditto for the 25,000 or so Kiwis who cross the ditch each year, or the international students for whom visa requirements have again been loosened or the sub-section 457 temporary work visas which have been recently embraced and promoted by both sides of politics as Australia struggles to handle its skills shortage.
Uncapped program
The 457 program is uncapped and untargeted – there are as many available as there are employers with positions that meet the scheme’s requirements. With the commodities and capital investment booms still gathering pace, demand for 457 visas is rising strongly.
An important contributor to the fall in Australia’s population growth rate from the peak of 2.2 per cent in 2008 was the slashing of the international student industry as visa requirements were drastically tightened and the stronger dollar made Australian education more expensive. The publicity surrounding attacks on Indian students in Melbourne didn’t help either (and nor will reports of similar threats against Chinese in Sydney).
But now the government is seeking to reinvigorate the education export industry by liberalising tertiary student requirements.
Lagging indicator
While it takes about six months for the ABS to publish its quarterly demographic release – the year to September numbers were released on March 29 – the monthly arrivals and departures figures give an indication of how net overseas migration is rapidly growing again.
Last week’s arrivals and departments release was for March. In the seven months since and including September, the ABS counted 393,540 “permanent and long-term” arrivals and 229,030 departures, indicating a net gain of 164,510 people. For the same period up to March 2011, there were fewer arrivals and more departures, indicating a net gain of 125,810.
That 31 per cent surge in apparent net migration, if it maintained over the whole year and assuming natural population growth is steady, would lift total population growth to 1.6 per cent.
The decline in population growth from the bubble’s peak in 2008 has been an often overlooked factor in businesses feeling times were much harder.
It’s also been part of the reason the unemployment rate hasn’t risen as much as our low rate of employment growth would generally cause.
Dog whistlers
Both the major parties went for the dog whistle during the last election and ran away from championing and explaining our necessary strong migration policy. (The Liberal Party’s policy is to outsource migration to the Productivity Commission while Labor produced a Sustainable Population Strategy without numbers.)
Both sides know Australia needs to maintain a healthy migration program to both handle the skills crisis in the short term and carry some of the tax burden of most the vast majority of the baby boomer demographic bulge being dependent on the pension in retirement. But neither side really wants to take responsibility for it or spell it out.
Leaving such an important assumption or forecast as population growth out of the federal budget process no doubt suits both sides.
Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay contributing editor.
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