The Left want high Immigration but not what comes with it
by Jaymez
9 December, 2016
Dick Smith quite correctly told Waleed Aly he didn’t understand basic economics, when Aly was trying to justify increasing Australia’s rate of immigration.
The real story of the impact of population growth in Australia
Australia’s rate of net immigration is higher than any other OECD country in the world, and most other countries as well.
We really have no idea how many indigenous people lived in Australia prior to European settlement. Most estimates are between 315,000 and 750,000 with some wildly high estimates of up to 1.25m. Some time ago I studied how the estimates were arrived at and they are statistically fragile, to say the least. There is also no doubt that a significant number of those were killed by disease, and later by mistreatment and in some cases outright massacre. But for the sake of argument let’s say the Australian population totalled 500,000 before European settlement in 1788.
The population 228 years later is 24,000,000. That represents an average net rate of growth from births, deaths, immigration and emigration of 1.7% pa.
People like Waleed Aly who are plumbing for more immigration and pretend we could cope with a population growth of 3.0% pa. At that rate it would take only about half the time since European settlement, to reach a population of 1 Billion people in Australia. That is just 126 years to reach 42 times more people in Australia than we have today.
A massive construction program would have to begin immediately.
In 126 years we would need to build 42 times more times schools, hospitals, roads, rail, airports, ports, housing, factories, offices, universities, aged care facilities, and so on.
Salaries for workers would have to drop dramatically. These projects aren’t for profit; they are for survival.
It is impossible. We would degenerate to a third world country, buckling under borrowings which aren’t generating immediate economic growth because much of that is for Australian use, not to generate exports income. In reality, even if we wanted to do it we couldn’t — who would lend us the money?
The Roe Highway in WA has been planned since 1954, yet we still have protesters blocking the last couple of sections of that 62 years on. It may end up taking 70 years to complete, if it is completed at all.
The Roe Highway route was planned 54 years ago and we still have protesters today.
Planning for a second airport in Sydney started in 1970, 46 years ago, and still not a single sod has been turned and it would probably take at least 10 years to build if construction started today, completion 56 years after planning.
Under the 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan, there was always going to be a link between the Eastern Freeway and the Tullamarine Freeway. Contracts were finally signed in 2014 which would have seen it completed in 2023, 54 years after its initial planning. But the new Victorian Labor Government cancelled the contract costing an estimated $1.2B. It may never proceed!
This is the story all around Australia.
No council will approve high rise, high density housing in the suburbs which is needed to satisfy our rate of population growth and get housing at affordable levels. If they do, they are inevitably kyboshed by protesters.
Ironically it is largely the noisy lefties like Waleed Aly that claim to want high immigration rates, and who say we have plenty of space, who are the first to protest at any sign of development which is needed for such an expanding population.
