Paul Kelly is Editor-at-Large of The Australian. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of The Australian (1991-1996). He writes on Australian and international issues and is a regular commentator on television. Paul Kelly is the author of six successful books. The Unmaking of Gough (1976), The Hawke Ascendancy (1984), The End of Certainty (1992) November 1975 published in 1995 and a collection of articles Paradise Divided (2000). The End of Certainty was described in The Times Literary Supplement as the most comprehensive account of Australian polity since that of Sir Keith Hancock half a century ago. He presented the 2001 five-part television documentary for the ABC on Australian history and character 100 Years – The Australian Story and wrote a book with the same title. In 2003 he co-edited Hard Heads, Soft Hearts, a new domestic reform agenda for Australia. Paul Kelly has written widely on international affairs in America, Europe and Asia. A Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, he is currently Adjunct Professor of Journalism at the University of Queensland and a participant in the Australia-America Leadership Dialogue. In 2002 he was a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School of Government and a visiting lecturer at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

Media panel session: Questions/discussion

It seems to me that there is pretty urgent need to bridge the disciplinary divide in the population-environment debate. How much willingness there is to do this I am not quite sure. I do know, however, that there is increasing evidence of the problems which arise from this divide. One such example is the CSIRO Future Dilemmas report of 18 months ago, when the divide actually became an issue for concern at the political level as far as the then Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, was concerned.

I think the media will play a role of sorts – hopefully, an important role – as we go into the future, in terms of the issues you are discussing at this conference. I don't know exactly what that role will be, but I would like to offer some signposts here for decision making, which of course occurs very much today in an interaction of politics and media.

My first point is a fairly elementary one, that the media is based upon a common everyday language and in this sense it is a forum for experts to communicate not just with the public but also with one another across disciplines. I think that one of the really important issues today is how the media does relate to specialists, and in a broader sense the role of the expert, in terms of influencing public opinion and relating to government. The language of the media is the language of politics, and that is of course the language of the people. I think one of the great challenges for the expert today is to bridge the divide in terms of language.

Looking at the media's approach to these issues, I think the media is very interested in issues of population. In fact, the media coverage of population issues in recent years has been strong and extensive, whether one is talking about the so-called fertility debate or the immigration debate or whether or not we should have a population policy. This has been a quite strong theme in media coverage. And at the risk of a gross simplification I would say that I think the media tends to be, if you like, pro-population, if you take a line generally through it. That is a function, I guess, of conventional wisdom – the media is always a faithful reflection of conventional wisdom.

The media is also very interested in the environment, and for a long period of time we have had a very strong media coverage of a whole range of environmental issues, from water to conservation to a whole series of urban issues, and again in terms of a simplification I think the media tends to be pro-environment, as do the community.

But what we don't seem to have a lot of in the media coverage is the connection between the population and the environment. Why doesn't this occur? Well, I would like to speculate. I don't pretend to have any remarkable insights here, but I think this is a very contentious and confusing issue. Essentially, the idea is the extent to which we need to limit or even reduce population in the cause of environmental protection and safeguards.

I think there is quite a degree of resistance to this particular concept. It does involve, I think, in some ways an epic change in our mindset. Some would say it even challenges some of the fundamental rationalist, post-environmental ideas about the nature of progress. So I don't think we should have any doubt that what we are talking about here can be a quite epic and substantial concept.

The way politics works is that politicians are looking at ways to reconcile interests, whether it is reconciling work and family, or reconciling the need to respond to the threat of terrorism, on one hand, with the maintenance of civil liberties, on the other. And when politicians tend to approach these issues that they want to reconcile – the economy/economic growth and environmental protection – of course they seek a series of trade-offs along the way, but essentially they want to harmonise this.

One of the issues is the extent to which this ambition within the political system to harmonise these interests is, in fact, being challenged. One of the big issues is whether or not we are not talking about harmonising interests but a different sort of paradigm, and that is a very substantial challenge to the public, to the media and to the political system. Are we, in fact, talking about sacrifices now for future gain? And, if so, what is the nature of the sacrifices? What is the nature of the future gain, and how certain can we be that there are future gains?

This is tied up with a lot of ideas about trust. On what basis should one proceed? How certain can we be of the scientific position and the scientific theory? And, with all environmental issues, one of the fundamental questions is: while people want a healthy environment, what is the cost that they might have to pay? That is a very different issue, where of course the politicians get particularly concerned.

I mentioned, earlier on, a conventional wisdom. I think this is important in this country because we have been a country of population growth for a long period of time and this concept is wired in to our brain cells in a way that should not be underestimated – economically, in terms of the idea that economic growth is tied in to individual living standards and prosperity; socially, as the idea that we are a diverse, multicultural society and that this is a value that should be maintained and developed; and in a strategic sense.

The strategic sense doesn't get all that much attention today, but I do think it is actually quite important. We live in a part of the world where the nations of East Asia are all growing strongly, and one of the untapped issues in international relations is: what are the true sources of Australian influence and power in the world, and the extent to which population is in fact one of those?