Bernard Salt in Damage Control: re-edits his website

My posting Bernard Salt is not a demographer seems to have spooked Mr Salt. He has re-edited his website at http://www.bernardsalt.com.au/ to remove the admissions to which I drew attention.

I am going to leave that original posting of mine essentially unchanged, while dealing here with Salt's present (or future) attempts to re-edit 1. his website and 2. his facebook page (see below). I plan to keep on record some of the material he has removed from public view.

First, the story to date, in 5 short paras: ...

Big business in Australia spends a fortune on trying to convince us that we need to grow our population at at least four times the average annual rate of developed nations. It sees this as a source of extra customers, larger and cheaper choice of workers, and of course as a way to make huge sums through property speculation/investment.

We have both overt population growth lobbyists (e.g. BCA, HIA, the Masterbuilders, etc ) and what might be called  non-overt growth lobbyists who  are often presented as independent experts and who may declare no vested interest. 

 Bernard Salt describes himself on his website as a KPMG partner who heads "KPMG’s Property Advisory Services practice … a ‘Centre of Excellence’ in demographics as it relates to the business sector."
Yet few ordinary readers know this; and the seemingly endless stream of pro-population-growth articles he places in the media (currently he averages at least one a week) are often by-lined "Demographer Bernard Salt".

My original posting argued that this is unacceptable granted (a) that Salt has actually advertised on his website that he will write pro-development brochures "on commission" for developers,  and (b) that he himself has publicly recognised that he cannot and should not be called a demographer.

His embarrassment, revealed in this audio clip from last year's Future Summit, suggests that he thinks he may have a problem here.

However my posting gave him the benefit of the doubt, and suggested that he may be the victim of careless journalists or assistants, and noted that he has often taken care not to describe himself as a demographer. The obvious implication was that he should now be consistent and take care to publicly disavow any such claims made for him by others.

I am afraid he seems to be going the other way.  Let's look at his responses. In my original posting of 19 June I wrote


  Take a look at Bernard Salt’s website, where he describes his and/or KPMG’s advisory     services. At http://www.bernardsalt.com.au/advisory, in words that require no comment, he writes of himself:

“Bernard Salt also writes on commission brief ‘article-like’ overviews of development projects. This work is often published by the client as a brochure or booklet. These one-off publications written by Bernard Salt often receive wider media coverage. To view these overviews please visit the Reports page.”

This paragraph had been there for months if not years. I had checked it quite recently. Yet on Saturday 28th May  I discovered that Salt had removed this paragraph from his "Advisory" page.


However if you google phrases from it, you can still find it online in slighter older versions of the same website as cached by the various search engines. For instance, as late as 2 June 2011, it could still be found here.  And on 24 June I found it here.

A little later in my original posting I had written:

Among the samples anthologised there, you can find for instance the arguments he produced to justify what some would see as the destructive development of Merimbula, a pleasant seaside town on the South Coast of NSW.

This piece, paid for by the Carrington group, is titled “Marvellous Merimbula”. It contains some demographic and financial research, though with a strong brochure-ish feel, including praise of a proposed development’s leading-edge architectural design and a finding that it will provide the town with desirable “beach chic”. The main point of the research is clear from the final paragraph:

Merimbula is a pretty Cinderella town that has to date been overlooked by the property industry. Merimbula is a town whose time has finally come.

On 28 May I also discovered that the "Marvellous Merimbula" report had vanished from the Reports page of Salt's website.

However Salt or his webmaster had failed to remove it entirely. You could still (as of 29 May) find it online at http://www.bernardsalt.com.au/pdf/Coast_pdf.pdf -- though you needed to know the exact URL to go there. I mentioned this fact, and provided the link.

By 2 June, Bernard had removed even this page! (There's not much doubt he's reading my blog.)

However, as of 2 June 2011, a google search for "Bernard Salt" + "Marvellous Merimbula" still turned up several cached versions, like this one. Or this.

It still contains the brochurish sentences of pro-developer rhetoric I had quoted -- seemingly incompatible with seeing Bernard as an impartial or unfee'd expert. To quote Bernard himself: "In order to be a property guru you cannot have a vested interest. A guru must be an advisor, not a developer." 

And those sentences I've quoted above are not the only ones!  Here are some more:

Aroma's coffee shop and pavement tables is a direct lift from the culture of Paris' Left Bank....The leading-edge architectural design of Merimbula's Coast  development injects "city sophistication" into a seaside village. Here is a prime example of how urban chic meets the beach: it is no less than an entirely new concept "beach chic".

The cached versions of this Merimbula article will before long disappear from the internet search engines like Google, but I have downloaded a copy and am happy to email it to anyone who wants to see it. And it is still on line here.

---

Meanwhile, I was sent Giuseppe Tauriello's article in the Adelaide Advertiser, about how Salt was targeted by activists when he appeared at at a "Sustainable Communities Symposium" (sic) in Adelaide.  (Someone has dated this PDF, as it appears on line, "8/7/2011, but I believe it in fact appeared on 8 June 2011.) The Property Council, which arranged this event had billed him as a demographer, and the protestors objected.  

Tauriello claims Salt told him "I have in no part presented myself as a demographer". However Michael Lardelli of Adelaide University suggested to Tauriello that Salt's assurance might be equivocal.


 Salt's Facebook page is called "Demographer Bernard Salt".


This facebook page, like Salt's main website, has been much re-edited. In particular, several postings have vanished since Kate Case asked him why he was calling himself a demographer.


Bernard seems to have realised that his own attempts at justification (and her rejoinder)  might do him more harm than her initial query. So his current policy seems to be to leave up the initial query but remove most of what followed. 

 In fact the page has been changing so fast I may not be able to keep up with it -- he has more motivation to keep changing than I to keep recording. But here are the public postings that I have recorded, in sequence:

Kate Case
 At the DAVOS Future Summit conference in Melbourne on 25 May 2010, you apparently stated :

"I’m not a demographer at all and I’m sure real demographers . . . er . . . I’m sure real demographers er . . . are amused by that tag in the media. I’m actually a historian. I have a master’s degree in urban history, specialising in Australian urban history, so a very good sense of where we’ve come from and where we're going to."

Yet here you are using it as your description. What gives?

May 26 at 7:39pm · Like · Comment

[Currently -- 7 June 2011 -- this is the only part of the exchance I can still find on Salt's Facebook page -- or am I missing something?  Salt's reply can however be found cached on the search engines like Google. -- M O'C]
---

Salt replied on the 2nd of June

"Bernard Salt Demographer wrote "Hi Kate, sorry for the delay in responding. I have been busy with the new book. I have no qualms about expalining to the world what my academic qualifications are and are not. The fact is that i am known, rightly or wrongly, in the business and media community as a demographer. The Australian coumn is pitched to the business community so the editor gives me the tag of demographer. I tag myself as KPMG Partner. Thisfacebook page was set up as a forum for comments for, dare I say it, fans of column and which is tagged Bernard Salt Demographer. Simple really. I suggest you also read my column today as Dick Smith has had similar concerns. And to be fair there is confusion on this issue. Dick refers to Professor Bob Birrell as a demographer (which i think is fair since his body of work is clearly demographic). In either case I would be very pleased if you would come to the dinner as my guest. Hope this response provides all the answers you were looking for.

Kind regards,

Kate, see today's column at It's the Bernard Salt versus Dick Smith book fest. See my column in today's Australian at http://www.facebook.com/l/86dfb/tinyurl.com/3ces7fv"

[I have added the underlining for emphasis. Note the suggestion, which also appears in his article of 2 June in The Australian, that it's alright to use the term demographer more loosely when you're writing for the business community. MO'C ]

-------------------------

Kate Case responded:

I guess my objection stems from someone calling themselves something but it is not acknowledged that they don't actually have a formal qualification in that field. And yet they are labeled as that in media articles, interviews and even in a column they write for a national newspaper. Usually such titles would be reserved for an appropriately qualified person, someone who has done advanced study in that specific area, published articles in peer reviewed journals etc wouldn't they?

You seem to be saying that your editor and others have arbitrarily decided to call you a demographer, and that is ok, because that is how you are generally known in the public arena. But you are only known as that because, presumably, at some stage, you must have called yourself that. Your facebook page is very explicit in its use of the label. The medias' continued use of the term must have your approval, implicit or otherwise.

Dick Smith has just written a book on population, does that mean he can now call himself a demographer?

Bob Birrell has a PhD in Sociology and has headed up the Centre for Population and Urban Research since 1991. He has served as Federal government advisor and served on the Commonwealth National Population Council from 1987 - 1993. Recently he was a member of the independent Review of the General Skilled Migration Program which reported in May 2006. (from Monash Uni website)

I don't know whether all of the above makes him a demographer in the strictest sense of the term. But as an academic, he would have to be independent. He's not employed by a corporation which has a vested interest in promoting their own agenda, and that of their clients.

 With respect, Bernard, the work you do for the corporate sector means that you can't claim to be independent. Obviously your clients and your employer are going to want to promote population growth, that means more bucks for them. Your promotion of that same growth is totally in line with their interests. This is why your continued use of the title "demographer" (with all its connotations) is inappropriate.

Thanks for the offer of dinner, it would be most interesting to discuss some of this in person. Alas, I am in Tasmania, so a bit out of the question. I hope it goes well.See More

 Friday June 3 at 7:42pm

----------------

Salt replied:

Bernard Salt Demographer wrote "Thanks Kate. The bottom line is this. Business call people like me demographers. I write a column in the business part of the paper. This facebook page is an extension of the column. I freely and repeatedly explain that I have no 'demographic qualificatgions' including on this facebook page, in my coliumn yesterday and as you yopurself cited a year ago at the Future Forum. I am hardly putting up a charade. I find it odd that you would be so hard line on the demographic qualification line with me but happily accept Bob Birrell the sociologist as a demographer because of this body of work. Are you aware that i have written and have had published by the AGPS research reports on internal migration, that I have advised Tony Burke on population, that I have advised Anna Bligh on demographics, that I was asked by government to represent the population stream at the 2020 summit. Let me also say that my views on Australian demographics are my own. By your logic the only people commenting on this issue would be academic demographers employed by government or universities. In a democracy everyone gets a say; even those whose views you may not like.

My offer of coming to dinner still stands; I am in Tassie quite regularly; if you would like to discuss this personally of if you would like to hear me speak there drop me an email at bsalt@kpmg.com.au"

 

Kate Case replied:

"No I'm certainly not saying that people can't comment on this issue if they are not a demographer, of course not.  Only that labels should be accurate, especially ones that relate to qualifications.  I don't believe I said that I accepted Bob Birrell as a demographer, I only pointed out his relevant professional experience and the fact that his academic position makes it incumbent upon him to be independent.  

By the way I was somewhat amused (bemused?) by your call in the article for the business community to be more vocal, when we saw such an orchestrated and coordinated barrage of commentary hit the media in the immediate aftermath of Tony Burke's report.  They're not exactly being shrinking violets when it comes to getting their message out there :-)  

Thanks again for taking the time to respond."

Salt replied:

 "Thanks Kate. I really do appreciate your feedback. I thionk we've both aired our views. I am serious about inviting you along to one of my Tasmanian presentations. And the dinner. But I appreciate tyhat you might not like to fork out for an airfare to hear me speak. Then again the offer is there."

--

[Note by Mark O'Connor: Salt's remarks about Bob Birrell fail to help his cause.  On Birrell's very real qualifications to be called a demographer see my other posting: Bernard Salt abandons his "baby bust" thesis. ]

  ---------------

I have taken the precaution of downloading the cached copies of the pages Salt has altered, so that I can demonstrate the comments in my original posting are accurately based upon what Salt has revealed about himself.

----In another worrying sign, Salt published a piece in The Australian on 2 June 2011 called "Let Dick Smith  have his say, but case for growth is overwhelming". 

In this he expresses concern that






Salt then tries to resile from his admission last year that he is "not a demographer at all" and suggests that if people accept him as a demographer then he can be considered one. He even offers the odd argument that:







Stop-press:

Recent revelations about Salt have come at an awkward time for CEDA, the Committee for Economic Development of Australia. CEDA had given Salt pride of place (as an expert speaker) in its advertisements for a major conference on Australia's future (20-21 June 2011, Hotelm Realm Canberra).  Indeed the reverence with which the big end of town treats advocates of growth and of "business as usual" helps explain, if not excuse, Salt's view that it's alright to call yourself a demographer (or at least to let others do so) if you're only talking to the business community.

Christopher Dorman who attended that CEDA conference described it as
"The big end of town, as they say.  Government ministers falling over themselves to be seen there.  No less than 4 government ministers and the Shadow Treasurer."
Dorman asked Salt some questions about his claim that Generation Y is not big enough to replace the baby boomers in the workforce. He reports that Salt did not defend his claim but skipped across to the plain vanilla version of the Aging Population scare, as described in my posting on the supposed Baby Bust crisis.  One wonders how many members of CEDA noticed.

----------

One of the problems Dick seems to have with me, as evidenced by his ABC documentary Population Puzzle, screened last August, is that I am not trained in demography.

Baby boomers retiring. Is there really a crisis?

 This began as an out-take from my posting Bernard Salt is not a demographer.

In this, I mentioned how much Bernard Salt  relies on a demographic argument about the baby boomers, and noted that if valid, it would go far to prove his point: 

Salt claims the huge bulge of the baby boomers are now reaching retirement age. Their old-age pensions will overload the smaller generations that follow them into the workplace, producing a shortage of workers and a need to increase taxes.  Hence, he claims, at least for much of the next 20 years we will need to continue with high immigration.

 This is an argument that goes down very well in the business world, where Salt is a much loved speaker. Managing a company is a quarter to quarter, or a year to year, proposition. Few CEOs are much focussed on 20 years ahead, and most know they are unlikely to be still there in 20 years. An argument that gives them an excuse to go on demanding that government provide them with more customers and hence more profits, even if this means monstering the environment and driving up greenhouse emissions, for just another 20 years suits them fine.

And the argument that we must contend with an acute temporary spike in retirements and pensions is also convenient for Salt. It gets him off the sharp hook of Dick Smith's counter-argument: that bringing in more immigrants (so their taxes can pay the pensions of the existing population)  is "a giant Ponzi scheme". After all, migrants get old too.

But is Salt's claim true?  Here's how he puts it in his  Demographic outlook for the Australian Nation: Notes for an address to the Pacific Institute, 15 March 2011, admiringly quoted on Henry Thornton’s blog.

 Big Australia as his notes put it, “Shores up tax base - supports boomers in retirement”.

Skills Shortages:  The Australian nation passes through a fault line in 2011 when all of a sudden baby boomers born in 1946 exit the workforce at a faster rate than Generation Y can enter [Note that "can"; in a moment it will turn into an implied "will"] the workforce.  More exiters than enterers to the workforce means a slowdown in the rate of growth in the tax base. [If you read carefully, he's not actually saying the "tax base" won't grow.]  We have become addicted to a tax subsidised lifestyle. [This seems to be a confused reference to the high cost of modern infrastructure -- but Salt neglects to mention that, since 2% of infrastructure comes up for replacement each year, a 2% annual increase in population doubles our infrastructure bill.]  Also, baby boomers paid tax all their working lives but the government of the day didn’t provision for their retirement. [Perhaps because rapid population growth faced governments with impossible infrastructure bills.]  We have a short term retirement liability in this nation. [In fact it would be a very long-term one if we took Salt's advice, since few migrants bring superannuation with them.]

[Pardon my interpolated comments, but they do help to suggest how very flaky Salt's arguement is.]

This argument occurs repeatedly in Salt’s other articles. For instance “At least until the mid 2020s - in order to offset the impact of retiring baby boomers - Australia needs strong growth based on an average of 180,000 migrants a year.”

In an article called “Inconvenient Truth on Ageing”  in The Australian of 4 February 2010 “Demographer Bernard Salt” claimed the real problem the 2010 Inter-generational Report addresses is that “from 2011 onwards more baby boomers exit than Generation Ys enter the workforce.”

Salt's article doesn't make clear which demographic projection he is using that shows this will begin to be the case from 2011. Perhaps we are meant to take it on his own authority.

In January 2010 Salt told the Property Council,  in an article in urging them to be less “timid” in standing up for their own  interests (“Is the Property Council too timid?”):

My response throughout the frenzy [he means the 2009 “Big Australia” debate] was to calmly and rationally explain that this nation needs strong population growth to grow the tax base at a time when baby boomers are exiting the workforce.
We have no choice. Either we ask Generation X and Generation Y to pay more tax per capita, or we ask baby boomers to ease up in their demands in retirement.

Could I suggest that neither of these options will fly?  The only way to offset the impact of the baby bust next decade is to grow the tax base through immigration. That’s why we need a big Australia, at least in the short term. And, make no mistake, this trajectory is good news for the property industry.

Going nuclear, tight water restrictions, and abandoning “outdated notions” like “the garden State” are all according to Salt just a necessary price to pay for solving this crucial problem of the retiring baby boomers.

Indeed in an article in the Australian on 19 May 2011 he scolds Population Minister Tony Burke for not incorporating Salt’s pet theory into the government’s population strategy:

I was surprised to see scant regard in the report to the impact of the retirement of the baby-boomers generation. Oddly, this demographic faultline that affects the nation and others in this decade does not seem to have been a factor in the Sustainable Australia document.

Salt’s suggested remedy is — you guessed it — to continue growing Australia’s population at four to six times the average growth rate of advanced countries. (Not that he mentions that comparison -- or asks why other countries have not adopted his remedy.) In fact similar ideas were offered to a British parliamentary committee, but were rejected as special pleading. See Sir Andrew Green, “Devastating demolition of the case for mass immigration”.)


Similarly, in Australia the economic expert Dr Ben Spies-Butcher, dismisses such claims as false. See his  "The myth of the ageing ‘crisis’", The Conversation, April 26 2011. He says "It is true that the [Treasury] reports predict a deficit in the future. However, much of this is unrelated to ageing. The biggest growth in spending is in health, and most of this is related to technology, not demographics." He adds "Given the imprecision of the estimates, the current figures do not suggest any evidence that there will ever be any deficit due to population ageing".

 BUT ---  the crucial problem is that Bernard Salt, the man jumping up and down about this huge demographic “problem” is not a demographer, and may not understand some basic points about demography.

Yes, the baby boom represented a maximum bulge in the birthrate per woman (or per couple) but not necessarily in the total number of children born!

In the USA for instance, it is well known that both Generation X (the children of the baby boomers) and Generation Y (their grandchildren) are larger “cohorts” than the Baby Boomers.  I have not been able to find evidence (and have not seen Salt produce evidence) that it is significantly different here in Australia.

So he may be making a simple mistake in demography. If so, it is one that I dissected (before I had ever heard of Bernard Salt)  in a 1995 talk on “The Replacement Rate Fallacy”   for Radio National’s Ockham’s Razor.

In this talk, to clarify the issues for those with no head for demographic abstractions, I told the story of my maternal grandparents’ family. Their four children all became parents during the baby boom, and averaged 5 children each, producing 20 children in all.

But we 20 baby boomers were more moderate. We averaged only 2.6 children each, producing (with our spouses) 52 children in all – a smaller birthrate, but a larger generation. And the next generation, if those 52 people average 1.9 children each (the current Australian average) will also be larger than our generation.

To put the point in more general form, Dr Katharine Betts of Swinburne University commented recently on the Australian Population forum:

It is often said (by Salt and others) that the Australian labour force faces an unusual and one-off shock through the retirement of the baby boomers: people born between 1946 and 1964.

For the purposes of this note I’m redefining them as those born between 1946 and 1965, and thus aged 45 to 64 in June 2010. This is because the ABS publishes the data in five year age-groups and redefining the boomers in this way makes the arithmetic easier.

When you hear about the wave of boomer retirements it’s easy to imagine a great bulge working its way through the population pyramid, and then swamping the pension system. But it’s not a great bulge. Twenty five per cent of the population was aged 45 to 64 in June 2010. The cohort coming after them of those aged 25 to 44 made up 28.5 per cent, and those aged 5 to 24 made up 26.5 per cent.

So now that we have moved into the demographic transition (low birth rates and low death rates) it’s normal to have a population pyramid with relatively straight sides, and any block of people in an age group which includes a twenty-year age span will include around 25 per cent of the population. I attach a table with the relevant data.

 And the pain for Bernard Salt’s absurd argument doesn’t just end there. For one thing, the boomers are not all going to retire in a block. Many will work on well past age 65; but many others have already retired, and quite a lot of them as much as a decade ago.

For instance, most of my age cohort at the Australian National University in Canberra went into the Commonwealth Public Service and were semi-compulsorily retired at age 54 years and 11 months – because the public service has too many employees, and the younger ones were cheaper than the older. 

Just as importantly, the workplace is not some passive tunnel that workers enter and leave at a rate determined by the turnover of the generations. Employers actively select and hire people when and as they need them. 

And despite ambit claims by some employers who would like a surplus of workers to select among, there is little evidence that workers rather than jobs are in short supply.  (Ask anyone who has a teenage child trying to find work. Or who is trying to get re-employed in middle age. It's hard to get so much as a job interview for anyone over 35.) That's why Julia Gillard and co. were chanting "Jobs, jobs, jobs" before the last election.

The whole claim that there aren’t enough workers to replace the retiring baby boomers has been trounced by the Australia Institute’s recent calculation showing that Australia’s real unemployment rate is more like 15% -- or even 20% if you add a further 5% who would like full-time work but can only find part-time. In an age of computers,automation, and gigantic mining and construction machinery, it’s no surprise that jobs are not plentiful -- although big emplyers keep pretending the reverse.

In March this year (2011) 17.6 per cent of young Australians (aged 15-19) were recorded as unemployed, compared to 13.3 per cent in March 2008. As Dr Betts remarks, this looks less like a growing shortage of young entrants to the labour market than a growing "longage".

Mind you, the very notion that working years are 15 to 64 (on which Salt bases his calculations) is pretty absurd. 20 to 64+ would be more like it today, and with retirement age being increased towards 70,   20 to 69 may soon be the figure. 

Citing the traditional 15 to 64 exaggerates the proportion of the population that is too old to work, while greatly minimising the proportion that is too young. And of course all such calculations become academic when we can't, as at present, employ all those in their working years. A bread-winner out of work often means a whole family on social security, and is far more expensive than a person on the old age pension.

To complete the rout of this absurd argument, Jane O’Sullivan provides credible evidence that the alleged costs of pensions etc for this aging population of baby boomers are about one thirtieth, that’s right, one thirtieth of the infrastructure costs of the migration program that Bernard Salt proposes as a financial remedy for the problem. “Can we really be so stupid?”, she asks.

  (For further refutation of Salt’s varied and tendentious arguments for population growth see Sheila Newman’s Bernard Salt page at CanDoBetter.)

Conclusion: Salt’s arguments for Big Australia are often based on dubious demography. Many, like this one, scarcely deserve discussion until some real demographer can be found to endorse them, rather than to dismiss them as one of the world’s most senior demographers appears to have done.  See Dr Joseph Chamie's analysis of what he calls Ponzi Demography.

This argument began as a side-issue in the posting Bernard Salt is not a demographer, to which you might wish to return. 

Bernard Salt is not a demographer.

How do we know? Because he has stated so himself, and in the strongest terms. And has implied that careless journalists are to blame for so describing him.

I was present when Bernard  Salt made a strong statement on this at the DAVOS Future Summit in Melbourne last year. I later mentioned it on the Australian population forum.

Since then, I’ve had emails from several people complaining that some journalists and some interviewers are still describing Salt as a “demographer”, and that they could not convince them this was wrong. I have been asked to post some factual information on the topic.

The following article has three parts:

1.    How we know that Bernard Salt is not a demographer

2.    Does it matter?  If so, why?

3.    How then can  Salt  best be safely or accurately described by those discussing his views or interviewing him?

-       -

1.    How we know that Bernard Salt is not a demographer

Here are his own words from the DAVOS Future Summit  conference in Melbourne on 25 May 2010. 

--

 I’m not a demographer at all and I’m sure real demographers . . .  er . . .   I’m sure real demographers er  . . .   are ... are amused by that tag in the media. I’m actually a historian. I have a master’s degree in urban history, specialising in Australian urban history, so a very good sense of where we’ve come from and where we're going to.

Bernard Salt agreed to have the proceedings of his session at the Futures Summit recorded. I have transcribed his words (including the um’s and ahh’s) from the official recording of the proceedings.  His words were uttered in front of about 100 other persons, including Hugh Morgan and various other business identities. The Chair of the session was Jane-Frances Kelly, the Program Director of the Grattan Institute.

It’s worth hearing the MP3 audio of Bernard Salt saying these words --. Click on the blue video box below.
 

Salt’s words are clearly a non-retractable statement. If its author were to later turn around and say – Note I am not suggesting that he ever has or would do this – that he is a demographer after all, or that anyone is free to call themselves a demographer if they take a strong interest in Australia’s population statistics, then his reputation for integrity would be in tatters. 

The DAVOS statement makes it clear that Bernard Salt understands “demographer” (as most of us do) to mean a person who (a) has been trained in specialised mathematical and other academic skills that allow them to navigate (and to pilot us through) the complex world of population statistics, and who (b) is currently working in this area at a university or other genuinely independent and academic institute.

Salt clearly recognises that he cannot claim to be such a person, and says that real demographers must smile when they see him so described. (I understand he made similar remarks on another occasion, when speaking to demographers at ANU.)

In short, Bernard Salt is “not a demographer at all”. He could not have made it more plain.

-       -

A  An alternative proof, at least for those who know a little demography, that Salt is not a demographer --- and indeed that he struggles with the mathematics of demography and seemingly with some of its basic concepts --- can be found here.  This alternative proof has the bonus of also making clear why it is important that such a person should not be presented as a demographer.

        -
A

So just how much “careless journalism” have we been subjected to about Bernard Salt being a demographer?

I googled the phrase “demographer Bernard Salt” on 18 April 2011 and got “About 55,000 results”.

 The phrase  “Australia’s leading demographer Bernard Salt” got 79 results. (You may not be surprised that Google found the Property Council of Australia so describing him.)  And "leading Australian demographer Bernard Salt" got a further 62 hits. The vaguer "leading demographer Bernard Salt" got “About 2,260 results”.

That seems an awful lot of careless marketing (by organisations advertising talks by Bernard) and/or  careless journalism (mainly by editors and interviewers hosting Bernard Salt or his articles).

Yet a study of Salt's own Media Releases shows that they mostly do not include the claim to be a demographer. Many end simply with the statement “Bernard Salt is a KPMG partner”. How is it that so many radio and TV interviewers and newspaper sub-editors have got this wrong?  There might be an investigative story in this!

- -

P.S.:  A little more about that session at last year’s Future Summit where Bernard Salt stated “I am not a demographer at all”.

I was his debating partner in that session. It was structured as a 2-person debate on whether Australia should stabilise or (as he argued) should go on increasing its population.

Though well aware that he was not a demographer, I was very gentle with him. At 4 minutes into the debate I did put a little pressure on him by remarking: "Neither Bernard nor I are trained demographers, but we’re both good amateur demographers I think, and pick up on the statistics." 

That seeming compliment may have set his brain stewing, because, at 22.5 minutes in, without further prompting, he said, rather nervously for such a polished performer,

Er...um... In fact Mark is right. I’m not a demographer at all and I’m sure real demographers . . .   er . . .  I’m sure real demographers er  . . .  are amused by that tag in the media. I’m actually a historian. [etc., as quoted above]

 I made no comment. Considering that he had repudiated the image of himself as demographer, I thought it unkind to question the alternative claim that he was a historian or ask questions about how many articles he had published in peer-reviewed historical journals. (I understand he works for KPMG on identifying social and demographic trends, especially ones that may create business opportunities or influence property values — an area that is at least adjacent to historical research.)

2. Does it matter that  Bernard Salt is not a demographer?  If so, why?

I suggest it matters (a) because of what Salt is arguing, and (b) because he is not simply an expert or a researcher on the Big Australia debate but a close to full-time advocate.

Salt is a fluent producer of articles and talks arguing that Australia needs a bigger population.  As he reminds readers at the start of  an article in The Australian on 1 July 2010  titled A Small Australia means Big Taxes, “I should first re-declare my position as an unabashed supporter of a bigger Australia.” He also calls himself a “proponent” of Big Australia.   Salt's output of pro-growth articles is a remarkable feat, and makes him a major, perhaps even Australia’s major, advocate/public-lobbyist for rapid population growth. 

A very high percentage of all his published pieces are on this subject, and he has used a great variety of arguments for population growth. He has threatened us with high taxes, moral condemnation from (or even an invasion by) overpopulated foreign nations, social problems, crumbling of the pension system, resurgence of "White Australia", “a tsunami of ageing and demanding baby boomers”,   and much more, if we do not accept “Big Australia”. (For detailed refutation of such claims, see the report of Population Minister Tony Burke’s Sustainable Development Panel  especially  pp. 24-27 and 37-40.)

 Salt’s many articles on this theme are very similar, but skillfully penned in such a way that each is sufficiently different to get published as a new and topical piece.

However a feature of his articles is that they offer few reasons for their conclusions. It often seems that (at least once sub-editors have added a description of him as “demographer Bernard Salt”) readers are expected to take his assertions on trust, because they are the assertions of a demographer or of a “leading demographer”.  This is why media descriptions of him as “demographer” get up the noses of those who disagree with his claims.

Take for instance the article mentioned above: A Small Australia means Big Taxes. Despite this title, Salt offers no compelling reason to think that a smaller Australia means larger taxes; and such reasoning as he does produce is entirely circular.

Here is as near as he comes to offering proof for his main contention, in all his 878 words:

Shouldn't [Population Minister Tony] Burke's brief be to examine what changes are needed in order to support the population (and tax) base we need to maintain our standard of living?

Naysayers never seem to apply their minds to finding solutions to congestion, water, power, housing affordability and infrastructure issues. Do you really think these issues will disappear with a significantly reduced rate of population growth?

I would also point out that those who oppose strong growth never fully explain the options: managed growth and moderate taxation; or low (or no) growth and raised taxation.

Contrast Dr Jane O’Sullivan’s article The Downward Spiral of hasty Population Growth (On Line Opinion, 8 March 2010), where there is careful weighing up and  laying out of evidence, plus rigorous economic argument of a sort not found in Salt’s articles. It leads her to a detailed and credible conclusion that recent levels of population growth in fact impoverish Australia and necessitate much higher taxes.

However there is one argument that Salt repeatedly uses (albeit not in the last-mentioned article). It is a demographic argument about the baby boomers, and if valid, would go far to make his case.


Salt claims the big bulge of the baby boomers is now reaching retirement age. Their old-age pensions will overload the smaller generations that follow them into the workplace, producing a shortage of workers and a need to increase taxes.  Hence, he claims, for much of the next 20 years we will need to continue with high immigration.


To save overloading this article, I have moved discussion of this claim to a new posting. See : Baby boomers retiring: Is there really a crisis? [Later note (23 June 2011): Salt has since been forced to withdraw the claim.]


There I argue that it's a myth, and based on bad demography. Yes, the Baby Boom was a bulge (followed by a notable constriction) in the fertility rate --that is, in the number of children per woman. But there was no such notable constriction in the size of the succeeding generations. "Generation X" and "Generation Y" are much the same size as the baby boomers. And with Australian women currently averaging 1.9 children, we seem headed for a continuation of roughly even-sized generations. Salt's Big Argument about the baby boomers seems bunkum.

Conclusion: Salt’s arguments for Big Australia are often based on dubious demography. Many, like this one, scarcely deserve discussion until some real demographer can be found to endorse them, rather than to dismiss them as one of the world’s most senior demographers appears to have done.

Complainants to the Australian Broadcasting Commission and other media have a real grievance, inasmuch as it is unlikely Salt’s claims would get such prominent coverage but for the misapprehension that he is a demographer, or a ”distinguished Australian demographer”.

  (For the prevalence of this misapprehension see “Henry Thornton’s blog”  16 March 2011)

3   How then can Salt best be safely or accurately described by those who are discussing his views or interviewing him.

Well, Bernard Salt works for KPMG. He can be described quite neutrally as “KPMG partner” or more informatively as “KPMG partner and Big Australia advocate”.

On his own webpage he cautiously avoids calling himself a demographer, and describes himself as “Business  Advisor, Author, Speaker, Columnist”. Also as a “trend forecaster” for business and government.  And as a KPMG partner based in Melbourne.

Elsewhere on his site he makes it clear that KPMG’s main interest in “demographics” is in the effects of population growth on property values. As he puts it:

KPMG’s Property Advisory Services practice is a ‘Centre of Excellence’ in demographics as it relates to the business sector. It is comprised of a team of seven specialists and is headed by Partner Bernard Salt. The practice sits within the Audit & Risk Advisory Services division of KPMG Australia.

KPGM , if you’re not in the business world, is a very big accounting firm. 

Doing the books for big developers can be very lucrative, and KPMG naturally enquired, some years back, if there were any other similar services its clients needed. The answer was predictable: most of them could use help with making the case (or doing research to make the case) for their all-important applications to get approval for projects.

Similarly, they could also use help with booklets and brochures for media campaigns to make their projects seem beneficial or inevitable, or both.

Bernard thrived as a researcher who could marshal arguments for growth, and who often gave these arguments body by including selected demographic statistics.  Many of these statistics, such as those that are available on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website, were quite sound. He would present the demographic facts in a way that supported development projects.

Take a look at Bernard Salt’s website, where he describes his and/or KPMG’s advisory services.  At http://www.bernardsalt.com.au/advisory, in words that require no comment, he writes of himself <quotation last checked 21 May 2011>

“Bernard Salt also writes on commission brief ‘article-like’ overviews of development projects. This work is often published by the client as a brochure or booklet. These one-off publications written by Bernard Salt often receive wider media coverage. To view these overviews please visit the Reports page.”

[STOP-PRESS:  Bernard Salt has responded swiftly to my drawing attention to this paragraph of his. My comments went up online  on 19 May 2011. On Saturday 28th I discovered that Salt had removed this paragraph from his "Advisory" page. It had been there for months if not years. However if you google phrases from it, you can still find it online in slighter older versions of the same website as cached by the various search engines. For instance, as of 2 June 2011, it could still be found here.  For more see my later posting  Bernard Salt in Damage Control.]

Among the samples anthologised on Salt's Reports page, you can find for instance the arguments he produced to justify what some would see as the destructive development of Merimbula, a pleasant seaside town on the South Coast of NSW.

This piece, paid for by the Carrington group, is titled  “Marvellous Merimbula”. It contains some demographic and financial research, though with a strong brochure-ish feel, including praise of a proposed development’s leading-edge architectural design and a finding that it will provide the town with desirable “beach chic”. The main point of the research is clear from the final paragraph:

 Merimbula is a pretty Cinderella town that has to date been overlooked by the property industry. Merimbula is a town whose time has finally come.

[STOP-PRESS:  Also by 28 May 2011, the "Marvellous Merimbula" report had vanished from the Reports page. However you can still (as of 29 May) find it online from the link 2 paragraphs below.  [Later note: By 2 June, Bernard had removed even this page. There's not much doubt he's reading my blog.] For more on this, see again my later posting  Bernard Salt in Damage Control.]

Bernard Salt does I think believe, in general, in the pro-growth propaganda he creates; but it is also the side his bread is buttered. A feature of his debating style is that quite far-fetched arguments are pressed into service, so long as they support either specific developments or the general principle that we need ever more people and projects to keep our economy humming.

Many in the property “industry” and other trades that thrive on growth find Salt’s vision “inspirational”.  However he is a champion and a polemicist rather than an academic expert, and (as suggested above)  his arguments may not stand up to objective examination.  Hence it is wrong to describe him as a demographer, which implies an independent academic expert.

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An important question remains. How did the myth of Bernard Salt being a demographer take root? I suggest a possible answer can be found in Bernard Salt’s Media Release of 9 December 2009, which contains the flat statement “Bernard Salt is Australia’s best-known demographer.”

It seems likely the poor fellow is being sabotaged by some careless personal assistant at KPMG who calls him a demographer.  Perhaps the same person is also responsible for carelessly calling him a demographer here.

Interestingly, a google search for the phrase “Australia’s best known demographer Bernard Salt” gets only one hit (from Stephen Mayne in the Mayne Report).  It seems that careless journalism is not always easily triggered.

Anyway, let us all hope that Bernard can get on top of this terrible problem, and present himself to the world as what he is: a KPMG business consultant, or more specifically a business opportunities researcher who also “writes on commission brief ‘article-like’ overviews of development projects”, and an unashamed member of Australia’s growth lobby.

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P.S.


For those who would like to hear some or all of the 1 hour debate between Bernard Salt and myself at the Futures Summit (where he made the admission about not being a demographer) you can click on these URL's

Debate: Bernard Salt - Mark O'Connor Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4: