The six-month project by the entrepreneur tackles an issue that he claims is largely ignored by politicians and greedy businesses: population growth. But it’s not just the number of people living in Australia that’s of concern, it’s the associated messiness that comes with unplanned growth, such as housing, healthcare, environmental issues, food and water, natural resources, border control, immigration and well, you get the picture.
''Politicians love the idea of more taxpayers and Treasury estimates that half of our economic growth is just based on having more people. There's been a blind acceptance that Australia can keep growing forever,” says Simon Nasht, the maker of the documentary.
Still, he claims that the documentary isn’t meant to be alarmist, or encouraging any kind of anti-refugee discourse in the country.
''We don't seem to be able to talk about immigration without getting sidetracked into a discussion about refugees, which is so tiny in the scheme of things as to be irrelevant,” says Nasht.
The Sydney Morning Herald writes that 277,700 migrants (or 64%) contributed to Australia’s population increase of 432,600 last December. The rest were due to births. But less than 10 per cent of that increase was due to newly-settled refugees.
In fact, in the documentary, Smith argues that the intake of refugees should increase, and that the number of other immigrants should decrease.
The film follows Smith as he follows rich folks and places the looming issue of population growth on the plate. And though Smith also contributed less than 10 per cent to the $500,000 documentary (he actually wanted to pay for the whole thing!), the ABC claims it had editorial control over the project.
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