AUSTRALIA'S leading demographer, Bernard Salt, is at as much of a loss as I am about our cavalier attitude to population.

"We have no problem in producing a climate change report that will predict sea levels rising over 100 years and prompting everyone to run around like headless chooks saying we need to plan for that," he told me yesterday.



"But we don't plan for population growth in 10 years' time. It has a bigger impact on the livability of our city than the possibility Port Phillip Bay will rise 8cm."



Of course, if you don't have a master plan, you don't have politicians obliged to make provision and legislate for future power, water and public transport requirements.



"This nation does not have a business plan -- a master plan -- to know where we are going in 30, 40, 50 years time," said Salt. "If you don't have a master plan politicians can chop and change.



"That means they can work reactively, taking the nation's political pulse each election, rather than biting the bullet and making decisions that don't fit with our awkwardly short three-year election cycles.''



Salt wants an ongoing population council-like body to review our population policies after every census.



"I want them to nail their colours to the mast and say this is where we going.

"We are going to 35 million, this is how we are going to do it and as a consequence here is the spending on infrastructure for the next 30 years."



Salt says that world population will peak in 2070 at 9.1 billion. It is now about 6.5 billion.



He asks if it diplomatically realistic for a large, empty continent like Australia, which may be empty for very good reasons, to believe we are full at 22 million, even if that figure is politically acceptable at home.



"I don't think that argument is going to wash in a world that is seeing a mad scramble for resources."



Originally published as We need to plan for 35 million people