Western Sydney fights back against migrant flood

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As we know, Australia’s population soared by nearly 500,000 in 2022 (a record high) on the back of extreme net overseas migration of nearly 400,000 (also a record high):

Australian population change

The early indicators are that 2023 will be an ever bigger year for immigration given monthly visa data shows net arrivals are booming on the back of record international student flows:

Net visa arrivals
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Last week, The Australian reported that “Australia will experience the biggest two-year population surge in its history, with an extra 650,000 migrants this financial year and next driving a 900,000 jump in the number of residents”.

Local governments across Western Sydney – which has traditionally been the dumping ground for migrants – are pushing back hard against the deluge, claiming there already isn’t enough houses and infrastructure for the existing population, let along tens-of-thousands of new arrivals.

Fairfield Mayor Frank Carbone said “Western Sydney is shut” and pleaded with the government not to move hundreds of thousands of extra residents there.

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Carbone’s council area already has an occupancy rate of 3.2 people per home, which is higher than the state average of 2.6.

“Western Sydney cannot be used as the place for the government to dump 650,000 new residents just so they fix their bottom line”, Carbone said.

“We need hospitals, roads, housing and at a time when cost of living is out of control, this does not help people with their budgets or quality of living”.

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“We need to say western Sydney is shut – we have a very low availability of housing and this will only foster more inflation with higher prices and it’ll be people out here in western Sydney that will pay the price for this huge increase”.

Federal MP Dai Le echoed Carbone’s concerns stating that new homes, schools and transport infrastructure had to be built into her region before new residents arrive.

“My electorate of Fowler has been a welcoming resettlement city for decades. However, I have seen the social and community impact that comes with lack of housing and public infrastructure to support new settlements”, Dai Le said.

Too right. The Western Sydney ghetto is designed to provide cheap foreign labour to the East so that the Eastern Elites can profit from the rentier services of over-priced ghetto apartments and postage stamp houses, inflated land banks, as well as mortgages and retail by volume.

That is essentially a type of economic apartheid, and as more migrants are crammed into Sydney’s West, it will only become worse.

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The wealthy elites living in the city’s east and northern beaches pull the government’s strings. So, if they are forced to suffer from overdevelopment and migrant-stuffing like their poorer cousins in the west, they will inevitably squeal like stuck pigs and demand immigration be cut.

The best way to stop the mass immigration scam is to force the likes of Lucy Turnbull and Highrise Harry living in Woollahra and Mosman to be swamped by ugly high-rise developments, alongside the associated congestion and loss of amenity.

About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.