Simon Kuestenmacher is Director of Research at The Demographics Group and is described as “a rising star in the world of demography”.
The Demographics Group is the private enterprise headed by self-proclaimed “unabashed supporter of a bigger Australia” Bernard Salt, who has spent years lobbying for mass immigration.
Kuestenmacher has been frequently cited in the mainstream media espousing the purported benefits that come with a strong migration system and a bigger population, while completely ignoring the costs.
With this background in mind, it was interesting to see Kuestenmacher appear in Domain where he warned that a campaign to encourage Aussies to move to the regions could drive up property prices and create infrastructure bottlenecks, breeding resentment and a regional backlash:
“You have people with city incomes moving to places where the majority of people have regional incomes. In a sense, city dwellers are driving up house prices and that can easily create some sort of resentment out of this and that’s what we need to avoid,” he said.
Mr Kuestenmacher said the campaign was in keeping with the long-established goal of encouraging stronger population growth around the country, with 80 per cent of growth seen in the nation’s five biggest cities pre-COVID.
“That is not desirable, it’s much better if we spread the load a bit more evenly across towns,” he said. “[But] the growth needs to managed and infrastructure needs to be managed at the same pace of population growth.”
I love the hypocrisy from Kuestenmacher.
Sydney and Melbourne alone received around two-thirds of Australia’s net overseas migrants in the 15 years between 2004 and 2019. This has seen their populations swell by 1.1 million (Sydney) and 1.4 million (Melbourne) respectively, representing population growth of 27% (Sydney) and 39% (Melbourne).
Melbourne’s and Sydney’s populations swelled under the ‘Big Australia’ mass immigration policy.
This extreme immigration-driven population growth was the main reason why Melbourne’s and Sydney’s dwelling values decoupled from the other capital cities, causing a massive deterioration in housing affordability:
Melbourne and Sydney dwelling values decoupled from the other capitals on the back of mass immigration.
Livability was also unambiguously eroded in these two cities as infrastructure failed dismally to keep up with population growth and congestion badly worsened, as explicitly mentioned by Infrastructure Australia’s 2018 report Planning Liveable Cities:
“Infrastructure delivery is struggling to keep pace with rapid population growth and change. Our largest cities are ‘playing catch up’ in delivering infrastructure to support population growth… Our infrastructure funding mechanisms have not kept pace with growth… Communities are increasingly disappointed by their experience of growth…”
Has it ever occurred to Simon Kuestenmacher that residents in these two cities also feel “some sort of resentment” at the mass immigration policy peddled by the likes of him, which has raised their costs and wrecked their livability and amenity?
