Former NSW Premier and Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, has called on Australia to reduce its immigration intake by half so that livability in the major cities is not unnecessarily destroyed. From The Age:
“I think the Australian people, if asked, would want immigration slowed,” Mr Carr said at a press conference in Sydney on Tuesday. “We’ve got a third-world style population growth rate.
“If you bring 100,000 people into the Sydney basin every year, the price of housing goes up […] people wonder why their youngsters can’t get houses in the big cities… the answer is we are going for breakneck population growth”…
Mr Carr said Australia had the highest rate of population growth of any developed country and that the growth was undermining policies by governments to make housing more affordable and to improve infrastructure. “It’s always never enough”…
“There’s a case for pegging immigration back by easily one-third, perhaps even 50 per cent,” Mr Carr said…
Mr Carr said Australia’s economy should focus on export-led growth and stop relying on an expansion in its domestic market…
Great to see somebody addressing the elephant in the room.
Australia’s population growth rate, driven mostly via immigration, is among the highest in the world and is more akin to a fast growing developing nation than a well-developed country (see below table).
For some stupid reason, Australia’s elite believe that “bigger is better”, and have continued to funnel more and more people each year into Australia’s cities without commensurate investments in infrastructure and public services. The result has been rising congestion levels, more expensive (and smaller) housing, reduced amenity, and overall lower living standards.
Worse, more than half of Australians surveyed are against further population growth, and two-thirds believe Australia’s population should not top 30 million. Why are they being ignored?
The answer is that big business loves endless high immigration because it gets to enjoy an ever growing customer base and are able to increase sales without becoming more efficient.
The Government also loves high immigration because it juices headline growth, even though everyone’s share of the economic pie is diluted (see next chart).
Real wealth does not come from diluting the nation’s fixed mineral endowment among millions more people. Nor does it come from importing loads of people so that you can sell them apartments with borrowed money (mostly from offshore) and cappuccinos, blowing-out the current account deficit in the process.
No, real progress comes from innovation, productivity and export-led growth.
Bob Carr gets it. Shame about our political leaders.
