Australia’s Rapid Population Growth Disastrous for Cities

New projections released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics have revised upwards the growth estimates that triggered the Big Australia debate in 2009 and 2010.

At that time it was estimated that Australia was heading for 35 or 36 million by 2050. Now according to the ABS central projection we are tracking for 37.5 million by 2050, and possibly 70 million by 2100.

This growth will be overwhelmingly in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane. Melbourne is set to double by 2060, to 8.5 million, and Perth and Brisbane are also set to double. Sydney will increase by 80%.

This increase will be disastrous for these cities. It will drive traffic congestion and gridlock, high rise and the loss of public open space, a widening gap between rich and poor and social inequality. It will fuel housing unaffordability and job insecurity for our young people.

It makes a farce of the view that population growth in Australia is about populating our regional and remote areas – 14 million of the extra 18 million people projected for 2060 will move into just 4 cities.

The latest upward lift is a consequence of net overseas migration rising yet again. The Bureau of Statistics is now using a net annual migration figure of 240,000 per year, more than double the numbers just 10 years ago. Migration is now the source of 2/3 of our population growth.

To challenge the view that rapid population growth is a good thing, I am setting up a non-government organisation called Victoria First. Its first meeting will be:

·         Sunday, December 1st;

·         10am-12 noon; and

·         Flemington Community Centre, 25 Mt Alexander Rd, Flemington.

Melbourne Planning Debacle

A report released by the Federal Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics underlines just how inadequate and incompetent Melbourne’s recent planning has been.

The report analysed population growth, jobs growth and commuter flows in Australia’s four largest cities. It found:

1)    Melbourne was the only city in which jobs growth in the outer suburbs had failed to keep pace with the population boom. Parts of outer Melbourne now have less than one job for every three working people, forcing residents to commute further for employment.

2)    Eighty-four per cent of outer Melbournians drive to work, the highest level among Australia’s biggest cities, and just 9% use public transport.

Monash University Professor of Public Transport Graham Currie said any city growing in population without expanding public transport was planning for decline. He said “the future cupboard of public transport projects is looking bare” and that “If population grows by 25% but services remain essentially static, we have a per capita decline of 25 per cent in service levels. We are not responding to growth. Rather we are going backwards”.

This report reveals as a fraud the idea that Melbourne’s rapid population growth is okay. Jobs are far removed from homes, and workers are not using public transport, leading to traffic congestion, long commutes, and reduced quality of life for everybody – a planning debacle.

 
It’s all very well to say that what is needed is better planning, but expanding the urban growth boundary and high rise and urban consolidation have both given us the outcomes we have today. The better planning never happens, and it won’t as long as Melbourne’s population continues to grow by 200 a day, 1500 a week, 75,000 each year.

Mistreatment of Australian Bulls in Mauritius

Graphic footage of Australian bulls being mistreated in Mauritius requires a tough response from the Australian Government.

The Department of Agriculture must either cancel or suspend the export licences of the exporter involved. Only real penalties, not Mickey Mouse ones, will act as a deterrent against these practices. It has the power to take the export license off this exporter and it should use it.

Minister for Agriculture, Joyce, has said “no one supports animal cruelty but investigations aren’t about shutting down the trade, they’re about policing it – the way an officer polices the roads”. Officers police the roads by taking dangerous drivers off them. That is what should happen here.

The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, says, “The existing system is designed to ensure that animals are not mistreated”. It clearly isn’t achieving that objective – so real action is needed.

The live export industry has no business talking about a return to self-regulation in the light of this revelation, along with the recent case of Jordan, where 10,000 Australian sheep exported to Jordan "leaked" from approved supply chains, and were sold in unofficial markets.

The live export trade is not only a failure of ethics but a failure of economics. We should move towards a viable alternative – a local chilled meat export industry that protects and creates more Australian rural jobs, results in higher profitability through value added opportunities, and delivers decent and humane animal welfare.

Hockey’s Tax Changes a Nudge and a Wink to the Wealthy

Yesterday’s tax changes were a shameless nod to those who can afford to pay a bit more that under a Liberal Government their interests will be served at the expense of those who can least afford it.

Treasurer Hockey confirmed that 16,000 high income earners will get tax breaks, while 2.7 million small businesses and 3.6 million low income earners will lose tax breaks and be hit with higher taxes.

Small businesses are missing out on the Labor intiative of an instant asset write-off, while 110,000 small businesses will miss out on a lower threshold for the loss carry back provisions.

The Liberal Government has scrapped Labor’s 15 per cent concessional tax rate on earnings above $100,000 in superannuation income streams, that is, super balances over $2 million. This comes on the back of their decision to scrap the Low Income Super Contribution and reimpose a 15% superannuation tax on low income and part-time workers, with shop assistants, waiters, bartenders and cleaners being hardest hit – 60 per cent of these are women. Women are already retiring with less in their super accounts because of the disparity in their pay compared to men.

The Liberal Government has also watered down Labor’s efforts to get multinationals to pay their fair share of tax. For example, Google paid only $74,176 in tax in Australia 2011, despite estimated revenues of $1 billion. Labor’s rules were designed to stop profits being shipped overseas. The Treasurer’s amendments help multinationals and will mean $700 million less in tax revenue.

These changes unambiguously demonstrate the priorities of this Government. Multinational companies and high income earners get tax breaks, while small businesses and low and middle income earners miss out.

So much too for the much touted ‘budget emergency’ the Liberal Party spoke about prior to the election! The changes announced have given up $3 billion over the forward estimates. When it comes to tax breaks for big business, it seems there is plenty of money to splash around.

Commission of Audit

Before the Commission of Audit looks at cuts to public service jobs and services to ordinary Australians, it should first take the razor to the Liberal Government’s extravagant and unnecessary plans to INCREASE the dollars going to:

1.    Defence equipment

2.    Paid parental leave

3.    The Royal Park Freeway

The Commission should also review environmentally-damaging subsidies to mining and agriculture.

I agree that we should balance our books, and must live within our means. But the representatives of big business who have been appointed to the Commission of Audit should cut the very substantial taxpayer funding that lines the pockets of wealthy Australian and foreign companies, rather than reduce government support for those Australians who need it most.

Malcolm King’s Fortress Australia Article

Malcolm King’s article, Fortress Australia: green wasting the future, in the Sydney Morning Herald makes numerous claims which are far removed from reality.

 

Claim: “Australia has a low population but the western suburbs of its two largest cities are growing under the load of poor infrastructure and a total lack of urban planning”.

Reality: Growth boosters always claim the problems could be solved by better infrastructure and better planning. If it is capable of being solved, how come it never is? Why can no government of whatever political party, in any fast growing city, get infrastructure or planning right? The reason, pointed out brilliantly by Queensland academic Jane O’Sullivan in her work on the costs of infrastructure in a growing population, is that population growth of 2% sound innocent enough but in fact it doubles the infrastructure task of any government or council.

Claim: “The real story is that the environmental movement is under attack by the anti-populationist and anti-immigration forces who are “green washing” their anti-immigration policies to make them more palatable to the electorate”.

Reality: I got interested in Australian birds, plants and animals when I was just 10 years old. I got interested in conservation and environment issues when I was a teenager, and interested in politics as a result. I first talked about climate change in the mid-1990s, and when I was Shadow Environment Minister between 2001-2004 I successfully proposed that Labor adopt the Kyoto Protocol, increase the Renewable Energy Target, introduce an emissions trading scheme to put a price on carbon, and return water to the ailing Murray-Darling Basin.  And I have found similar priorities among the people I have met at Sustainable Population Australia. It is precisely their concern at the impacts of habitat destruction and climate change on our birds and plants and animals that cause them to believe that we should try to stabilise our population. Claims of ‘greenwashing’ are pathetic and laughable.

Claim: A stable population “would have radical implications for Australian society and capitalism”.

Reality: In fact it would have positive implications for society and capitalism. The wealthiest GDP per capita countries in the world are not those with large and rapidly growing populations, they are those with small and slowly growing populations, such as Scandinavia and northern Europe.

Claim: “Advocates of population stabilisation want a one in/one out immigration system, stop building houses for first home buyers and stop Kiwis arriving.

Reality: None of these claims is true of me. I propose net immigration of 70,000 each year (not net zero), and a cap on New Zealanders arriving which would still allow for a similar number to that we have seen since the Trans-Tasman Agreement was introduced. As for first home buyers, I am the one blowing the whistle on the way rising house prices are denying first home buyers the chance to enter the market. I support first home buyers and oppose rising house prices driven by population growth.

Claim: That the reason it takes an hour to get to work is not growing population, but because every single person drives a car.

Reality: Mr King accuses Sustainable Population Australia of having a social engineering agenda, yet he apparently wants everyone to stop driving their cars! Just how does he plan to accomplish that? Either utterly naive, or utterly insincere.

Claim: “Over the next 30 years almost 6 million baby boomers will pass on….The population of much of eastern Europe and Japan is falling”.

Reality: Australia’s population is growing faster than ever before. When I went to school and learned about population Australian was 14 million. Now we are 23 million. Treasury projections are that we will hit 36 million by 2050, and keep rising. Same for the global population, which hit 7 billion in 2011, having trebled in a little over a century, and is tracking for 9 to 10 billion by mid-century. I used to believe those demographers who claimed that population would take care of itself. But their predictions are always wrong – the population always grows by more than they predict – so I have stopped listening to them.

Claim: The solution to the traffic jam on Punt Road is to ride a push bike.

Reality: Melbourne is on track to go from 2 million cars now to over 3 million cars by 2036. If you think the Punt Road traffic is bad now, wait till Mr King’s vision for Melbourne arrives!

Conclusion: Mr King’s claims are so far divorced from reality that one wonders why he makes them. He describes himself as director of a PR Business. It is time he disclosed his clients, which may help us understand the answer to that intriguing question.

Reducing Migration is Commonsense

Victoria’s Planning Minister Matthew Guy’s comment that cutting migration would be ridiculous is very revealing. Matthew Guy, and other Planning Ministers before him, and other State Governments, usually try to sound apologetic when they inflict planning horrors on local communities- “we’re sorry but we have no choice, our increasing population has to go somewhere”. But here, talking to the Property Council, Mr Guy is unrepentant and expresses himself to be quite content with Victoria’s rapid growth rate.

Mr Guy’s reference to the 50s and 60s attempts to paint Victoria’s and Australia’s current migration and population growth as normal. It is not. For a range of years in the 1980s and 1990s net overseas migration was well under 100,000. A massive spike began during the Howard years. In 2004, it was 100,000. It then rose to 124,000 in 2005, 147,000 in 2006, and 178,000 in 2007. It continued to rise after the change of government, going to 200,000 and then 300,000. Victoria is getting more of this migration than any other State. Melbourne’s population is increasing by 200 per day, 1500 per week, 75,000 per each year. This is a larger increase than anything we have faced before.

Like other people with a weak argument, Mr Guy sets up straw men. He says “there are some still who say if we cut off all overseas migration tomorrow that is the answer to all of our problems”. No-one says that. No-one advocates cutting off all overseas migration- I advocate returning to the net 70,000 of the 1980s and 1990s- and no-one says this will solve all our problems.

Mr Guy says that even without migration Melbourne will still add the population of Adelaide (an extra 1.2million increase) by 2050. This may well be correct, but an increase of 1.2 million for Melbourne will create more than enough work and pressure for Mr Guy and his successors, and more than enough work for the Property Council, without them advocating even more rapid population growth with all the attendant traffic, planning, affordability, cost of living, social and environmental problems that come with that. Advocating growth beyond this natural increase is greedy and short-sighted.