The Australian’s economics editor and a former Productivity Commission commissioner, Judith Sloan, and Leith van Onselen, the chief economist of MacroBusiness, spoke with Sky News host Andrew Bolt on Tuesday night about Melbourne’s declining liveability.
The key theme was that Melbourne’s population has grown too fast via the federal government’s mass immigration policy, which has led to gaping shortfalls in public services, infrastructure, and housing.
To add further insult to injury, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews is actively lobbying Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for even more immigration, despite the federal budget projecting that Melbourne’s population will grow by around 500,000 people over the five years to 2026-27.
Below are key excerpts from the interview, which you can watch in full below.
Judith Sloan: “If you look at the growth of Melbourne, it’s grown by 50% over the past 20 years. And that is predominantly due to the migrant intake. So, three-quarters of that increase is due to the migrant intake. You get similar figures in Sydney and South East Queensland”.
“There is the force of what economists call chain migration. So, migrants go to areas where migrants from the same countries already have settled. So, you get this sort of effect of crowding in of the new migrants”.
Leith van Onselen: “It’s worth pointing out that at the 2001 Census, Melbourne’s population was 3.3 million people. And it took Melbourne about 170 years to get there”.
“But in the last 21 years since then, we’ve grown by nearly 2 million people. So, it’s over 50%. And based on the current trajectory, by about the mid-2030s, we’re effectively going to add another 3.3 million people from what it was in 2001”.
“So what took us [Melbourne] 170 years, we’re going to do in about 35 years. And anyone who’s lived in Melbourne knows exactly what this means. We’ve got packed roads. We’ve got packed public transport. Good luck trying to get a spot in the hospital. At school. And of course, people are paying more for housing and families are now being forced to live in apartments instead of houses”.
“It’s a quality of life destroyer and unfortunately our mad Premier is actually lobbying the Albanese government to increase immigration even further. He told an Italian language newspaper ,Ill globo, last month that he’s actively lobbying Anthony Albanese for more immigration”.
“Now it’s the definition of insanity to do what’s failed over the past 20 years – it’s wrecked living standards – and then go double down even harder and expect a different result”.
“It’s the absolute definition of insanity and it’s going to destroy living standards”.
Judith Sloan: “There are just major holes in the Visa programs. So at the moment, for example, there is a Visa category which goes back to the pandemic. So, it was introduced at that time to allow people to stay because of the pandemic consequences”.
“The pandemic has been over for ages but what’s happening is that they’ve [the Albanese Government] issued 66,000 of these pandemic visas. And what’s happening is people are working the system”.
“It’s very easy to get a student visa. They come in and then the next week they transfer to this pandemic visa”.
“Now you know the federal government must know this. If I know this they know this. And yet they really turn a blind eye because the forces of Big Australia are very powerful and they basically, I think, are prepared to trade off the standards of the living of ordinary folk”.
Leith van Onselen: “Sydney receives about the same immigration as Melbourne. The difference is Sydney loses more people interstate because Sydney’s housing costs are so much higher than even Melbourne”.
“And what that basically does is, it’s like you push on one side of the balloon with immigration. People come in and then the other side of the balloon bulges out. People spread to Queensland and places like that”.
“So effectively, we’ve got this sort of population replacement program going on in Melbourne where we’re bringing loads of people from and Sydney. Loads of people from overseas and they’re pushing, forcing people out into the regions and into other states”.
“It’s just nuts and that’s basically people voting with their feet to get out of these cities because liveability has been trashed. But obviously if you’re from a developing country, Australia looks great to them. So, they keep coming”.
“But if you’re already in Australia and Melbourne and Sydney, and your living stands are getting smashed, you’re going to move elsewhere. And that’s basically what’s happening”.
