4 ms·

Gee, 25M. That's the population of some cities back home. Australia has all the resources and land in the world to support much, much more people.

GnwbZHiU 8y ago
most of the land is barren
- oblio 8y ago
  Even if that's true, Australia covers 7 million sqkm. Eyeballing from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Australia, I'd say at least 0.5 million sqkm seem super habitable. That's more than enough to support 25 million. For comparison France isn't super crowded, it's about the same size and has 65 million people...
folli 8y ago
Can you compare the quality of living in such a city to the Australian standard?
vixen99 8y ago
So the concerns of people quoted in the article can be ignored?
oblio 8y ago
Easy. Urbanization is super high but because of various policies which benefit property owners, these people get to keep their property values super high and ever increasing. As a result, everyone crowds to the same places and the housing supply (and associated infrastructure) is strained. From what I've seen it's a repeating pattern in the developed world. I've seen New Zealanders, of all people, complaining about NZ being overcrowded (it has one of the lowest population densities in the world, especially considering its climate and abundant natural resources). TL;DR: Rich property owners block/delay construction to get high rents or sell their properties at a very high prices. Average people suffer. Rich people point average people to immigrants and "overcrowding".
ekianjo 8y ago
Land is nothing. Infrastructure is what matters.
- sho 8y ago
  Hit the nail on the head. Decades of underinvestment in critical infrastructure has left the whole system vulnerable to even small influxes. Driving down the eastern seaboard of Australia one is struck by the hundreds of kilometres of perfectly habitable empty space. You could put two or three Hong Kongs on the coast between Sydney and Melbourne and no-one would even notice. We just need the damn infrastructure! Given its land mass, Australia at 25m is a joke. We can support ten times that. That "uninhabitable desert" is no worse than Arizona really. All that's needed is a little bit of long-term thinking and investment. Anyone familiar with my comments knows I'm no fan of "high-functioning autocracies" like China or Singapore but bloody hell - it would be good to get them in charge for just a few years and build stuff.
  - ulfw 8y ago
    You have high taxes. You have lots of income from mining and your rich natural resources. Then just build 3 Hong Kongs. What's the problem? Immigrants will be happy to build their new cities. Hong Kong didn't just suddenly show up. It grew over time on an island that had basically nothing on it. It's neighbour Shenzhen was a 10,000 people fishing village and is now a 10 Million metropolis.
    - jazoom 8y ago
      I believe sho stated the problem. We have dysfunctional government that only thinks as far as the next election.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      The high taxes are going into welfare, not infrastructure development.
  - Khaine 8y ago
    We lack this critical resource called water.
bitwize 8y ago
One thing I noticed about Australia is that compared to the USA, population density falls off rapidly as you leave the CBD of one of the major cities. If you go ten miles out from a major US city, you will still likely be in a relatively dense suburban town, if not a neighboring city. When I went to Queensland a few years back, I stayed in Taigum -- 16 km north of Brisbane's CBD -- and it was already boonieville. Had I gone much further out, I would have been "out in the bush" as the locals say. So if everybody stays close to one of the city centers, and immigrants come -- and, looking for work and public infrastructure, they are likely to stick to urban areas as well -- you can see where there might be a population problem. The government may well choose to incentivize more development in the bush and encourage more people to move away from the CBDs, but that's likely to attract backlash from environmentalists and nature conservationists.
- Nursie 8y ago
  Depends where you are. Perth is pretty massive in terms of land area, with a low population - It's larger than London with about a quarter of the population.
Nursie 8y ago
> Australia has all the resources and land in the world to support much, much more people. But not the water, and a large part of what makes living in Australia appealing is that it is comparatively uncrowded, even in the cities. It leads to a relaxed feeling when compared to large US, Asian or European cities. Should citizens be asked to give up one of the major positives of living in Australia in the name of 'growth' ?
- oblio 8y ago
  It depends. Is their current lifestyle supported by that growth? I'm not Australian, so I can't say, maybe an Aussie could chime in.
  - antt 8y ago
    >Is their current lifestyle supported by that growth? No. The people who are the most negative here about population growth are Australians. It's getting to the point where at a Bunnings sausage sizzle you can't tell if you're talking to someone from One Nation or the Greens when you ask what they think about immigration.
  - stephen_g 8y ago
    Population growth is good for nominal GDP growth, but doesn't do much for per-capita growth. Since our labour market has very high levels of labour underutilisation and underemployment and the main population growth is from a very large skilled migration program, some of our record-low wage growth is probably driven by that too.

GnwbZHiU 8y ago

most of the land is barren

oblio 8y ago
Even if that's true, Australia covers 7 million sqkm. Eyeballing from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Australia, I'd say at least 0.5 million sqkm seem super habitable. That's more than enough to support 25 million. For comparison France isn't super crowded, it's about the same size and has 65 million people...

folli 8y ago

Can you compare the quality of living in such a city to the Australian standard?

vixen99 8y ago

So the concerns of people quoted in the article can be ignored?

oblio 8y ago

Easy. Urbanization is super high but because of various policies which benefit property owners, these people get to keep their property values super high and ever increasing. As a result, everyone crowds to the same places and the housing supply (and associated infrastructure) is strained. From what I've seen it's a repeating pattern in the developed world. I've seen New Zealanders, of all people, complaining about NZ being overcrowded (it has one of the lowest population densities in the world, especially considering its climate and abundant natural resources). TL;DR: Rich property owners block/delay construction to get high rents or sell their properties at a very high prices. Average people suffer. Rich people point average people to immigrants and "overcrowding".

ekianjo 8y ago

Land is nothing. Infrastructure is what matters.

sho 8y ago
Hit the nail on the head. Decades of underinvestment in critical infrastructure has left the whole system vulnerable to even small influxes. Driving down the eastern seaboard of Australia one is struck by the hundreds of kilometres of perfectly habitable empty space. You could put two or three Hong Kongs on the coast between Sydney and Melbourne and no-one would even notice. We just need the damn infrastructure! Given its land mass, Australia at 25m is a joke. We can support ten times that. That "uninhabitable desert" is no worse than Arizona really. All that's needed is a little bit of long-term thinking and investment. Anyone familiar with my comments knows I'm no fan of "high-functioning autocracies" like China or Singapore but bloody hell - it would be good to get them in charge for just a few years and build stuff.
- ulfw 8y ago
  You have high taxes. You have lots of income from mining and your rich natural resources. Then just build 3 Hong Kongs. What's the problem? Immigrants will be happy to build their new cities. Hong Kong didn't just suddenly show up. It grew over time on an island that had basically nothing on it. It's neighbour Shenzhen was a 10,000 people fishing village and is now a 10 Million metropolis.
  - jazoom 8y ago
    I believe sho stated the problem. We have dysfunctional government that only thinks as far as the next election.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    The high taxes are going into welfare, not infrastructure development.
- Khaine 8y ago
  We lack this critical resource called water.

bitwize 8y ago

One thing I noticed about Australia is that compared to the USA, population density falls off rapidly as you leave the CBD of one of the major cities. If you go ten miles out from a major US city, you will still likely be in a relatively dense suburban town, if not a neighboring city. When I went to Queensland a few years back, I stayed in Taigum -- 16 km north of Brisbane's CBD -- and it was already boonieville. Had I gone much further out, I would have been "out in the bush" as the locals say. So if everybody stays close to one of the city centers, and immigrants come -- and, looking for work and public infrastructure, they are likely to stick to urban areas as well -- you can see where there might be a population problem. The government may well choose to incentivize more development in the bush and encourage more people to move away from the CBDs, but that's likely to attract backlash from environmentalists and nature conservationists.

Nursie 8y ago
Depends where you are. Perth is pretty massive in terms of land area, with a low population - It's larger than London with about a quarter of the population.

Nursie 8y ago

> Australia has all the resources and land in the world to support much, much more people. But not the water, and a large part of what makes living in Australia appealing is that it is comparatively uncrowded, even in the cities. It leads to a relaxed feeling when compared to large US, Asian or European cities. Should citizens be asked to give up one of the major positives of living in Australia in the name of 'growth' ?

oblio 8y ago
It depends. Is their current lifestyle supported by that growth? I'm not Australian, so I can't say, maybe an Aussie could chime in.
- antt 8y ago
  >Is their current lifestyle supported by that growth? No. The people who are the most negative here about population growth are Australians. It's getting to the point where at a Bunnings sausage sizzle you can't tell if you're talking to someone from One Nation or the Greens when you ask what they think about immigration.
- stephen_g 8y ago
  Population growth is good for nominal GDP growth, but doesn't do much for per-capita growth. Since our labour market has very high levels of labour underutilisation and underemployment and the main population growth is from a very large skilled migration program, some of our record-low wage growth is probably driven by that too.