Perish then Populate
A migration shot in the arm for Australia's excess mortality crisis
“Populate or Perish” was an Australian government policy in the post-WWII era that aimed to encourage immigration as a means to increase the country's population to safeguard its strategic and economic future.
Arthur Calwell, Australia’s Immigration Minister at the time, promised to secure the “right type of our future Australian” and embarked on a tour of European refugee camps to find the prettiest and wealthiest displaced peoples to bring to Australia to shore up its postwar future.
Facing another population crisis, Australia is once again pursuing another “Big Australia” immigration policy, to again welcome the “right type of our future Australian”: young, skilled and healthy.
In the September quarter of 2023, annual population growth hit 2.5% - the highest rate since 1952 - and it mostly comprised international students and temporary workers. For the year to September 2023, 737,000 people arrived. The largest contribution to the total was temporary visa holders, with 554,000 people entering the country to work or study. Of those, about 42 per cent, or 237,700, were students. The net effect will be to boost economic growth by raising Australia’s productive capacity through employment and increasing aggregate demand. However, the opportunity cost of this policy has been to increase the cost-of-living pressures facing Australians through higher inflation, higher interest rates and therefore, erosion of our real income.
But another less discussed aspect of this population miracle has been the impact it will have on Australia’s current excess mortality crisis.
Population growth makes excess mortality look better
The increase in Australia’s population impacts the measurements of excess mortality by altering the baseline mortality rate for calculating expected deaths. When a population grows, though the absolute number of deaths may increase, these increased deaths are “expected” because calculations of excess mortality are adjusted for population size.
In total, 393,000 people aged 30 years and under were added to Australia’s population in 2022-23 through NOM. As younger age groups generally exhibit lower mortality rates, the significant surge in younger immigrants during 2022-23 has diminished Australia’s excess mortality from its record high in 2022.
Whilst the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) has never factored population size or demographic composition (the “ageing population”) into their Provisional Mortality Statistics calculations of excess mortality, one of the most frequently cited “authorities” on Australia’s excess mortality, the “COVID-19 Mortality Working Group”, has always done so.
The COVID-19 Mortality Working Group has created ever larger estimates of “expected” deaths against which to compare actual deaths, given the surge in the number of younger migrants. As a result, in one its recent analyses, Australia’s excess mortality was reduced to zero:
These younger migrants are also shoring up other important metrics of economic health and wellbeing. Australia now has an historically low unemployment rate and more employed people than ever. “Australians” are also working more hours than ever, resulting in a higher labour force participation rate and underemployment well below pre-pandemic levels.
These statistics are only made possible through substantial NOM increases in Australia’s population.
But all is not well in Australia.
The full impact of the damage wrought by the pandemic—from mismanagement and lockdowns to iatrogenesis—cannot be concealed by a temporary surge in student and worker arrivals and a reckoning for these issues is inevitable.
But there is more to the story.
The new, younger and healthier Australians
These younger immigrants arriving in record numbers are predominantly from countries with a low rate of mRNA vaccination coverage for their populations.
Why is this important?
The countries which have recorded the highest rates of excess mortality during the pandemic are also the ones which had the greatest percentage of their populations vaccinated against COVID-19, typically with mRNA “vaccines”. Australia’s new young immigrants are originating from countries which had low population COVID-19 vaccination coverage, and for many of these countries, mRNA was not even the major vaccine type used.
These were the top ten immigrant origins (in order) to Australia from 2022-23 (and the percentage of the population which completed the initial COVID-19 vaccination regimen):
India (67.18%)
China (89.53% - no mRNA vaccines)
Philippines (67.88%)
Nepal (80.11% - majority non-mRNA)
United Kingdom (75.19%)
New Zealand (82.77%)
Vietnam (87.55% - mRNA vaccines approximately only half this percentage)
South Africa (35.13%)
Pakistan (59.55%)
Sri Lanka (67.3%)1
Obviously, with initial vaccination coverage so low, it follows that the booster coverage for these populations would be markedly lower still. Having avoided the many known risks of COVID-19 vaccination, therefore, particularly booster vaccination, these immigrants are healthier and less likely to die.
COVID-19 vaccination aside, our hypothesis that the new “Australians” will be healthier is also supported by pre-pandemic research which indicates “international migrants in [high-income countries] have, on average, lower mortality than the host country population . . . [and] migrants are, on average, healthier, better educated, and employed at higher rates than individuals in destination locations.”2
The net effect of this change in NOM will be to further diminish Australia’s excess mortality, not because the health and wellbeing of Australians has improved but because Australia has imported healthier people.
Looking to the future
Recently, the Australian Senate passed a motion to have the Community Affairs References Committee investigate Australia’s excess mortality, with the motion to establish this inquiry only passing with the support of Independent Senators by a margin of one vote.
Incredibly, it was Senator Ralph Babet’s fourth attempt in passing this motion, with the majority Labor-Greens alliance seemingly disinterested in understanding why more Australians have been dying than ever in recent times, voting this motion down on the previous three attempts.
Now that the motion has passed and an inquiry will follow, we anticipate that the ABS will speedily review its excess-mortality-calculation methodology in an effort to water down Australia’s excess mortality prior to the inquiry’s commencement. This will allow critics to claim that excess mortality was nothing more than a methodological error and that the inquiry be made redundant.
Similar efforts to whitewash excess mortality in the United Kingdom have resulted in the United Kingdom’s 2023 excess deaths being reduced from 31,442 to 10,994 – a 65% drop - simply by changing their methodology for counting excess deaths. The number of people who died in the United Kingdom last year did not change. What changed was the baseline for determining expected deaths in a given week, and thus how many that actually occurred were in excess of that baseline.3
As we have addressed previously, Australian mortality was improving despite the ageing of the population and despite the increase in total population, until its significant and abrupt reversal in 2022 and beyond. So, we should be cautious of claims from the ABS and “experts” that Australia’s mortality has returned to “normal” or pre-pandemic levels.
We know that the current level of population increase has the effect of making excess mortality seemingly disappear, but the reality for Australians in the absence of NOM-driven population growth is far different.
Things are not well in Australia at the moment and no amount of statistical obfuscation can hide this.
Our World in Data, Share of People Who Completed the Initial COVID-19 Vaccination Protocol, link, accessed 27 March 2024.
Abubakar, I., Aldridge, R. W., Devakumar, D., Orcutt, M., Burns, R., Barreto, M. L., Dhavan, P., Fouad, F. M., Groce, N., Guo, Y., Hargreaves, S., Knipper, M., Miranda, J. J., Madise, N., Kumar, B., Mosca, D., McGovern, T., Rubenstein, L., Sammonds, P., Sawyer, S. M., … UCL–Lancet Commission on Migration and Health (2018). The UCL-Lancet Commission on Migration and Health: the health of a world on the move. Lancet (London, England), 392(10164), 2606–2654. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32114-7.
The Daily Sceptic, “The ONS’s New Excess Death Figures Don’t Pass the Smell Test”, https://dailysceptic.org/2024/02/22/the-onss-new-excess-death-figures-dont-pass-the-smell-test/, accessed 27 March 2024.