THE GROWTH LOBBY AND ITS ABSENCE:

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT AND HOUSING INDUSTRIES AND IMMIGRATION

POLICY IN AUSTRALIA AND FRANCE

1945-2000 WITH PROJECTIONS TO 2050

M.A. by Research, Swinburne University, Victoria, 2002

By Sheila Newman

ABSTRACT

This thesis compares population policy and demographic outcomes in France and Australia from 1945 taking into consideration projections to 2050. These features are analysed using a theoretical approach derived from James Q. Wilson and Gary Freeman, flagging focused benefits/costs and diffuse benefits/costs of population growth, including growth fueled by immigration. This analysis is framed by the New Ecological Paradigm developed by Dunlap and Catton.

The oil shock of 1973 is identified as a major turning point where French and Australian policy directions and demographic trends diverge, notably on immigration.

It is established that in both countries there was a will for population stabilisation and energy conservation, which succeeded in France. In Australia, however, a strong, organised growth lobby over-rode this Malthusian tendency. A major force for growth lay in the speculative property development and housing industries. The specific qualities of the Australian land development planning and housing system facilitated land speculation. Speculative opportunity and profits were increased by population growth and, with decreasing fertility rates, the industries concerned relied increasingly on high immigration rates. In France, to the contrary, the land development planning and housing industries had no similar dependency on immigration and, since the oil shock, have adapted to a declining population growth rate.

The author concludes that France has a relatively Malthusian economy and that Australia has a relatively Cornucopian one. These observations may be extrapolated respectively to non-English speaking Western European States and to English Speaking Settler States.

Speculative benefits from population growth/immigration are illustrated by demonstrating a relationship between ratcheting property price inflation in high overseas immigration cities in Australia and the near absence of this inflation in low growth areas. In contrast this ratcheting effect is absent in France and French cities where population growth and immigration have little influence on the property market.

The research suggests that speculative benefits of high population growth have been magnified by globalisation of the property market and that these rising stakes are likely to increase the difficulty of population stabilisation and energy conservation under the Australian land development and planning system.

The thesis contains a substantial appendix analysing and comparing French and Australian demographic and energy use statistics.

PART I....................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTION.............................................. 1

World Population, International Migration and Economic Policies: Emerging Differences............................................................................................................ 1

France and Australia : Differences and Similarities before the 1973 Oil Shock....................................................................................................................................... 5

France and Australia 1974 : The Aftermath of the First Oil Shock 7

Immigration:.................................................................................................................................................... 7

Land Development Planning and Housing:.............................................................................................. 7

A New Subject of Sociological Comparison in Immigration Research.................................................. 8

Research question and Argument Outline........................................................................ 10

Outline of Structure and Contents of this Thesis.......................................................... 13

CHAPTER TWO - BACKGROUND THEORY AND LITERATURE REVIEW - THE NEW ECOLOGICAL PARADIGM................................................. 16

Environmental Sociological Theory..................................................... 16

New Ecological (Environmental) Paradigms:.......................................................................................... 16

The Ecological Footprint............................................................................................................................ 20

Energy and Oil Shocks................................................................................. 21

CHAPTER THREE - BACKGROUND THEORY AND LITERATURE REVIEW - LAND DEVELOPMENT SYSTEMS, HOUSING AND THE RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY............................................................................... 23

Systems of Land Development Planning.......................................... 23

Australia....................................................................................................................................................... 24

France............................................................................................................................................................ 27

Public and Private Housing Policy....................................................... 29

The Residential Construction Industry................................................................................................... 30

Land-use Planning for Biodiversity Habitat Needs................... 35

Biodiversity and Habitat Preservation as a Sociological Concern......................................................... 35

Ecological Theory of Biodiversity Habitat Needs....................................................................................... 35

History of Biodiversity and Habitat Theory : Ecological Darwinism.................................................. 37

History of Ecological Darwinism in Australia Leading to Early Formation of National Parks......... 37

Modern Theory : Island Biogeography and Land Planning for Species Diversity........................... 39

Fig. 3.1. Maps showing progress of Reduction and Fragmentation of woodland due to land clearing for agriculture, roads, housing etc............................................................................................................................................. 40

Australian Eco-Malthusian Literature...................................................................................................... 41

Fig. 3.2. Map of land clearing and vegetation disturbance in Australia.......................................... 45

Fig. 3.3. "Pre-European broad vegetation types".............................................................................. 46

Fig. 3.4. "Present Day Broad Vegetation types"................................................................................ 48

Fig. 3.5 Map of Victoria and Koala sightings..................................................................................... 49

CHAPTER FOUR - APPROACHES TO MIGRATION : A REVIEW OF THE TRADITIONAL LITERATURE.................................................... 51

Introduction........................................................................................................ 51

Population Numbers and Environmental Considerations..................................................................... 51

Immigration and the Question of Total Population Numbers in France and Australia.................... 53

Works on Australia......................................................................................... 54

Works dealing with incentives and disincentives for immigration...................................................... 54

The Role of Liberal Democracies, Civil Rights and the Intellectual New Class in Institutionalising Immigration (Australia) 56

Works on France.............................................................................................. 58

Immigration as a response to citizenship................................................................................................. 58

Elite Power Groups (France)...................................................................................................................... 59

Housing : Immigrant integration and housing as a political or logistical disincentive to immigration. 60

Was France's Immigration Policy a Populationist or a Temporary Worker Immigration Policy? (France) 64

The Role of Racialism (France).................................................................................................................. 69

International Comparative Works involving Australia and/or France 71

The role of Racialism (International)........................................................................................................ 71

An Economic Explanation for both promoting and discouraging Immigration................................. 75

The Role of Liberal Democracies, Civil Rights and the Intellectual New Class in Institutionalising Immigration 77

How is it that politicians and the political process become influenced to change immigration policy after 1973? Electoral process contrasted with Elite Power Group theory............................................................................................... 79

Housing : Immigrant integration and housing as a political or logistical disincentive to immigration (International) 82

Problems with statistics in analysing trends in immigration and housing......................................... 84

Conclusion................................................................................................................................................... 90

CHAPTER FIVE - MAIN THEORY AND METHOD........................ 94

Gary Freeman's Theory of Concentrated and Diffuse Benefits and Concentrated and Diffuse Costs of Immigration......................................................... 94

CHAPTER SIX - HISTORY CHAPTER...................................... 102

Purpose of this Chapter............................................................................ 102

History of the Populationist Property Development and Housing Lobby in Australia.............................................................................................................. 102

The Gold Rush and the Land Boom 1860-1890..................................................................................... 102

The Land Crash and the rise of the Population Boosters................................................................... 104

Table 6.1. Australia and her States: Rate of Population Growth (Per Cent) 1861-1950 (Annual Averages) 105

Connections between the Land Crash and Members of the Royal Commission into the Decline in the Birth Rate in New South Wales (RCDBR) 1904............................................................................................................................................ 106

Table 6.2. Some Business Connections of the members of the Royal Commission into the Decline in the New South Wales Birth Rate (1904)............................................................................................................................................. 108

Organisational Affiliations of members of the RCDBR....................................................................... 109

Recommendations of the RCDBR........................................................................................................... 110

Colonialism at variance with a big local market.................................................................................... 112

The First World War (1914-1918), Returned Soldier Farmers and the Great Depression............... 112

After the Second World War.................................................................................................................. 113

The Populationnist Property Development and Housing Lobby in Australia Today..................................................................................................................... 115

Composition and characteristics............................................................................................................. 115

Table 6.3 Top Australian Companies in Developing and Contracting or in Building Materials by Sector, Market Capitalisation and Return on Assets.................................................................................................................................. 117

Some Modern Australian Population Boosters.................................................................................... 119

The Absence of a Populationist Property Development and Housing Lobby in France................................................................................................................... 125

In the absence of a property development lobby for immigration, what drove immigration in France until 1974?..................................................... 126

Immigration Before 1945........................................................................................................................... 127

Immigration Policy : 1945-1954:............................................................................................................... 129

Long-term outcomes of early policies.................................................................................................... 132

Housing Issues and Immigration: 1945-1955:........................................................................................ 133

Immigration policy: 1955-1974:................................................................................................................ 133

Housing Issues and Immigration 1955-1974:......................................................................................... 137

Immigration policy : 1974 to the close of the 20^th Century.................................................................. 137

Legal Interventions on behalf of specific immigrants.......................................................................... 139

Housing Issues and Immigration: 1974 to the Close of the 20^th Century:......................................... 140

Why did immigration continue in the form of family reunion and asylum seekers in France after 1974?................................................................................. 141

History of Family Reunion legislative issues post oil shock:............................................................. 142

Asylum Policy legislative issues:........................................................................................................... 143

Conclusion................................................................................................................................................. 144

PART II - EVIDENCE.............................................................. 145

Introduction to Part II:..................................................................................................................... 145

CHAPTER SEVEN.................................................................. 148

The Role of Energy Policy in Producing Economic Expansion or Consolidation................................................................................................................................... 148

Different Economic Approaches............................................................................................................. 148

Comparative Oil Economics..................................................................................................................... 148

France's Approach to Oil Economics..................................................................................................... 149

Australia's Approach to Oil Economics................................................................................................. 151

Social Impacts............................................................................................................................................ 153

Reasons for Connections made to Housing and Demographics....................................................... 153

The Role of Land Production, the Housing Construction Industry, and Public Housing in Immigration Policy.............................................................. 155

Land Ownership and Development: France.......................................................................................... 155

Land Ownership and Development: Australia:..................................................................................... 155

Public Housing:......................................................................................................................................... 157

The Role of Property Development and Housing in Immigration Policy 159

Relationships Between Energy, Economy, Housing and Immigration Post 1974 in France and Australia............................................................................. 163

Importation of Construction Industry Workers : France and Australia........................................... 163

The Boom and Bust Character of the Australian Housing Industry Contrasted with France's and the importation of skilled and unskilled labour......................................................................................................................................... 164

Reaction to the First Oil Shock in France.............................................................................................. 165

Why did France Drastically Reduce Immigration in 1974?. 167

Initial Reaction in Australia to the First Oil-Shock................ 171

Policy Implementation and Outcomes in France and Australia 176

Fig. 7.1 France : Total Oil Consumption and Total Population, 1965-1997.................................. 178

Fig. 7.2 Australia: Total Oil Consumption and Total Population Growth.................................... 179

Changes to the Residential Construction Industry in France after 1973.......................................... 181

Fig.7.3 France and Australia, Total New Dwellings Commenced, 1964-1997................................ 182

Resistance to Change in the Residential Construction Industry in Australia after 1973............... 184

Anti-speculation Innovations attempted under the Whitlam Government : the Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD)........................................................................................ 184

Australia's return to a populationist development and housing policy under the Fraser Government...................................................................................... 191

CHAPTER EIGHT - EVIDENCE CHAPTER : GLOBALISING THE PROPERTY MARKET : FOREIGN FINANCE AND IMMIGRATION FROM THE 1980S 195

Introduction............................................................................................................................................... 195

Property Development and Foreign Finance from the 1980s 197

Table 8.1 Donations to the WA Labor Party by Property Developer Investors 1983-89............. 200

Why did Labor, and then the Coalition, continue high immigration after Fraser? Politics and Immigration in the 1980s and 1990s...................................................................................................................................................................... 201

Table 8.2 Evolution of Commonwealth Housing and Urban Development Expenditure: 1970-1996 208

Table 8.3. Australia: Average Total Net Migration at Different Periods.......................................................... 210

Housing Production, Immigration and Foreign Investment 211

Introduction............................................................................................................................................... 211

Housing Production and Overseas Immigration in Australia............ 213

Fig. 8.1 Australia: Total Net Overseas Immigration (year ending December 31) from 1945-1998 and Total New Houses Commenced from 1955-1998.............................................................................................................................................................. 213

Dwelling Prices and Affordability in Australia................................................. 216

Figure 8.2. Required Annual Income to Purchase Median-priced House in Melbourne (real threshold income), 1972 to 1995 in 1990 Australian Dollars................................................................................................................................. 216

Dwelling Affordability in Australia and Population Pressure............................... 218

Fig. 8.3 Net Overseas Migration (Adjusted for Category Jumping) for Australian States and Territories 1979-2000. 220

Fig. 8.4 Median Dwelling Prices as a Percentage of Disposable Income $1984-5 for Australian Cities with High Population Growth and High Overseas Migration.............................................................................................................. 222

Fig. 8.5 Net Overseas Migration (adjusted for category jumping) as a Percentage of Total Population Growth in different States, Year ending June.................................................................................................................................. 224

Fig 8.6 New South Wales Components of Population Growth as a Percentage of Total Population Growth 226

Fig. 8.7 Median Dwelling Prices as a Percentage of Disposable Income $1984 in Selected Areas with Low Population Growth and Low Overseas Migration 1984-1999 (Net Overseas Migration adjusted for category jumping.). 229

Dwelling Prices and Affordability in France................................ 231

Fig. 8.8 Index of price of dwelling in ratio to disposable Income, using 1965 francs............... 232

CHAPTER NINE - CONCLUSION............................................. 235

LIST OF APPENDICES................................................................................. 249

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS BY CANDIDATE...................................... 249

REFERENCES.................................................................................................... 251

ENDNOTES......................................................................................................... 255

PART I

CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTION

In 1945 France and Australia started out with high immigration policies that set out to supply workers for industrial expansion and to build up the populations of their nations for defence purposes. Both also began with strong public housing policies.

France continued to house a large proportion of its lower socio-economic strata through public housing, but in Australia in the 1950s the Menzies Government withdrew support from the public housing program, giving private developers and builders almost exclusive domain over the provision of housing in Australia.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australia was on course in 1995 to increase its population by about 50% by the year 2050, when it would still be growing. This course has not varied much since then.[1] But France is on a course to stabilise and then decline over the same period, according to the Institut National des Statistiques et Etudes Economiques (INSEE) and Eurostat.[2]

The UN has suggested that France (and the rest of Western Europe) replace its population loss and maintain its age to youth ratio through a massive immigration program.[3] A number of prominent Australians think that Australia should do the same.[4] But for the French such a proposition has little relevance since population stabilisation and decline are well accepted prospects there.[5]

France and Australia began on a similar path. How is it that they have finished up with such different demographic philosophies? Much of the answer may lie in their different approaches to land development planning and housing.

World Population, International Migration and Economic Policies: Emerging Differences

A situation has arisen where growing inequalities between the 'developing countries' and the 'developed countries' have contributed to strong emigration "push factors" from poor countries to richer countries. Some "pull factors" also exist in the richer countries and some groups seek to profit from them.

After the Second World War a number of western countries set out to increase their populations and to increase economic development. These objectives were related in a number of ways. In the case of Europe there was a desire to rebuild war depleted populations, to man factories and to produce new soldiers for defence. In the “English speaking settler societies” of the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, there was the additional objective of territorial development, such as the expansion of agriculture and transport infrastructure. In Australia there was also the objective of expanding the local market.

Several of these first world countries continue to have semi-explicit population policies based on population growth and economies which appear to be based on this population growth. However increases in energy consumption and human population since the Second World War call the wisdom of these policies into question as well as the philosophy of economies dependent on demographic growth. In this thesis I will be concentrating on France and Australia.[6]

Between 1960 and 1999 global population doubled for the third time in 72 years, reaching six billion in 1999. Prior to this it had taken 123 years to double just the once, from one billion to two billion, between 1804 and 1927.[7] It may yet double again. Even if this does not happen, population momentum guarantees continuing rapid increase well into the next century. This is because of gains in life expectancy, despite falling total fertility rates.

Pressure from population growth and economic growth is causing environmental degradation and massive loss of biodiversity and wilderness, as well as degradation of natural economic resources, such as soil and water in the poor countries of the world. These pressures are not, however, confined to the so-called "Third World". As per capita consumption increases and where population continues to expand in the old colonial countries like Australia and the United States, the last of the major wildernesses and major intact biodiverse ecologies are in the line of sight of property developers. They are increasingly downstream from high impact developments, and bounded, criss-crossed or pitted by human infrastructure, such as roads, dams, mines and power grids.

As well as these ecological problems, economic disparities between the “developed” and the “developing” world have dramatically increased since the second world war.[8] And since a series of oil shocks, beginning in 1973,[9] the disparities between socio-economic classes have also increased in developed countries where these traditional gaps had previously narrowed with the post war boom and industrialisation in intensively oil based economies.[10]

Economic and demographic pressures within the developing countries are causing a growing movement of people seeking better lives by moving to the richer countries in search of work.[11] Some attempt to come as formal immigrants; others by other routes. For example, the number of people seeking political asylum is rising. The line between political asylum and economic migration is blurring as social breakdown accompanies economic breakdown and the policies developed by the first world countries for determining and processing asylum claims are being overwhelmed and replaced with new strategies.[12]

At the same time as the poor are pressing against the national borders of the first world, national governments in the first world are actively competing with each other to attract highly skilled workers and potential capital investors to their commercial, research, service and development sectors.

In a sort of parallel economy, employers in the black labour market are also seeking to attract another class of immigrant (low-skilled workers, the very class that the national workers want to keep out) to supply labour to those industries that either cannot get local labour or cannot or will not pay the wages it asks for. (Nationals fear open policy towards these kinds of low skilled immigrants will depress wages).[13] This group of “illegal immigrant traffickers” is an industry in itself; people-smuggling is a lucrative business.

The legal immigration of refugees selected off-shore, family reunion, and potential workers, has also become a lucrative international enterprise, which does not carry the stigma or the risks of illegal immigrant trafficking, but which attracts money up front and may be at times nearly as financially exploitative of false hopes.

Some humanitarian groups also seek to take in many more refugees than their governments wish to provide for.

In Australia, but not in France, business groups and industries (especially the land development and housing industries) seek greater immigration from any quarter in the belief that a bigger population will mean more consumers, profitable infrastructure expansion, and a bigger economy.[14]

Almost all of these pro-immigration groups are in conflict with other groups (which desire to limit the immigrant flow) to various degrees in various first world countries, including France and Australia. For instance, in Australia, the groups which seek to attract skilled immigrants are in conflict with local industry associations, like the Australian Medical Association and Actors Equity, who wish to restrict the entry of such migrants. In France and Australia the groups which seek to attract illegal immigrants are in conflict with the law and the working classes who sense that their jobs and wages are targeted. The industry that profits by encouraging largely unfounded hopes of legal immigration among political asylum-seekers costs government and tax payers the funding required to process applications and appeals, particularly in Australia.[15] In France and Australia, the humanitarian groups that want more refugees are in conflict with government because of the cost of providing support and infrastructure for humanitarian migrants, who are one of the most costly immigrant groups, due to physical and emotional trauma and the difficulty in language and matching skills with local labour markets. In Australia, the business groups which desire demographic expansion in order to have a bigger local market and the land development and housing industries which hope to profit from providing the infrastructure for that expansion are in conflict with environmentalists and ecologists. Government also worries about the costs to the environment and of providing infrastructure for continuing expansion.

First world countries have experienced a tremendous, largely unanticipated rise in migration pressures. This, together with the economic disparity between the first and third worlds and the growing difficulties of the former communist European states, has challenged the premises upon which the post-1945 population and economic policies of the first world were based. As we shall see, the two countries chosen here for analysis provide, in different ways, telling examples of the way in which changing global conditions have challenged the certainties of the early post-war period.

France and Australia : Differences and Similarities before the 1973 Oil Shock

At the end of the Second World War France and Australia both developed policies aimed at population growth for reasons of defence and economic growth. Both relied heavily upon immigration to achieve this population growth. Both began with pronatalist policies, but Australia’s pronatalist lobby lost much of its political influence in the mid 1950s.[16]

There is some conflict among immigration historians and sociologists as to whether France eventually launched a post-war immigration program that was exclusively economic, based on an intake of short-term immigrant workers, as Gary Freeman argues,[17] or whether the program retained a nation-building (population-building) purpose. However the work of a number of writers supports the case that the French immigration program did retain population building characteristics.[18]

France and Australia may have coincided in their desire to build up population for defensive purposes, but unlike Australia, France had never been particularly concerned about the size of her local market. Her post-war policy had been to develop the European Economic Community (EEC)[19] as an area of favoured trade and to develop exports further afield.[20] Although early post-war Australian economic policy and practice had included export of food, fibres and some mineral resources, such as pig iron, the preoccupation of the business community had been to develop a big local market by increasing local population. This idea was particularly favoured by Australian manufacturers and the Liberal party. It also came to be favoured by the property development and housing industries. After 1945 the primary idea of governments - Labor and then Liberal - after defence, was economic development within Australia. The idea of a huge local market provided by a huge local population complemented this idea. Exports were a secondary consideration. The immense mineral wealth of Australia was virtually unsuspected in 1945.[21]

Importantly, both countries also began with post-war public housing policies. France kept hers as an important provider of housing to a substantial portion of the working classes. The French government also had extensive authority to direct the planning of land-use development on a national basis. In Australia the Chifley war-time and post-war government had considered doing this but ultimately did not. Nevertheless the Australian government did go ahead with a federally funded and public housing plan. However, gradually between 1950 and 1955, the Australian government turned almost all home building over to private industry and most land continued to be privately developed on an ad hoc and speculative basis, unlimited by any national planning.[22]

During these times - 1945 to the first oil shock (circa 1973) - energy was cheap, and so were wages. (Marxism and capitalism co-incided in the belief that humans created as much wealth as they needed by extracting it and moulding it, almost like clay.) France refers to the years between 1945 and 1975 as “les trente glorieuses” - the thirty glorious years. Australia talks about “the long boom”. In both countries much manpower was required - not necessarily skilled - to build infrastructure for industrial expansion and to work in industry, especially in manufacturing. Very gradually automation decreased the need for manpower here and there. But since business was booming there was plenty of money to start up new businesses for nearly every worker that presented, and automation was more of a choice than a competitive necessity.

This was the period of the “traditional” or “worker” immigrant of humble origins. In France, with the independence of her colonies and with the development of free movement and trade within the EEC, this traditional immigrant worker came to be identified as coming from outside the EEC. The distinction between non-EEC and EEC immigrants was increasingly formalised within the EEC as time went on, particularly after 1973.[23]

So, at the beginning of the period from 1945 until the first oil shock, France and Australia had a number of broad commonalities: they both sought high immigration for economic reasons and to build up population for defence purposes and they both began with major housing shortages which they both initially attempted to resolve through important public housing schemes. France continued hers to the present day but Australia's lost much of its importance in the mid-1950s.

Economic fall-out from the oil-shock was to have significance for long-term future policy. Australia and France handled the challenge of much higher oil-prices in different ways, which affected their demographic, social and housing policies differently. The differences in dealing with international changes in oil economics between France and Australia will be described at the beginning of Chapter Seven and are important to the argument in this thesis.

France and Australia 1974 : The Aftermath of the First Oil Shock

Immigration:

France and Australia's policy similarities were to change between 1973 and 1975, when, after a short-lived but dramatic change of course on Australia’s part, the population policies of the two countries - especially on immigration - drastically diverged.

Until 1974 immigration had contributed substantially to population growth in France and Australia.. After 1974, when France brought in a policy of zero net immigration from outside the European Economic Community, the contribution of immigration to population growth in that country fell dramatically. But in Australia, except for a brief interruption, from 1972 to 1976, high immigration continued as before.[24] (For statistical documention see Appendix 4, e.g. Graphs A.4.1 and A.4.8.)

Trends in both countries have led to total fertility rates below the “replacement level” of 2.1 children per woman, in France since 1974 and in Australia since 1976. This means that, apart from the self-limiting contributions of population momentum and increases in life expectancy, immigration is the only factor that will keep either population growing. It is also the major factor on which the two countries diverge after 1974.

My study has two major focuses: immigration numbers as the major variable affecting ultimate population size and land development planning and housing as a major variable affecting immigration.

Land Development Planning and Housing:

After 1974 in France a building boom came to a grinding halt as demand fell off from the private sector and the government greatly reduced its outlays on public housing construction and private housing subsidy. Sociological studies since then record changes to the structure and operation and technology of the French (and Western

European) housing industries, but virtually no change of this kind in Australia. In Australia the same pattern of rapid cycling booms and busts prevailed in the housing industry and immigration numbers, though interrupted under the Whitlam government for a short period in the mid 1970s, went on to rise and continue at a high level as before.

The interruption to 'business as usual' for the property development industry and immigration during the Whitlam era was, however, important. The lack of success in Australia of policy changes similar to those which succeeded in France, highlighted the interdependence of immigration, economic philosophy and the land development and building industries in Australia.

After 1974 lobbying for high immigration ceased in France, although the housing industry there continued to lobby for immigrant labour (but not for immigrant consumers) for one more year.[25] In Australia, however, the lobbying never stopped.

A New Subject of Sociological Comparison in Immigration Research

The differences that exist between Western Europe and the English Speaking Settler countries regarding land development planning and housing have, for a long time, been uncommented on by sociological writers on population policies and immigration. They have been written about quite often by sociological writers on urban planning and the housing industry, but these authors do not make a connection to immigration politics.

Writers on urban planning have however observed that: “assumptions and models derived from North American studies are not only simplistic in the European context, but at times quite erroneous. Cities in Western Europe remain distinct, just as their approaches to planning remain distinct.”[26] This comment was made about writers on urban planning, but could well apply to other sociological studies of Europe if the theory about the influence of land development planning on population growth developed in this thesis is correct.

Biological ecologists writing about human population impact on animal populations also frequently write about problems in land-use management.[27] Although they often connect human population growth to destruction of indigenous fauna and flora habitats and farmland, to my knowledge none has looked at the differences in land development planning between the English speaking New World settler societies on the one hand and Western Europe on the other. Since Western Europe is particularly low in biodiversity, this omission is not surprising.

And so far, to my knowledge, no anglophone population sociologist has yet written of the connection between land development planning and immigration as a factor in population growth politics. The subject of housing and planning comes up from time to time in French writing on immigration but, since these French writers seen unaware of the great difference in land development planning and housing in the English-speaking settler societies (ESSS), no theory has fused these issues to date.[28] (Henceforth I will refer to the English-Speaking settler societies using the acronym ESSS.) Jeanette Money has noted how the different emphases on public housing in Australia, France and Britain seemed to correlate with different levels of resentment of immigrants competing for housing with native-born, but her main focus is on localised competition for housing and the opportunity this provides for influencing electoral margins. She also suggests that the property development lobby for high immigration in Australia might be important to the volume of immigration after 1974 (a volume which she sees as quite small), but, since the focus of her argument was elsewhere, she does not go into how differences in land development planning may have produced this difference.[29]

But attention to the relationship between population growth, immigration and land development planning and housing has wide implications for sociological study. It could, for example, be applied to the third world to see if, for instance, Chinese development planning deters population growth whereas laissez-faire planning in India promotes it. A study of the land development planning traditions in Fiji (bloodline inheritance without the possibility of selling outside the Fijian ethnic community) might help to explain the difficulties in integrating the two disparate communities of Indian and islander Fijian. The relationship between land development, housing, and immigration policy might also be useful for explaining the inaccessibility of home ownership for Australians due to high prices, and the flight to cheaper housing away from the major cities, especially Sydney. (See Chapter 8) Knowledge about alternative ways of planning land use and development might assist Australians and the other ESSS to halt the destruction of native animal and plant habitats.

So, to sum up: From 1945 to 1974 there were a number of similarities between the immigration policies of France and Australia but, since 1974, the immigration policies of the two countries have diverged. Differences in land development planning systems, however, predated the second world war. Public housing policies diverged early in the period being studied. Unlike the Australian Government, the French Government is not trying to increase its population through an active immigration program and, again unlike the situation in Australia, no significant lobby group in France suggests that it should.

Research question and Argument Outline

Why have French policy makers taken a different path on immigration policy from their counterparts in Australia over the last 25 years? Why have they adopted a policy of demographic consolidation while their counterparts in Australia have persisted with a growth policy?

I sought answers to this question by applying a theory adapted by Gary Freeman to analyse concentrated and diffuse benefits and costs of immigration in immigration politics. I describe this theory in detail in Chapter 5.

Freeman hypothesised that immigration has become entrenched in systems where its benefits are narrowly focused but the costs that it imposes are diffuse (and therefore not easily identified by the public that is paying for them). According to Freeman’s thesis, we would find the answer to the question about the difference between French and Australian immigration policies by seeing where concentrated benefits and costs and diffuse benefits and costs are located in each society in relation to immigration impacts.

Narrowly focused benefits mean that those benefiting from immigration are consciously aware of this and are able to recognise each other and organise to keep those benefits flowing. Where costs are diffuse and fall upon a disparate population at many different points in many different ways, they are difficult to identify and there are no obvious political rallying points for the public to organise a protest around.

Using Freeman's approach I identified the Australian property development and housing industries as major receivers of concentrated benefits from immigration. Upstream and downstream many other major industries also benefited from the financial activity and material expansion that property development and associated infrastructure engendered.

The situation was almost the converse in France, however. The property development and housing industries showed no interest in catering to immigrants. There was even a certain hostility to housing immigrants and the lack of housing arguably poses an obstacle to immigration.

Why should there be such marked differences in the relationship between property development, housing, and immigration in each country? Further exploration revealed that there was a marked difference in the systems of land development planning and housing in France and Australia.

This led me to theorise that the difference between French and Australian systems of land development planning and housing was a major factor in the different outcomes, whereby the Australian property development industries lobby for high immigration because they perceive that their profits rely on it, whereas the French industry seems to be indifferent to immigration, not perceiving profits therein.

I concluded that the role of the property development and housing industries in Australia had almost certainly been of major importance in maintaining high immigration there after the 1973 oil shock, which I identified as a turning point, despite initial attempts to reduce immigration led population growth. In France, however, the absence of reliance by the property development industry meant that there was no strong organised obstacle to a long-term reduction in immigration.

I interpreted these findings within the context of Dunlap and Catton's New Ecological Paradigm. (See Chapter Two.) There is no apparent conflict between this paradigm and Freeman's theory. According to the New Ecological Paradigm, after an abortive Malthusian response in Australia, Australia took a Cornucopian route and France took a Malthusian route after the 1973 international oil-related crisis.

(Cornucopian denotes a philosophy that the world and nature are infinitely abundant and that mankind will always engineer solutions to any problems that develop. Mathusian denotes a philosophy whereby natural resources are presumed to be finite and that humankind, like other species, will encounter certain limiting material situations. Humankind will not be able to overcome these with mechanical solutions and will need instead to adapt by limiting its demands on the natural world. Both these philosophies have demographic and economic expressions.)[30]

Australia's cornucopian route was characterised by high population growth (notably through high immigration), infrastructure expansion, and energy use. France's Malthusian route was characterised by a strong reduction in population growth, notably through the reduction of immigration numbers, infrastructure consolidation and oil based energy use reduction, with a shift to other forms of energy supply. These two different development policy routes fitted respectively what Dunlap and Catton call the Human Exemption Paradigm (HEP) (a cornucopian point of view) and the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) (a malthusian point of view).

The system of land planning development and housing in Australia was typical of a general growthist[31] economic approach in that country and would almost certainly have been a factor impeding a different style of adaptation to the post 1970s oil-shock situation, despite an early attempt in Australia at a complete change of approach to one more similar to France's.

The system of land planning development and housing in France, which did not rely on population growth and an economic approach that looked to national security in essentials like energy resources, meant that in France it was relatively easy to adapt the economy to a declining pace of demographic growth and less oil based energy use.

Another characteristic of the cornucopian Australian approach was a tendency for public and private overseas borrowing to finance continuing expansion. In France, to the contrary, where economic activity and energy use were allowed to contract, overseas borrowing was not a major option.

An important assumption of this thesis is that petroleum based energy is fundamental to our modern industrial economy, although our dependency on this varies from country to country. Because of this fundamental dependence, it is reasonable to suppose that, since the first oil shocks, there have been some important social, industrial, political and economic adjustments.

Raw Data for Graphs and Tables - Raw data will be supplied by the candidate on request.

CHAPTER TWO - BACKGROUND THEORY AND LITERATURE REVIEW - THE NEW ECOLOGICAL PARADIGM

My explanation for why Australian and French population policies diverged is both environmentally based and economic. I will be arguing that the Oil Shock of the early 1970s,[32] and those that followed, necessitated socio-economic reorganisation for both countries and that their different land planning development and housing systems meant that they re-organised differently from each other and with different immigration outcomes. In this chapter I give the theoretical background for my environmentally based explanation.

Environmental Sociological Theory

I would describe as "environmental" rather than ecological the theories below. They emphasise the use of commercial energy and other resources for human needs and give little attention to ecological issues of biodiversity. Nevertheless they are usually referred to as ecological theories. Their relevance to sociology is discussed below. (Theory of land-use for biodiversity is addressed in Chapter Three.)

New Ecological (Environmental) Paradigms:

Mainstream sociological theory has not been accustomed to giving much prominence to the questions of energy and natural resources. For example, unlike Malthus and Darwin, Durkheim and Marx believed that humans were distinguished from other animals by their ability to escape the limits of growth. Both acknowledged Darwin’s contribution to science, but both thought humans were fundamentally different from other animals.[33] More recently there have been attempts to realign sociology with the basic common ground of biophysical science by, among others, R.E. Dunlap & W.R. Catton Jr., in “A New Ecological Paradigm for a Post-Exhuberant Sociology".[34]

Dunlap and Catton use the term “human exemptionalism”[35] to describe the belief that humans can solve all problems through technology, and they link its persistence with the optimism that accompanied the pioneering of new territories (such as America and Australia) from the 18^th to the 20^th centuries by Europeans. They identify Europe's discovery of the "new world" with the notion of limitless territory. They call the period of colonialism and the industrial revolution, which also spanned the 18^thto the 20^th centuries, the “Age of Exhuberance”. According to their interpretation the Age of Exhuberance was fuelled by the opening up of the “second hemisphere” (the new world and Oceania) accompanied by the discovery and the exploitation of new techniques which led to increased fossil fuel use. Rees and Wackernagel have more recently popularised Caton's conceptualisation of the exploitation of fossil fuels, particularly oil, as the opening up of another dimension; that of precious energy buried in time. (See further on.)

The Age of Exhuberance began to falter in the second half of the twentieth century. One sign that the exhuberant age was coming to an end was that colonial populations sought sovereignty over their regional wealth.[36] The formation of OPEC has been cited as an illustrative case that severely impacted upon the first world, giving rise to the 1973 oil shock. The reaction of European and English speaking settler societies, primarily France and Australia, to the first and subsequent oil shocks, is an important part of the argument developed in this thesis.

A second sign that the Age of Exhuberance might be coming to an end was the rise in population in third world colonies and the rise in energy consumption and population in first world colonies and in Europe, a rise which has been accompanied by economic and demographic disparities on a global scale. These disparities have, as we have seen, contributed to international migration pressure and to increasing acrimony[37] over international trade power blocs - notably North America’s dominance over the international market.

Thirdly, many analysts fear that growing problems of pollution of water, soil and atmosphere, with the prospects of global warming and the possibility of qualitative and quantitative oil shortages, (leading to exploitation of increasingly pollutive and inefficient energy sources) will make economic and demographic growth and growth in energy use increasingly problematic.

Possibly because they felt constrained to operate still within the (Marxist originated) materialist economic model that dominates Sociology, Dunlap and Catton's analysis is limited to material wealth alone, and does not explore disruption of biological diversity and species scarcity. Ecological crisis is implicitly defined as a crisis of material(s)[38] supply.

Dunlap and Catton cite Garett Hardin’s Limits to Growth[39] for its contribution to the identification of this crisis. They identify several problems they consider will arise from an impending materials shortage/environmental crisis and human population growth. Among these is the phenomenon of resource substitution of one fossil fuel for another, which physical scientists often hold will lead to higher energy costs and growth in pollution. Another problem many scientists have raised is that continuing expansion and intensification of human economic activity will lead to increasing heat production. Dunlap and Catton are among those who believe this will result in dangerous planetary warming, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.[40]

Dunlap and Catton call the belief, in sociology,[41] that human beings are not subject to the same biophysical laws as other animals, the Human Exemptionalist Paradigm (HEP). Because of this belief they say, initial sociological studies of environmental problems were mostly confined to public attitudes on environmental issues. Presumably this was due to the need to establish these issues as sociological concerns. However studies never got beyond this focus to the point of actually examining human and social interaction with environment and ecology, particularly major biodiversity issues.[42] Some sociological work on the relationship of humans with the biodiverse environment began in the 1970s, with studies by Burch and Michelson.[43] By their acceptance of environmental variables, these sociologists implicitly denied the HEP.

Dunlap and Catton's New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) stresses the interdependencies of species including humans, whilst allowing humans some “exceptional” qualities. The NEP asserts that human affairs are often influenced by the biophysical environment, frequently due to environmental reaction to human action. Human affairs are constrained by their biophysical context. The NEP assumes that, as inventive as humans may be, their science and technology cannot repeal physical ecological principles such as the laws of thermodynamics. The NEP assumes that there are limits to growth for human societies and compares the sociological concept of a "sustainable society" to the biological concept of a "climax community".[44] The term, climax community, refers to the final (stable) stage of a plant/animal community where the numbers and generations are stable as long as the environment remains unchanged. (It would be interesting to situate French and Australian populations according to this definition.)

The most obvious departure from traditional sociology is the inclusion of non social variables. For sociologists the NEP gives a new basis for examining traditional sociological concerns, such as competition and conflict between different social classes in a context of ecological scarcity and competition between current and future generations, using the concept of intergenerational competition for resources or “diachronic competition and intertemporal equity.”[45] Here is a sociological conception of a dimension in the future that relies on exploitation of fossil reserves accumulated in the past! It also provides a basis for examining resource competition between the first and third worlds.

For the purposes of this thesis, ecological crisis as a crisis of material shortage is an important concept when considering the 1973 Oil Shock and those that followed. Among reactions to the 1973 shock, in Europe we see social reaction to the concept of potential long-term energy shortage. In the English-speaking settler countries, however, energy shortage is dealt with as a short term-problem.[46]

In my thesis I use technological and design changes in the construction industries and the decline of new building in the home building sector as an indicator of these different social reactions. The case emerges that suggests that the French (and EEC community) interpreted the 1973 oil crisis as an indicator of limits to growth and set about limiting population growth and energy use for the long term. Their immediate objective, which they achieved, was to reduce the consumption of oil based energy. However the land development planning and housing system in Australia (and other English-speaking settler countries) relied on population growth and high energy consumption and overcame similarly inspired attempts to restrain these there.

Land and the phenomenon of immigration are also important to Dunlap and Catton's thesis. Using the historic context of European expansion into the New World, Dunlap and Catton show how increases in the amount of land available to Europeans through emigration were also responsible for setting the tone of the Age of Exhuberance According to them, "discovery" of the Americas took the land potentially available to the European population from about 24 acres to 120 acres per capita (an approximate five fold increase).

The perspective developed by the NEP provides one way of visualising the interaction between human culture and its resource base, but the concept of the ecological footprint allows us to bring this new image into a sharper focus.

The Ecological Footprint

William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel examine the concept of land needs in Our Ecological Footprint (1998). [47] This book attempts to develop a concept for measuring the per capita impact on the environment of a community. It is another way of counting population by assigning each person an average impact value[48] according to the total impact of their nation’s economy on regional and planetary resources.

Instead of just looking at housing and urban planning on a local scale as in Australia, or on a national scale as in France, it looks at planning on a global scale. While population planning is usually addressed on a national or global scale, and family planning on a personal or family level, Rees and Wackernagel's addresses land use on the global scale, although it does look at personal needs.

The book visualises the allocation of space needed by humans and how this space is utilised by an economy. It also explores planning of development in a spatial sense and how building, organisation and design affect energy use. How much biologically productive land[49] will be required to produce the energy required for humans to live in a particular economy and how much pollution will they produce? Furthermore, how much biologically productive land would be required to absorb that pollution? This is another way of exploring carrying capacity. Its methodology is built on theories like Ehrlich’s I=PAT. [50]

The Rees and Wackernagel theory has been developed with practical formulae and serves sophisticated concepts, but the operational indicators are still primitive so the results are of low validity and reliability. This is due in part to the problem of global scale and national differences in statistical measures and indicators. Nevertheless some practical work has been done already using this theory and has permitted comparisons between different countries. [51] See my Statistical Appendix, pp 35-45 regarding methods used to calculate energy use. See Appendix 5 for more about population theories.

This thesis attempts broadly to quantify and relate availability and cost of energy to land-use, housing and population logistics in France and Australia. It identifies differences in energy policies and in land development planning and housing systems as variables producing different demographic outcomes in France and Australia. The Footprint theory helped in providing a conceptual framework, as well as examples of indicators and measures, with which to do this.

Energy and Oil Shocks

What have energy consumption and oil economics got to do with sociology?

Clearly energy consumption and oil economics have an impact on economies and anything which impacts on an economy may cause social constraints and social reactions.

In the area of sociological theory, Dunlap and Catton and Rees and Wackernagel have given sociological significance to energy use and their theories provide us with conceptual frameworks within which to examine relationships between numbers of people, lifestyles and energy consumption. (Some of the statistical concepts for measuring indicators of these will be mentioned at the end of this section. They are discussed in much more detail in Appendix 4, pp.35-45.)

Their theory assumes practical significance for the analysis of socio-economic policy in response to major oil shocks, particularly the first one in 1973.

Conveniently, the major oil shock of 1973 provided a period where economic impact and social reaction was highlighted and substantial records remain at the level of the popular press, specialist magazines and books treating the period. This is because policy formation was widely discussed and reported on internationally. It focused on decisions to do with consumption and energy pricing, potential alternatives to petroleum-based energy, infrastructure expansion or contraction, demographic expansion or stabilisation, public finance strategies such as encouraging saving, buffering unemployment, raising taxes, increasing protectionism, or borrowing externally. Some of these policies were more directly connected to the international crisis as an oil supply crisis and others were couched in more general terms of an economic crisis. But they were all apparently kicked off by the 1973 oil shock.

The 1973 oil shock marks the period when France broke away from its post war population building policy and when Australia attempted unsuccessfully to do so. From this point the two countries were to develop in quite different ways.

The oil economics literature has little to say on the reason that different countries took different courses in dealing with the oil shock, but two obviously different blocs exist.

In ecological terms, the first block consists of the 'cautious' Western European countries, like France, without local oil supplies and the second, of the 'incautious' ESSS with local oil possessions. It appears that France and other Western European countries took a Colbertiste and Malthusian[52] course.

Australia and ESSS with local oil possessions were economically and demographically more expansive and cornucopian in their approach - as judged by energy consumption, population growth, and infrastructure expansion.[53]

There does seem to persist in some circles a general belief that "new" countries could go on expanding indefinitely, due to their abundant natural resources, which include oil, gas and other energy and mineral reserves.[54]

This absence of comparative theory leaves questions that I attempt to answer, at least in part, through my research, which does indeed suggest that France's methods of organisation, with national land planning and strong public housing provision may have assisted the retention of a "Colbertiste" protectionist approach to economics and social welfare, with a "Malthusian" awareness of population carrying capacity.

These differences will be dealt with at the beginning of Chapter Seven and are explored in some detail in Appendix 3.

CHAPTER THREE - BACKGROUND THEORY AND LITERATURE REVIEW - LAND DEVELOPMENT SYSTEMS, HOUSING AND THE RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

The previous chapter provides an outline of the theoretical perspective in which the argument of this thesis is set. It shows that, whatever may have been the case in the past, we can no longer analyse social and economic policies without considering environmental constraints. To date there has not been a particularly abundant literature on this, but the case is different when we come to the specifics of particular policies. There has, for example, been a substantial tradition of policy analysis as far as the land development system, housing, and the residential construction industries in France and Australia are concerned.

Systems of Land Development Planning

In this thesis I identify two different systems of land development planning and treat them as variables of population policy formation in France and Australia.

Burtenshaw, Bateman and Ashworth, The City in West Europe[55] helped me to clarify the differences in land development systems, as part of the structure and implementation of property development in France and Australia. The book was written by a number of authors in the field of urban planning for the express purpose of pointing out how different land development planning of cities and housing and other spaces in Western Europe is compared to statutory planning and housing in America. Their articulation of the characteristics of Western European cities and spaces validated my suspicions that erroneous assumptions about pressures to maintain or increase immigration in France could have occurred due to misunderstandings by writers from English speaking settler countries about land development planning and housing systems there. A major difference that emerged was the relative lack of land speculation.

One of the functions of government in any society is that of directing and controlling housing outcomes through appropriate housing policy. The form of that policy will vary from country to country, depending upon the particular form of society and governance. Terry Burke in his analysis of housing and related planning policy describes Australia, the United States, and Canada as market liberal federal systems, meaning that their "national political system is built around States with their own autonomy and rights." Their emphasis is on market processes and small government. Another system exists in other countries which have "unitary systems, where the national political system is dominated and controlled by a central or national government." He adds that this difference is "often neglected in an analysis of housing policy", but that it is an important one.[56]

Nationally co-ordinated Land Development Planning : This is France's system. It is a nationally based and co-ordinated and involves State direction of public land. Uses are planned a long time in advance. The State purchases land specifically for public housing, equips it with infrastructure and releases it to builders. Land is also set aside for forests, roads, agriculture and other social and economic uses.

Statutory or Land Use Planning : This is Australia's system. Australia's planning system reflects that Australia is a market liberal and federal society. There is no national planning system as planning is the responsibility of the states and local government. It is also a non-interventionist system compared to much of Europe, as the objective is to facilitate and direct the market rather than to override it. Although land is initially zoned by state governments and there are forums for the public to raise objections to development initiatives, the system is piecemeal and no-one in one area is aware of what is being done in another area unless they take special steps to find out. This is because administration of the development controls that attach to zones is left to the myriad of local governments, each with their own interpretations and aims and objectives. Despite the fact that land is initially zoned, rezoning is comparatively easy, due to the absence of overall long-term planning framework in most states and territories and a greater desire to accommodate the needs of the private sector than in non-market liberal societies.

Australia

The two systems are clearly very different and the literature on one does not often speak to the conditions of the other. Consequently the two systems will be analysed separately here.

Michael Cannon’s The Land Boomers,[57] and Neville Hicks, This Sin and Scandal,[58] helped me to make connections between land speculation, economic growthism and population boosting. Cannon's work was about land speculation in Melbourne and Sydney in the 1890s and Hicks wrote about the desperate machinations of businessmen of the time to induce a rise in the birth rate and in immigration.

After the long boom associated with the 1860s gold rush, when gold ran out, international immigration dried up, the birth rate fell, and people went interstate, to Queensland and West Australia, following gold discoveries there.[59] The worst economic depression in Australia's history followed.[60] Up to the crash, however, more allotments had been subdivided for suburban houses in Melbourne than would have been sufficient for the entire population of London. In 1893 there were 14,000 vacant houses there.[61]

What were the ecological consequences of so much land clearing associated with mining and building? An unpublished doctoral thesis by Sandra Bardwell, National Parks in Victoria 1866-1956, "For all the people for all time", 1974[62] provides valuable documentation of historical changes to space and amenities, in the form of the reservation of parks, changes to forest cover and increments to urban areas. This detailed thesis, which actually went chronologically well beyond 1956, is an historical document in its own right, since its focus typifies a 1960s and early 1970s renaissance in the preservation of natural spaces in Australia just prior to the post oil shock period when universities and youth became more preoccupied with unemployment and corporate culture.

Bardwell shows that the Gold Rush and its attendant land rush had rapidly devastated much of the Victorian landscape. Land was cleared for housing, for fuel and for agriculture as well as to dig holes to look for gold. The impact on forest cover was so early so devastating that the Land Act (1865) Commissioners recommended investigating the merit of establishing State Forests. They described examples of protective overseas legislation and raised the issue of massive forest clearing and the connection with climate change, drainage problems and water supply.[63]

It seems clear that rapid population growth was a good thing for the property development industry, but a bad thing for ecology and the environment. (In the last part of this chapter I explore land-use planning and ecological theory for biodiversity needs.)

There were obvious differences in the way Australia's population had grown in sudden fits and starts since 1788 and in the more moderate pace of change in the French population over the same period. However it was not until I started to investigate differences in immigration policy in France and Australia after the first oil shock that I began to wonder if there was some difference in the way land development was planned and organised in Australia and France whereby the interests of Australian property developers were more directly served by population growth. Continuing a similar line of research to Cannon's history of land speculation were Leone Sandercock's books, The Land Racket (1979) and Property, Politics and Urban Planning (1990).[64]

Sandercock describes these books as historical studies of the “national hobby of land speculation” beginning in the 19^th Century. The first concentrates on corruption in the Victorian property development and housing industries with the institutionalisation of private interests over public interest in land development planning.[65]

The second book revisits the first and adds chapters on Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, making some comparisons between Australian and American city planning. The author comments on her early method, which she describes as having been written on the “cusp of a waning left-liberal approach to planning issues and a just blossoming neo-marxist paradigm”.[66] She explains that she had been interested in the political, sociological and institutional aspects of city planning and in understanding how planning relates to the political economy of a society. Her books carefully document names and dates and they also establish concepts which do not occur elsewhere in sociological literature on population growth and immigration. For instance, in her second book she establishes the relationship between property speculation and population growth and the fact that it is an issue which gives rise to conflict among planners in Australia.[67]

She also provides a clear definition of “land development planning and statutory planning”. Sandercock actually expressed these two concepts as: “development planning” and “statutory or land-use planning”,[68] but I have changed the first to “land development planning” to avoid confusion with foreign aid 'development' programs and to emphasise the fact that land use of all kinds may be involved in this kind of forward large scale nationally co-ordinated planning. She also establishes very firmly the existence of speculation as an institution in Australia and the role that government’s accommodation of private interests in land development and housing play in facilitating this.

France

Modern French land development planning and public housing traditions and law in France actually had their origins quite early in the 20^th century. Jean-Pierre Gaudin documents this in "Urban planning techniques and political legitimacy in France at the beginning of the twentieth century".[69] Ironically, the First World War appears to have had a beneficial effect on planning. Gaudin writes that the "scope of reconstruction work made necessary after the bombing in 1914-18 prevented those defending private property and real-estate speculation from holding up the process any longer." The process was to pass national laws making town planning compulsory, providing powers of compulsory purchase, and increasing the powers of the communes and the government. This process was first discussed in 1909 by the French Chamber of Deputies.[70]

After the first world war forward planning of "development, improvement and extension programmes"[71] for the allocation of land-uses became a reality. In a paper for an urban planning conference in 1923 at Strasbourg, France, G. Bechman wrote that "the period of small-scale road maintenance operations, designed with a narrow-minded outlook, prepared and undertaken in isolation, accompanied by a great many endless formalities, to end finally in ruinous expenses, is now definitely over".[72]

Gaudin writes that French planners immediately saw that plans for new residential areas would have little chance of success if it was attempted to implement them on land belonging to private owners. Hence laws were made for compulsory aquisition of land by government for the building of public housing and ammenities, financed by taxes. The goal was for "land regrouping" where the State would purchase private land to form blocs destined for specific public use. The Cornudet planning Act of 1919 continued on a national basis the principles of planning initiated by the famous statesman and planner, Haussmann, who remodeled Paris between 1853 and 1869 and had a lasting influence on urban design throughout Europe.[73] It had the purpose of dealing "with the question of the future development of the city and built-up area; the general review and modification of routes of communication, conservation of existing open spaces, formation of wooded reserves, rational distribution of public buildings, creation of health, archaeology and art organizations and major clean-up operations."[74]

The concept of protecting the heritage of future generations through "plans based on forecasting" was thus introduced and legitimatised in France before 1920. Planning was a communal responsibility according to the principles of "social solidarity", a concept popularised by the Radical Party at the turn of the century. The idea was that those who had become rich in a society owed a debt to the society as a whole, for their wealth had been acquired through many anonymous acts of cooperation over time.[75] This philosophy provided an important rationale for taxing speculative profits.

These innovations to the structure and implementation of property development seem to have contributed to a situation in France where there were, arguably, fewer obstacles to nationally co-ordinated land planning development than in Australia. Structural limitations and taxation disincentives to land speculation seem to be especially important. For instance, although in 1945 according to their urban planning projections, the French had anticipated a higher growth rate, both by natural replacement and immigration, far into the twentieth century when growth slowed dramatically from 1974 onwards, these plans could be revised without the kinds of revolt and lobbying for renewed population growth that occurs in Australia from the property development and manufacturing sectors. An indication of this flexibility of planning was the capacity by government to reduce funding for public housing and subsidies for private home buying.[76] Since government provided much of the funding for housing of all kinds this dramatically reduced the creation of unnecessary new housing stock.

In an international comparison, Barry Simpson provides further information on planning and infrastructure provision in his Planning and Public Transport in Great Britain, France and West Germany, Longman, 1987. This work gives numerous instances of specific laws authorising public authority land requisitioning and obligations for developers during different periods. The comparative material is useful as well because it demonstrates the broad similarities of Western European planning approaches. Simpson's work also contains a few examples of where private property development had found ways around institutionalised planning obligations. This situation is alluded to by Burtenshaw and Bateman below. It seems that property speculation was just getting ready to seriously entrench in France, particularly in the commercial sector, when the oil crash came. [77]

Another source of international comparisons is the International Handbook of Housing Policies and Practices.[78] Willem Van Vliet in his introduction to this collection of articles, provided material to situate Australian development and housing policies and practices internationally.[79] He evoked the different roles that governments in capitalist systems could take in land development,[80] writing that in the US “local growth coalitions dominate” and national government intervention is minimal. Australian policy and practice seem to be closer allied to US practice than European practice, as I suggest often in my thesis. He adds that “political constituencies in many European countries were better positioned to extract government commitment to public concerns such as education, health and housing than was the case in the US, Canada and Australia".

Van Vliet does not comment on the relationship between population growth and housing, but he does write that “housing has also been an instrument of population-related policies” and gives examples which include the redistribution of population (in Britain, the Netherlands, China ...) which were part of broader strategies to stimulate economic growth, but also to protect agricultural land and curtail adverse effects of urbanisation, and to promote the integration of diverse population groups.

Public and Private Housing Policy

There is in fact quite a lot of comparative work on housing policy internationally.[81]

A number of key differences exist in the housing systems of France and Australia. One is the greater role of public housing for the lower socio-economic strata in France compared to Australia. Where Australia's in the mid-nineties was five per cent of stock, that of France was 17 per cent.[82] The obvious point to make here is that the housing system in France is therefore more amenable to state control than the largely private Australian system. The two other important aspects of the way housing is provided are, firstly, that the Australian system is dominated by the detached dwelling (almost 80 per cent of stock) whereas the French, notably in urban areas, is dominated by flats and apartments. Secondly and relatedly, the construction of housing in Australia is dominated by small builders, where the French system is controlled more by large builders using industrial techniques. The small scale fragmented nature of the former, along with the more marketised nature of the residential building industry means it is much more prone to booms and busts and therefore to the speculative opportunities that a boom and bust process creates. The role of household growth and migration in relation to the attributes of the housing system including the tendency to market speculation and production is one theme of the research.

Many of these books are primarily concerned with better servicing the housing needs of the lower socio-economic strata. This objective is of obvious social importance, but, in pursuing it they unavoidably provide information on patterns of provision and rates of provision of different kinds of housing in relation to population growth and immigration. Statistical sources help us to establish rates and patterns of population growth through immigration and natural replacement, but historical and sociological studies are necessary to elicit material on interactions between immigration and production and access to housing.[83]

The Residential Construction Industry

Burke (1999) points out that the methods by which housing is produced, as well as its form, have important implications for housing policy, including low income housing provision.[84]

The residential construction industry is that part of the property development industry that actually designs and builds residences. His work makes it clear that the structure of the provision of housing and systems of land development, housing policy, and the residential construction industry are interdependent.

For some time I concentrated on material that described actual residence construction industry organisation, technologies and product design. I thus initially zeroed in on differences between the way the residential construction industries in France and Australia had adapted to energy price changes and economic recession, supposing that organisational and technical changes in the French residential building industry after 1973 reflected a drop in demand due to lower population growth, together with a rise in the cost of building materials and wages. I assumed that this alone must have led to so much contraction in the industry that it had been unable to marshal sufficient forces or funds to lobby for more migrants or to attract international finance.

Although I was right about the depressant effect on the French residential construction industry, what I did not realise is that I would find no evidence of any part of the French property development industry, including the residential construction industry, ever having relied upon or lobbied for population growth, especially not from immigration. The time I spent researching characteristics of the residential construction industry that emerged after 1973 proved to be useful however, for establishing industry flexibility. Importantly it also provided indications of relationships between rising energy costs and industry restructure or lack of restructure and change or lack of change in product design and focus in each country during this period.

The main thing to emerge from reading about the course of the residential construction industry in France and Australia was that after the 1973 oil shock, the French industry restructured. This was also the case in the rest of the EEC. In France the industry rationalised resources, utilised new technology and adapted design and production to increased energy costs and to the reduced product demand. [85] This reduced product demand was related to reduced population growth and reduced government projects and finance.

In contrast, the Australian industry made few if any such adaptations although a number of similar conditions initially prevailed. From the late 1970s however, there was actually infrastructure, residential and office construction expansion in Australia. There are many indications that the Australian construction industry came to rely on overseas borrowing, much of it brokered through international Japanese construction companies.[86]

Peter Rimmer's article, "Japanese construction contractors and the Australian States: another round of interstate rivalry", provides material indicating major international financial links to State infrastructure and residential and office construction projects. He describes Australian States competing for international funding in the face of the post oil shock economic fall-out.[87]

Sandercock, in her introduction to Property, Politics and Urban Planning[88] describes very clearly how from the "late 1970s until its defeat in 1983, the Fraser government relied ..." on attracting foreign investment by the provision of cheap power and encouragement of the "provision of infrastructure for private sector resource" which relied heavily on foreign borrowing.

Rimmer also alludes to immigration as a way for foreigners to acquire cheap land in Australia.[89] Ernest Healey's thesis, The Political Economy of Immigration and Multicultural Policies under Labor during the 1980s and Early 1990s[90] hypothesises global market and finance motivations for a connection between high immigration policy for Australia and the vision of Australia as more imbedded in Asia. These are new ways of looking at the relationship in the Australian property development industry between high immigration and land speculation. The Bold Riders by Trevor Sykes, as well as chronicling the activities of the grand Australian speculators of the late 1980s, provided evidence of some relevant links between these speculators and government.[91]

Fagan writes that after 1975 State governments increased their foreign borrowing firstly to finance infrastructure projects, especially for mining, and later to "offset mounting balance of payments deficits on current account."[92]

Between 1963 and 1977 capital from Japan increased ten-fold. From less than 10% in 1972-75 under Whitlam, foreign investment in Australia increased to 49% of GDP in 1990-91. By 1986 more than half was destined for real-estate investment.[93]

It appears thus that the Australian economy was able to perpetuate pre 1973 conditions by overseas borrowing, whereas the French economy chose a more conservative path.

Prime Minister Fraser liberalised foreign investment rules under the Foreign Takeovers Act (1975).[94] Successive amendments have progressively removed barriers for foreigners to purchase land in Australia. Few restrictions remain. A 1987 amendment prohibited foreigners from purchasing established residences, but since 10/9/99 a foreigner married to an Australian citizen may co-purchase an established residence. There is no restriction on purchasing any other land with the exception that foreigners must notify the Foreign Investment Review Board when they intend to purchase developed non residential land for more than $50 million. I will discuss some ramifications of this issue in Chapter 8.

In France, foreign borrowing and foreign investment were discouraged up to the 1990s. Pompidou changed policy to the extent of facilitating foreign investment in productive industries that created employment, "Greenfield investment", but discouraged the buying out of French enterprises. From the mid 1980s French investment overseas increased. By 1992 French direct investment abroad made up 18% of the world total and 32.1% of investments originating from the EEC. Most of this finance was invested in Europe. From the mid 1980s foreign investment in France increased, but most came from within Europe. Up to 1992 EEC investment was clearly preferred. After 1992 policy was less discriminatory. There has developed over this period a notable symmetry between imports and exports.[95]

Van Vliet in International Handbook of Housing Policies and Practices analyses the average size of residential construction firms in different countries in the 1980s as an indicator of efficiency in the building industry. Australia’s firms were among the smallest, with about 20,000 firms in 1984-1985 with an average of 3 employees each, including the working proprietors.[96] This point is important to my argument as the size of construction firms is linked with the ability to adapt new methods and this is a factor in reliance or lack of reliance on accelerated population growth. In The Australian Housing System, which refers to the different systems in Europe and the English speaking settler countries, including Australia, [97] Terry Burke comments that developers in Australia frequently employ a strategy of “inviting as many builders as possible to set up display houses. Some have up to 60 different builders working on their estate at any one time. This fragmentation not only limits the degree to which the builders can appropriate development gains, but also further restricts their ability to embark on more industrialised forms of production techniques that might occur on site.”[98]

In short, the cases of France and Australia provide many differences in industry restructuring post 1973, differences in energy use practices, differences in infrastructure investment and in overseas borrowing. Added to differences in population growth rates between France and Australia, these variations underpin my argument that Australia took a 'cornucopian' route and that France took a 'Malthusian' route after the 1973 international oil related economic crisis.

The next section deals with a branch of land development planning literature concerned with population policy, immigration, and ecology. This is land planning for biodiversity, a branch of planning which has given rise to major differences between Australian and French immigration literature. These differences may again be extrapolated to differences between the ESSS and Western Europe.

Land-use Planning for Biodiversity Habitat Needs

Biodiversity and Habitat Preservation as a Sociological Concern

Durkheim defined social facts[99] as detectable social products that form institutionalised constraints. He held that social conventions and institutions constitute concrete manifestations of real societies. He divided social facts into material ones, like roads and buildings, and non material ones, like social norms prescribing acceptable behavior. In human society, land clearing and appropriation is subject to many rules and conventions and frequently encounters opposition. One opposition it encounters are rights of biodiversity, which humans have institutionalised on a variety of levels as conventions and territorial interests. For instance there is the convention of not being cruel to animals, which has a long and distinguished history,[100] and the desirability of preserving an area of great interest to science. We are also told that to reduce or unbalance biodiversity may ultimately overwhelm our immune systems.[101] Groups of humans attempt to save natural habitat in order to preserve the populations and cultures of hunter and gatherer tribes which function within these natural areas. There are also many who value natural biodiversity in its unchanged habitat for aesthetic and spiritual reasons.[102] We may thus justify the inclusion of the concept of biodiversity habitat in sociological terms. Indeed there is a rich body of literature that proposes that threats to biodiversity viability by human population growth and infrastructure expansion are reasons to limit population growth in Australia.

Ecological Theory of Biodiversity Habitat Needs

The ecological theory of biodiversity habitat needs is a scientific and popular concern that has arisen mainly in the ESSS. This is because exploration of the new world not only opened up land, but it brought Europeans in contact with an extraordinary wealth of intact ecologies containing large fauna and flora. This was, in a sense, a second chance at Eden.

Australia was one of the first countries in the world outside the United States in which national parks appeared before 1900 and was a pioneer in the creation of special legislation and organized public promotion of national parks and regional reserves for the conservation of Australian flora and fauna.[103]

The history and role of national parks and regional reserves in France presents a marked contrast to Australia's. Legislation to create national parks in France only exists from the 1960s and is still in its early stages.[104] At present most or all of these parks are located in alpine or mountainous regions and are too small or too unprotected from resentful farmers to ensure viability of 'super-predators', such as wolves, lynxes and bears.[105] Regional parks in France have the major function of retaining human population in rural areas by preserving traditional regional lifestyes and distinctive local products. The protection and fostering of local fauna and flora is almost an ancillary pursuit. It is largely dominated by the French hunting and shooting lobby's needs and preferences, which favor an attenuated range of traditional prey.[106]

Such different sociological pressures are reflected in land-use planning and population theory differences in the ESSS and Western Europe. In the ESSS a new branch of Malthusianism called "Eco-Malthusianism" has arisen, which is hardly known in France or Western Europe. This emerging philosophical difference was perhaps first written about in Ronsin, Dubois and Newman in "Ecomalthusians and Pherologists".[107]

Although in theory one could feed and house a substantially larger human population in Australia, one could not do so and also preserve the natural biodiversity there. This is all the more so because the Australian State based land development planning system, which is population growth dependent, has unnecessarily fragmented natural habitat, rendering what is left extremely fragile.[108] In essence, corridors which once linked parks and reserves have been broken up and built over by human infrastructure, leaving biodiverse population stranded on islands, buffeted within a sea of increasingly intensive human activity.

Biodiversity habitat needs are the population needs of species including, and in addition to, the human species. Ecological theory of biodiversity habitat is a form of population theory that looks at the problem of land use planning. “Ecological” here is used to distinguish theory about relationships between living organisms and their environment from the narrower term, “environment”, which is often used anthropocentrically to designate “the external conditions and surroundings, especially where people live and work”[109] and which may entirely disregard the issue of biodiversity.

History of Biodiversity and Habitat Theory : Ecological Darwinism

Up until the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, the general western view on species extinction and changes to landscapes was that God had preordained everything that was going to happen to the world. This perspective is now generally known as "creationism". Many people believed that the species composing an ecology were an unchanging ingredient, although it was also widely held that a great flood had eradicated animals and plants from an earlier epoch. There was however little or no concept of geological time. How people felt about what became of their landscapes and the animals in them varied between a fatalistic belief that destiny prevailed and man had no responsibility or, to the contrary, that man was there to keep order among the lower species, which many felt were only there to serve him.

Whereas Malthus had popularised the concept that food production was limited to available arable land and human population growth was limited by food production, Charles Darwin popularised the notion that humans were only part of a complex web of life. He theorised that species competition over territory could lead to extinction. It is almost certainly to Darwin that we can attribute the wide dissemination of the notion that other species are worthwhile and interesting in their own right. Until Darwin's thesis there had been no principle under which the impact of human activities on other species might be examined.[110]

History of Ecological Darwinism in Australia Leading to Early Formation of National Parks

Many natural scientists had been attracted to Australia by a stream of publications on Australia's extraordinary ecology, beginning with Banks' journal of his voyage with Captain Cook in 1770.[111] It is probably true to say that, until the gold rush, natural scientists were among the few people who came to Australia voluntarily. This was Australia's golden age of science.[112]

Darwin has a particular place in Australian history because he not only visited Australia, in 1836, but Australia's unique ecology furnished powerful evidence for his theory of natural selection. A number of "Darwinian scientists" came to Australia because what Darwin had to say about the ecology fascinated them.[113]

Against the feverish property development and infrastructure expansion associated with the gold rush, such scientists led the strong popular native biodiversity conservation movement, which resulted in the creation of natural reserves in the form of "national parks".

Gradually, however, the proportional representation of natural scientists in the Australian population and the importance assigned to their opinion, as evidenced by the number of social events and publications related to scientists, was reduced by the arrival of more commercially oriented waves of immigrants.

The first wave came with the gold rush. This was the beginning of Melbourne's establishment as a financial centre and it was also the beginning of the Australian tradition of property speculation.[114]

The second great wave arrived after the second world war.[115] These immigrant waves formed the foundations of the rise of a bourgeoisie in Australia with little interest in the wonders of biodiversity and which, in the case of the property development sector, was actually in competition with it.

Probably because Australia is a large land that is very hard for humans to settle, and because dense settlement by non-stoneage peoples occurred much later than in Europe, much of its remarkable biodiversity still survives despite the increasingly hostile and intensive economy.[116] Although there has been a retreat from rural areas, population growth in urban regions and along the coasts is rapid and sprawling, preceded by and accompanied by massive land clearing - much of it speculative.

In France, due in part to the different land development and public housing system, natural habitat has increased since last century and physical conditions are ripe for the return of "super predators" at the head of biodiverse chains, but cultural conditions still support the domination of nature by man, despite a growing movement in support of undomesticated species.[117]

In Australia, cultural traditions still support the preservation of biodiversity, but physical conditions for its maintenance are rapidly eroding.

Modern Theory : Island Biogeography and Land Planning for Species Diversity

E.O. Wilson and R.H. MacArthur's ecological theory of Island Biogeography (1967)[118] may be the first that attempted to quantify the destruction of species by relating their habitat needs to loss of habitat through land clearing. Prior to this there was no real system whereby we could measure the erosion of the natural world by human settlement. Wilson and MacArthur’s method was to study small islands to see how many individuals of different ages and sexes were necessary to a particular species in order for it to maintain an optimum population. The study also took into account in and out migration and interdependence of species within ecological communities. It began to look at the viability of ecological communities according to scale and complexity. The theory also permitted the definition and study of unnatural islands created by humans, which isolated species and ecological communities away from their counterparts. Figure 3.1. shows how human land-clearing creates such isolated islands.

Fig. 3.1. Maps showing progress of Reduction and Fragmentation of woodland due to land clearing for agriculture, roads, housing etc.

Source: MacArthur, R.H., Wilson, E.O., Ecological theory of Island Biogeography, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1967, p.4, Fig.1, “ Reduction and Fragmentation of the woodland in Cadiz township, Wisconsin, 1831-1950.” The illustration actually depicts man’s impact on Wisconsin woodlands between 1831 and 1950 and originally appeared in J.T. Curtis, “The Modification of mid-latitude grasslands and forests by man. In W.L. Thomas, Jr., ed., Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, University of Chicago Press.

These illustrations lead us to obvious conclusions. At some point in the progress from dense woodland to total fragmentation and then complete clearing there is not going to be enough land for ecological communities, for large species, or, indeed, for almost any species except humans. The species and communities are not going to be able to leave their population centres in order to seek fresh genetic pools because the habitat they eat and shelter in no longer connects the various communities. The process ends with no viable animal and vegetation communities except human ones and those which human enterprise provides for domestic animals.[119]

E.0. Wilson has continued to pursue this problem throughout his life. In The Diversity of Life, (1992)[120] a study of a new volcanic island, he explores the question of just what it takes and how long for a complex biodiverse community to build itself from the ground up.

Wilson's life-long study also led him to examine the problem of the inability of the “human” sciences - notably sociology - to deal with the problem of desertification and loss of biodiversity. One of his most recent books, Consilience (1999)[121] is a book which asks for the different sciences and arts to come together by acknowledging their common basis in molecular and physical science in understanding and nurturing the world we live in. Sociology is particularly taken to task for persisting in treating its subjects - humans - as if they were not real life-forms dependent on a biophysical environment and for its negligence towards other life-forms.

Australian Eco-Malthusian Literature

The cultural importance of native biodiversity and the conflict this engenders in the face of Australia's growing human population and infrastructure expansion within a growthist economy have given rise to a body of Australian population and immigration literature written by natural scientists.[122]

In The Future Eaters, 1994,[123] Australian zoologist, Tim Flannery, in the tradition of Darwin, writes about the competition between humans and other species.[124]

Flannery and other Australian scientists[125] have contributed information on the problem of land use planning for biodiversity preservation by identifying the co-operative characteristics of Australian indigenous ecology which are different from the competitive characteristics of Europe's. The reasons are biophysical; Europe’s receding glaciers created newly mineral enriched soils only 8000 years ago, whereas Australian soils have remained undisturbed by glacial or volcanic activity, or even by fast flowing rivers, for many millions of years, leading to soils which are poor in contrast to those of Europe. Australia’s exacting climate and poor soils give rise to much less vigorous, more interdependent ecological communities than Europe’s.

Flannery identifies humans as coming from the more competitive ecology. He theorises that Australian Aborigines decimated species in Australia during their early settlement of the continent until the ecological circumstances they had induced caused them to adapt their society to a more co-operative model.

Flannery’s thesis propounds the need for an overall population policy in Australia aiming for a more ecologically co-operative model and a much smaller population over time. He assesses this need on the basis that, at current economic lifestyles, the human population, together with other introduced species, is destroying the capacity of the land to sustain it, by devastating the natural biodiversity, which is also of tremendous interest and scientific and aesthetic value. Knowing the contribution of immigration to Australia's population growth, he therefore recommends a reduction in immigration levels.

Australian natural scientists, including paleobotanist Mary White, author of After the Greening, The Browning,[126] show that there is a strong relationship between the destruction of indigenous biodiverse ecology and land and water degradation and desertification.[127] Like Flannery, White melds geological theory to fossil evidence, in another Darwinian tradition.

White states that Australia is overpopulated[128] and has advocated a smaller population in the long-term in her densely written, illustrated work on the interaction of climate and geophysics with the Australian continent and man. White's thesis is similar to Flannery's but, added to her paleobotanical and geological review of Australia's prehistory and history, she identifies likely trends for the future. Even without global warming, Australia is still drifting norththwards and this very dry brown land is becoming even drier. Australia's major river basin, the Murray-Darling, is becoming so salty it may turn into a salt desert by about 2020. In the form of irreversible drylands salinity, salt is rising up in the absence of native vegetation all over the continent. Without ground cover and as the land dries, the top soil, never plentiful anyway, is blowing away into the sea. How will humans and other life-forms in Australia cope?

Because Australia has such extraordinary rich, if fragile, biodiversity, a major issue of land planning and human population expansion is how far can development go without destroying this inheritance? And how far do Australians want it to go, keeping this in mind?

The Australia, State of the Environment report examines this question in detail and concludes that the current volume, pace and style of development is unsustainable. This report was published by the Commonwealth Department of the Environment and is a document of highest authority.[129]

In France the situation is different. There biodiversity was drastically reduced and almost completely domesticated long ago, due to human competition and dominance. Encouraging the re-establishment of indigenous animal and plant populations is a distant future ideal for France. Dominant ecological issues in France are reduced to the environmental ones of how to preserve water, soil, atmosphere and quality of life for human beings, whilst keeping the economy going and, the national joke goes, preserving the biodiversity of over 300 cheeses. The issue is much more complex in Australia because of the possibility of preserving and enhancing life for wild populations of flora and fauna. There is even the issue of preserving the possibility of hunter and gatherer lifestyles within these wild ecological communities.

These differences give rise to global responsibilities in land development planning in Australia which go far beyond France’s. But as we have seen, Australia’s land development planning system is relatively anarchic compared to France’s and that it is failing to protect her biodiversity. More and more it accommodates market forces[130] and market forces seem to be destructive of biodiversity, especially as concerns land clearing. Although most land clearing was initially done for agricultural purposes, including grazing, or for industrial purposes, including mining and provision of firewood, as human population grows, those agricultural lands and the natural habitat that lies between them, are rezoned for housing. Next, more land is cleared for agriculture, and so on.[131] Between 1961 and 1971 Australian cities used 1,042 square metres of land per person for each unit of population increase. Between 1971 and 1981 this increased to 1,207 square metres. South East Queensland lost 33% of coastal bushland to development between 1974 and 1989.[132]

Fig. 3.2. Map of land clearing and vegetation disturbance in Australia

Source: Mary White, After the Greening, Kangaroo Press, 1994, p. 210.

In Fig.3.2 the lighter shaded areas are those which have been affected by thinning and clearing of vegetation. The dark spots are specific areas altered in composition. The main point is that natural habitat has been damaged by thinning and clearing in virtually all fertile areas. Those areas not shown to be affected on the map are more or less inhospitable to human habitation and unable to sustain other large flora and fauna in any density. They are largely desert areas

Fig. 3.3. "Pre-European broad vegetation types".

Source: Wild Animals of Victoria, Viridans Biological Databases, a CD purchased from the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment, viridans@connect.net.au This map shows the variety of vegetation types in Victoria prior to European settlement in around 1850. The entire area is covered in a rich variety of vegetation.

Fig 3.3. is the first of two maps of Victoria, one of Australia's oldest settled States. Much land has been cleared for rural and urban use in only about one hundred and fifty years. This state was originally densely wooded, with well watered and rich soils by Australian standards. It was therefore habitat for a wide variety of flora and fauna, The coastline was once extremely rich in lowland forests and quite large animals, such as kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, quolls and koalas. Most Victorian quolls have died out and koalas, arguably one of Australia's most emblematic animals, are, among several other species, considered to be under serious threat of extinction. If we look at Fig. 3.4 we can see that much of their habitat has been cleared.

Fig. 3.4. "Present Day Broad Vegetation types".

Source: Wild Animals of Victoria, Viridans Biological Databases, a CD purchased from the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment, viridans@connect.net.au

Land clearing in Victoria, the most intensively settled state in Australia, has been extensive. Most of the relatively uncleared areas are public land, such as parks and reserves - but they tend to be on poor land and are small. Most of the cleared areas are private land. Much of the latter was originally agricultural but is increasingly being rezoned and urbanised, particularly around the biodiverse coastline.

Fig. 3.5 Map of Victoria and Koala sightings.

Source: Wild Animals of Victoria, Viridans Biological Databases, a CD purchased from the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment, viridans@connect.net.au

Each square represents the sighting of at least one koala within ten kilometers squared. Sightings go back to 1900. It is obvious that much koala habitat has been cleared or thinned.

In Fig. 3.5 we can see that there is little food or cover for koalas and that their habitat has been reduced to tiny landed islands. Koalas already nearly died out in Victoria in the 1900s and most of the Victorian population was imported from French and Phillip Islands. In the recent years these animals have been dying of starvation because, having run out of trees in their local areas, they have no other place to go.

Koala specialist, Scott Buckingham, links koala decimation to human population intensity and writes that, in 1996-1998 it was estimated that several thousand koalas and their young died of starvation in the isolated habitat of Framlingham Forest.[133] Where roads and housing estates are encroaching, such as Tower Hill in Victoria (the first created of Victoria's National Parks)[134] forests have been stripped bare of leaves and seem to be deserted. Economist Clive Hamilton, has written about the extinction of koalas in Bandjulung National Park within the last few years and of how another colony is threatened by housing development in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales.[135]

Beyond the furry icon of the koala, however, is the overall reduction of diversity in vegetation and fauna, which is reflected microscopically in the impoverishment of soil and water systems in Australia. Aesthetically and spiritually it is reflected in reduction of bushlands and their vandalisation, littering, weed infestation and the growing absence of native fauna.

In this land planning theory and literature chapter I have described major differences in planning and housing systems and their finance in Australia and France. I have documented how Australia's housing and infrastructure development expanded after the oil shocks, whereas France's consolidated. I have also shown that the need to preserve biodiversity and ecological viability in Australia represents special limits to human population growth and infrastructure expansion in this country and has given rise to a unique body of literature on ecology, population and immigration policy. Unlike the situation in France, the influence of ecologists in the Australian population debate is potentially huge. So far, however, it has been dodged by most major and minor political parties, although a political lobby group does exist - Sustainable Population Australia (SPA).[136] There is no comparable body of literature in France, nor any comparable lobby group.

The implications of this absence of a comparable French lobby group relate both to the absence of significant biodiversity to protect and the absence of rapid population growth in France. The existence of SPA in Australia is an indication that rapid population growth is noticeable and that it is perceived to be adversely affecting valued qualities of biodiversity.

CHAPTER FOUR - APPROACHES TO MIGRATION : A REVIEW OF THE TRADITIONAL LITERATURE

Introduction

Here I concentrate my literature review on the more traditional (that is, non-ecological) works about immigration that provided explanations for why large scale immigration programs were undertaken, why they continued or why they ceased after 1973. Issues of relevance to my thesis include the logistics and politics of land use and housing, ideologies promoting or discouraging immigration, the role of elites and the effectiveness of democracy in determining immigration policy and practice.

For a literature review this chapter contains a fair amount of detailed discussion, clarification and argument. This is due to the international nature of the material and its probable unfamiliarity to the reader. A number of facts and issues have come to light that require explanation - such as Algeria's unilateral cessation of migration to France, official policy on housing for immigrants in France, the complex evolution of EEC immigration as distinct from non-EEC immigration in France and the nature of the French visa system. These elements tend to be taken for granted in French literature but need to be articulated here. The context of analysis is also important - whether France was examined in isolation from the EEC or as an increasingly inextricable component of it.

The chapter is organised into: Works on Australia, Works on France, and International Comparative Works involving Australia and/or France.

Population Numbers and Environmental Considerations

Immigration, where it contributes to population growth, also contributes to increasing economic demand on water and land systems, through clearing for agriculture and infrastructure. Chapters two and three on ecology and environment showed these issues are of concern to environmental and ecological scientists. This theme is not new in Australian immigration literature.

As early as 1770 the botanist Joseph Banks commented on the low density of the Australian Aboriginal population and surmised that it was due to the biophysical limitations of the continent, such as poor soil and an inhospitable climate. With Captain Cook he was engaged in an assessment of the capacity of the land to support the establishment of a penal colony.

There have since been too many other works which made brief or lengthy references to the issue of "carrying capacity" for me to mention more than a few. Possibly the most famous, which dealt with immigration, population and environment was geographer Griffith Taylor's Environment and Race (1927). This predicted most accurately the size of Australia's population in 2000 and suggested that Australia should not grow past 20 millions if quality of life was to be maintained.[137]

In 1918 E. Brady's Australia Unlimited[138] promoted the idea that Australia should support a (white) population the size of Europe's and, with the post Second World War policy on immigration there was a rash of works promoting the idea of high immigration, such as A. Lodewyckx, People for Australia, A Study in Population Problems, 1956,[139] which also advocated a vast population for Australia styled on Europe's. In the 1960s and 1970s aborigines gained Australian citizenship,[140] the White Australia Policy was gradually dismantled,[141] and the idea of a big European outpost lost favor.

Populationism[142] became the prevailing tone of immigration literature for a while. In the 1970s, however, concerns about population numbers returned. In 1975 there was a major government enquiry, The National Population Enquiry (The Borrie Report).[143] After that the Conservation Foundation of Australia and Fontana published a collection of essays, under the title, Populate and Perish, in 1984.[144] Another collection of essays came out in 1991, Immigration, Population and Sustainable Environments: The Limits to Australia's Growth.[145] Between 1992 and 1994, there was another rash of government enquiries and reports, culminating in the Australian Population "Carrying Capacity" Report.[146] In recent times population numbers have been central to the major zoological and anthropological history of the Australasian region, including New Caledonia, New Zealand and New Guinea in Tim Flannery's, The Future Eaters, 1994[147] and in Mary White's After the Greening[148]. This was followed by two books by ecologist, Doug Cocks, People Policy, 1996, and Future Makers, Future Takers, 1999.[149] In 1998 ecologist and poet, Mark O'Connor, published This Tired Brown Land, 1998.[150] In 2001 Tom Morrow published Growing for Broke.[151]

Of major Australian immigration sociology works, Birrell and Birrell, with An Issue of People,[152] (1981 and 1987) and K.Betts with Immigration Ideology (1988) and The Great Divide, (2000)[153] stand out in nominating environmental considerations as reasons for addressing the question of immigration numbers and lifestyle. To do this they have referred to non-sociological data, such as, in Betts' case, the State of the Environment Report, 1996.[154]

Immigration and the Question of Total Population Numbers in France and Australia

Comparison of Australia and France reveals that immigration and population policy do not give rise to the same debates in both countries. This seems to be because the population trajectories are so different and also because biodiversity is of minimal local concern in France.[155] France and Australia resemble each other in total fertility rates and longevity, but in the matter of demographic numbers, immigration impacts are quite different. At current rate of legal immigration France's population is destined to stop growing between 2030 and 2050 - which is the period when the baby boomers will expire. Australia's population would also stop growing then if it were not for the high immigration factor. Discussion of immigration in Australia has recently returned more frequently to a discussion of population policy, hinging on the question of whether Australians want their population to stabilise, decline, or keep on growing rapidly. There is however little or no evidence that debating this matter has recently impeded immigration led population growth.

Since the main point of this thesis is that in Australia high immigration continued after the oil shock, I have concentrated on arguments that explain why this is so. Since, in France, immigration declined after the oil shock, I have concentrated on arguments as to why this is so.

Works on Australia

Works dealing with incentives and disincentives for immigration

In the 1970s analysts began to focus critical attention on the post Second World War contribution of immigration to population growth in Australia. Instead of asking about numerical goals, or helping governments steer their migration programs, some began to ask: Why did we have immigration?

The idea of an economy "conditioned to immigration" was advanced in Australia for the first time in 1971, by R.T. Appleyard, in "Immigration and the Australian Economy" at the conference, How Many Australians.[156] Appleyard wrote that a great deal of investment had been undertaken in the expectation that immigration would continue and that there were no countervailing measures to bring it to a halt.

In the same publication the idea that interest groups existed in Australia to promote high immigration was explored by Max Walsh.[157] He identified such groups as the Immigration Department, Qantas, and manufacturing industries which wanted workers and a larger market of consumers, unions seeking more members, and possibly local governments. He suggested that the interests of these pro-immigration groups were assisted by the inertia of an established pattern of high immigration. Such groups did not overtly advertise their own interest in high immigration but tended to present it as being in the national interest, for economic and defence reasons. In theory the poor, who had to compete for jobs with immigrants, might oppose immigration, but they were not powerful and/or organised. Max Walsh also mentioned environmental groups as possible sources of objections to immigration.

These ideas were taken up later by Birrell and Birrell, and by Betts.[158]

A European-based marxist thesis that worker immigration in Europe had been encouraged in order to undermine the ability of indigenous labor to bargain was advanced by Australian writers Castles and Kosacks in Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe.[159] J. Collins[160] and Paul Wilson[161] adapted this theme to the Australian situation, generalising from the tendency of Southern Europeans to man factories in Australia to most Australian migrants.

The essence of this argument is that a "reserve army" of immigrant labor exerts downward pressure on wages during economic booms, when wages would otherwise most probably rise. Indiginous labor is assumed not to oppose this competition because the immigrant labor force is supposed to perform unpleasant kinds of work that local workers refuse to do. Because of immigrants, local workers might then rise to management positions, and prevail as a kind of labor aristocracy. Reserve army theorists argued that insecure temporary imported workers had few democratic rights and were unfamiliar with culture and language. They were easier to bully than native born workers who could express themselves fluently and who had political rights. This 'reserve labor force' also has the theoretical advantage of being easily dispensed with when no longer wanted.

The Birrells argue against the marxist "reserve army" explanation for immigration dependent labor markets, where the capitalist benefits from bringing in cheap labor. They concede that this is true for Europe, and that it may be true to a degree of the United States, especially in the agricultural industry, but say that it is not a dominant motivating force in the Australian labor market.[162]

The main theory that the Birrells advance is that of the big local market, where manufacturers and non-trade industries, such as the housing industry, seek to increase the number of customers locally, rather than exporting their product overseas. They argue that the business lobby wanted a big population in order to have a big local market and that it was this motive, rather than the desire for cheap workers, that drove the Australian program. (My own thesis also assumes the big local market goal to be the major driver of Australian immigration, although it concentrates on the role of the property development and housing industries in this.)

The Birrells also argue that the Australian manufacturing industry has become dependent on low skilled immigrant labor and has adapted around it, thus avoiding innovation in technology and design.[163]

The Birrells offer an economic and an environmental and malthusian explanation for the Whitlam government's low immigration policies, but, contrary to my own interpretation, they do not relate their explanations to the oil shock related depression. Accessing different sources, and writing before Whitlam's autobiography, The Whitlam Government (1986),[164] they interpret Whitlam's policies as having the purpose of reducing demand on the local employment market whilst Australian industry was engaged in restructuring. The restructuring was an adjustment to across the board tariff reductions of 25 per cent, introduced by the Whitlam Government in 1973 to repair an imbalence in foreign trade in the Australian economy. The ALP also viewed the necessary expansion of intrastructure and services demanded by immigration-fed population growth as soaking up scarce capital which might better be invested elsewhere. In addition, population growth was seen as contributing to urban problems and deterioration in the quality of life. [165] These interpretations were an extremely helpful basis for my own interpretations which varied mainly in the way I linked them to the global oil shock related recession and to contemporary environmentalist trends.

The Role of Liberal Democracies, Civil Rights and the Intellectual New Class in Institutionalising Immigration (Australia)

The reserve army theorists and the Birrells offer different explanations for why Australia has pursued a policy of high immigration. In The Great Divide[166] Katharine Betts asks a different question. She asks how is it that political elites have been able to do this? To answer this question she looks at how societies, especially Australian societies, nurture immigration as a social obligation, a little like a form of noblesse oblige, even when it appears to be economically and socially very costly. She pioneered the use in Australian immigration sociology of total net immigration statistics, and I have used the same statistical approach. Betts also writes from an ecological perspective which sees immigration as a subset of the larger question of population policy, and, unlike Money, (see below), has no doubt that immigration numbers have remained high in Australia. Betts asks why immigration has persisted despite a good deal of resentment among the Australian people? Building on the theories that ascribe population building to the desire for big local markets, she observes that government and opposition appeared to develop a bi-partisan agreement to avoid criticising immigration numbers between 1976 and 1981.

After the demise of the Whitlam government the Labor opposition developed a policy of favoring family reunion, which pleased ethnic groups. However it continued for a while to criticise the numbers of immigrants the Liberals were bringing in. Betts suggests that the Liberals would have challenged Labor to show how immigrant relatives did not represent additional numbers. Labor was of course unable to defend its stance. It wished however to keep its family reunion favoring policy because it was important in appealing to immigrant voters. Betts suggests that, because both Liberal and Labor wanted immigration, although for different reasons - they agreed to avoid the topic altogether. Thus, at the elite political level, there was no criticism of high migration.

Why wasn't there more criticism of this beyond the parliamentary arena, she wonders? Her answer is that it became socially dangerous for intellectuals to criticise immigration because, she theorises, a pro-immigration stance became a badge of membership of a status group which considered itself socially and intellectually enlightened.

Katharine Betts' theory is convincing and appears to apply at an international level in a number of countries, as well as in France. According to the conclusions of my own thesis, Betts's "new class"[167], although it exists in France (where it might be somewhat differently defined in terms of post war and post modern origins) has not had the same impact on immigration policy, debate and numbers in France as it has in Australia.[168] In France a similar group has been described thus:

Parisien snobs calling for legalisation of illegal immigrants' status, abolition of national borders and global brotherly love. ... a badge of the Left for rebels without a cause or artists and film-makers who feel guilty because their professions benefit from national protection.[169]

The French intellectual 'new class' is less interested in increasing legal immigration than in increasing the rights and welfare of illegal immigrants and refugees. Perhaps also the frank economic rationale for much of immigration policy in France has limited militant promotion of the right to immigrate to family reunion and rights of immigrants to local voting and to housing.

With regards to Betts' theory about the "new class": Both the French and the Australian "new class" groups tend to be tertiary educated, but in my opinion (using the main argument of my thesis) the Australian group has more power because it is boosted by the commercial investment of much Australian industry in immigration led population growth. As such this "new class" would have constituted an important facilitator of high immigration and the influence and status of this group made public disagreement with them socially dangerous for other intellectuals and socially concerned people. In Australia it would seem that the groups that did not fear the new class were the non-intellectual classes - the rural and urban poor and small business and agriculture, however their lesser articulateness served them ill and they also became associated with some crass nationalistic and racialist views which severely eroded the moral and social validity of their platform. Le Pen's supporters in France were of similar ilk[170] but the French intellectual class had status but little political or financial power since there is little political or financial support for high immigration and certainly almost none for the rights of illegal immigrants.

Betts's thesis is in a sense complementary to my own (which it preceded, of course). Where I suggest that the dependence on immigration-led population growth of the property development industry and other Australian industry groups boosted the power and influence of the "new class", it is perhaps true that, without the "new class" these industry groups might have had a great deal of difficulty maintaining high immigration.