In the decade to June 2015, Melbourne’s population ballooned by 832,000 or 23%, with an average of 83,200 people flooding into the city each and every year, driven mostly via immigration (see next chart).
Moreover, the latest population data for Victoria registered a whopping 114,865 new residents added to the population in the year to March 2016, again mostly via immigration, with the lion’s share of these residents flowing to Melbourne:
And let’s recall the Victorian Government’s own population projections, which forecast a whopping 115,000 new residents for the state each and every year for the next 36 years, with Melbourne’s population projected to swell by 75% to 8 million, again with most of these new residents arriving via immigration:
Those of us that live in Melbourne have experienced the effects first hand. Congestion is getting worse each and every year, with the city’s roads now choked with traffic much of the time. Users of the city’s public transport system are not fairing much better, with “crush loads” now a frequent occurrence.
Melbourne’s public schools, too, are suffering from chronic over-crowding as they struggle to keep pace with the rampant population growth, with some students being forced to work on cushions on the floor and play in neighbouring parks because there simply is not the space to accommodate them.
Now, the collateral damage from Melbourne’s high immigration has spread to its hospitals, where emergency rooms are running over capacity. From The Age:
…leaked data indicates there has been no improvement in ambulance “ramping” and that this month hundreds of patients waited longer than an hour to get into an emergency department while under the care of paramedics.
The queues are tying up paramedics when they should be free to respond to urgent cases. Doctors say the problem persists because hospitals are too full.
…units were so busy that junior doctors were performing resuscitation on patients without the presence of senior clinicians – something that previously did not happen. Dr Giannios said crowds of people waiting for care can trigger agitation and violence, causing risks for patients and hospital workers.
“There are times when things get so chaotic and crazy, you wonder if you’ll get out alive,” said the doctor, who called for the government to fund more hospital beds and resources…
So here we have yet another case of Australia’s dysfunctional population ponzi in action.
The Federal Government massively ramped-up immigration from 2004, which has lead to surging demand for infrastructure, housing, schooling and hospitals (among other things).
However, the states have been unable to accommodate this growth – due in part to incompetence, but also through lack of funding courtesy of Australia’s famous vertical fiscal imbalance, whereby the federal government collects most of the revenue.
The federal government’s Intergenerational Report projected that Australia’s population would grow by an average of 394,000 people per year between 2016 and 2055, representing a further expansion of Australia’s immigration intake and nearly twice the annual level of population growth recorded in the post-war to 2003 period (see below chart).
As illustrated by The Australian Institute, this level of population growth will require the building of an additional 61 public schools, 2 public hospitals, 25 residential aged care facilities, and 145,000 new homes each and every year:
Ongoing population growth without adequate planning and investment means more time lost in traffic, more expensive (and smaller) housing, less services (e.g. health and education), and overall lower living standards.
The equation is that simple, but so often ignored by our politicians and policy makers.
YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN
Greg Jericho is feeding hate far more than any 'hater'
From Greg Jericho today: The simple explanation
Immigration minister cherry picks lies to support a 'Big Australia'
By Leith van Onselen On Friday, Australia's
How the Aussie economy compares to when RBA last cut cash rate
By Gareth Aird, Senior Economist at CBA: Key
ScoMo crashes consumer confidence
I don't usually report the weekly given the
“There are times when things get so chaotic and crazy, you wonder if you’ll get out alive,” said the doctor, who called for the government to fund more hospital beds and resources………………..no Doc, reduce migration is what the government should do
doctor suicide rate and depression versus general population is higher or lower?
Higher for a long time. Particularly anaesthetists for some reason
Rates of depression and anxiety are higher than general population. Rates of suicidal ideation higher and rates of successful suicide much higher. I am a trainee anaesthetist and uniquely we have ready access to a range of lethal drugs – rarely does it go wrong. Tragically, just last week a colleague and mentor of mine took his own life.
In the public system our work environment becoming increasingly stressful. We get recognition only for our mistakes. The more they pump the population Ponzi the more people will die. Patients and practitioners alike.
Your post makes me very sad, Dr Jekyll. Take care of yourself.
Sell PR visas for $100k each instead of $0k. That would slow down immigration. And they would not be eligible for the dole for the first 2 years anyway.
Actually Jacob we are the middle of applying for a PR for my partner at the moment and it’s going to cost around $7,000 just for the application fee (more if we were using a migration agent).
Edit: And apparently it’s going to take up to 18 months after submission before we find out if she is approved, and she can’t go on the dole or get a Medicare care in that time.
$93k to go!
Agreed.
The “Price of Admission” into a First World Country with First World benefits needs to be set FAR Higher.
Also … noone over the age of 65 that isn’t self funded and can pay for their own private health care.
Yes I remember one of my first steps to thinking immigration was a racket for the govt was when I saw a small paragraph lost in the middle of The Fin that said the department of immigration had made something like $635 million profit that year. Never quite sure if I read it right. Never seen anything similar again.
Oh higher and I know that from family experience – just this year, my second cousin’s spouse. A very sad business indeed.
Sydney is the same but who cares as long as some politicians and rich people don’t suffer any slow down in wealth
Hospital admins love it too, the more people in your “catchment area” the more political clout they yield.
Corruption via statistics
All this stuff you write about public transport and public hospitals being overcrowded and housing becoming smaller – you make it out to be a big deal. But it’s just poor people being inconvenienced and/or dying. It’s what they deserve for being poor, what’s the problem?
And it’s not as though they need to be poor.
Don’t drive a car, and get a good job that pays good money.
Why do people always want to over complicate these things?
And why is the population ponzi a problem?
Everyone seems to be happy with it and serving mother land China.
We are just employed by the republic to look after its interests in the big island once called AUSTRALIA
We are owned by China and we only do what pleases it, after all mandarin is the future language here : right Malcolm ?
if you went out to the western Sydney suburbs shops and malls , you will find an overwhelmingly job ads that requires English and mandarin as a requirement for employment. So it is slowly shifting already.
Now those students with arts degree would be more employable than STEM…
(languages falls under the arts faculty).
But remember, to question unfettered immigration means you’re a racist.
@Mr Walker
It is racist if you are objecting on the basis of their cultural differences a la One Nation.
We are a wealthy western democracy, we can sustain increases in population from immigration. Rather than complaining about the ponzi, we should be working to accommodate the issue. It is only going to get worse once climate change kicks into high gear and the equatorial nations face annihilation of their agrarian infrastructure. We know this is all going to happen and we need to be planning better, now.
“we can sustain increases in population from immigration”
Obviously not.
cutural difference = race?
cutural difference = race?
Most of the time, yes.
Or problem is we pick to low quality immigrants. We run a population ponzi that does nothing to raise our standards (much).
cutural difference = race?
Crikey, this little semantic argument is getting to be like a nervous tic.
In most practical applications, yes (“swamped by Asians”).
Rest assured Pauline Hanson isn’t thinking about someone like this bloke when she talks about banning muslim immigration.
Semantic? lol
“We are a wealthy western democracy, we can sustain increases in population from immigration”.
Sounds like John Howard and the Banks
Or problem is we pick to low quality immigrants.
If ‘high quality’ immigrants is roughly ‘immigrants from other 1st world nations’ why would they come here? For the high priced housing or for the lack of industry?
We don’t ‘pick’ the immigrants – those are the ones we can get if we want to maintain the numbers where they are (yes dropping the overall numbers by half or something would give us more freedom to change the mix)
@Mr Walker
My point is we can sustain population increases IF WE PLAN FOR IT. Our problem is keeping our collective heads in the sand. This is not an issue that is going away. As I point out, when climate change really starts to hit in the 2040’s and onward, we are not going to be in a position to avoid this.
Why should we plan for a higher population? Will that make quality of life better, will that easy rising pressure from climate change?
If we were smart we should actually plan for a level of population that leaves Australia as a more resilient and sustainable community that is able to cope with climate change.
Australia is currently feeding about 60 million people (see the new book from the CSIRO, Australia’s Role in Feeding the World, Tor Hundloe & Sarah Blagrove, eds.) From World Bank figures on arable land and average grain yield per hectare, France can feed a third again as many people as we can, even when we are having a good year. We have far less reliable rainfall than France, and our grain production is essentially cut in half in a drought year such as 2004. Multiyear droughts are not uncommon, and we have serious problems with land degradation. Our agricultural production would drop like a stone without imports of cheap oil and phosphate, and climate change is a wild card as well. If huge numbers of people try to swarm in, we will have to fight as a matter of survival.
Back in 1994, the Australian Academy of Science recommended 23 million as a safe upper limit to our population. To the best of my knowledge, they have never updated this. Politicians may not like presiding over a recession due to stopping mass migration, but an angry populace is likely to throw them out in any case.
-> DrSmithy “thinking about someone like this bloke”
Why should we accept someone like this who is prone to strange irrational attractions to a medieval belief system? He is potentially extremely high risk because he is weak minded and can’t think for himself, so potentially a target as a patsy for extremists. Same for militant christian fundamentalists, scientologists, and quite possibly even dopey, addled brained left wing drop kicks like … well there are a few of them around.
I doubt this will get bad enough to be a political issue soon. Earliest will be after the next election. Plenty of time for liberals to destroy more of the countries infrastructure and services through cutbacks and privatisation.
*Melbourne’s public schools, too, are suffering from chronic over-crowding*
Easily fixed. Send your kids to private schools. They keep their numbers under control.
bllsht, go and have a look at say Kings in Sydney?
……and try and get your kids in.
what’s the story / problem with Kings? I was a boarder there back in the day and loved it. also loved that it was a majority boarding school which was good as a boarder. I’ve got a few years to work out if I’d send my own kids there.
A couple of years ago some politician (I think it was Joe Hockey) made a statement suggesting there was nothing that could be done about it. Thems the rules
It’s not like the politicians don’t make the rules.
The hospitals are getting crushed by over 85 population….. which has jumped over 50% in the past 10 years in Victoria plus the “Baby Boomers” who are now starting to hit 70. The former is a result of better medical care which oddly adds more pressure to hospitals than less.
The really massive pressure in Melbourne will be in the school sector. Although the population of the state rose around 20% in the past decade, the number of school aged children only increased 7.5%. Yet the number of children 0 to 5 is up 25% on a decade before.
Back in the day there was Prince Henry’s, Queen Vic & PANCH. All fine hospitals bowled over in the name of progress.
All hopelessly out of date with dreadful facilities. Much bigger Monash and Western Hospitals,Epping and Sunbury built or rebuilt a vast improvement. Even the politically powerful Royal Children’s was in shocking shape before the rebuild.
And a hangover from the Victorian era having all major hospitals in the centre of the city. Suburbia has been around for a while!
But but but but but…. seen all the high rise development in good ole Melbun town lately? Can’t imagine an ambulance getting out to Monash Medical Centre or even the Alfred from the CBD in 5 minutes during peak hour. Can RMH and SVH handle all those new potential clients/patients? Seems they cannot. All of those hospitals wiped off the map 30-40 years ago could have been refurbished/rebuilt. At the very least the land should have been kept in public hands. And by the way, have you noticed that they’re teaching anatomy and clinical skills etc with mannikins and Youtube nowadays. Call that progress?
And have you noticed….The cacophony that issues from the nursing stations at all hours of the day and night. Nothing a good old-fashioned ward sister (person?) couldn’t fix, quick smart. Bring back the Nightingale wards I say!
We did anatomy off formalin soaked cadavers(not for the squeamish as same body for a year) and specimens in glass cases. Some of those specimens were over a hundred years old,and were shedding furiously-perhaps that’s where the idea for snow domes came from.
You tube videos would be vastly better-clean,don’t smell and you can actually see what is going on there. They couldn’t teach it any worse than the way it was done 20 years ago.
You must have trained at Melbun Uni then ?
Why does not Barry Cassidy or Leigh Sailes of the ABC highlight this shit population/immigration ponzi?
Are they in on it too?
The media consider it conventional/accepted wisdom. In this way they are ‘in on it’. J Irvine is just one example.
Or they fear being labelled as racist and bigoted by the Politically Correct Cultural Marxists.
Good point.
ABC could devote a 4 Corners to the costs and benefits/winners and losers of immigration.
Here is a 2007 analysis https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/01_2014/contents_exec_summary_and_intro_access.pdf
See in particular 11.3 Common issues and concerns to host communities at page 152 ff
Can anyone truly imagine a Sailes or Cassidy standing up to say that Australia should limit its population growth?
Even in the face of ’empirical evidence’ and with support from many of the wise and good among our Nobel Prize winners, they would lose their Union tickets and be excommunicated from the media pack.
There are some voices of reason in Radio at 2UE and 3AW and Macca on the ABC (Sunday with Macca) is often found talking about overcrowding and sustainability/sovereignty issues with Dick Smith, but they are not talking to powerful inner city elites in Sydney and Melbourne.
Those setting the immigration intake should be required to spend a night in an Syd/Mel emergency ward, an ambulance, a police watchhouse, a garbage dump, a sewerage treatment works, a waterways clean up crew and a homeless shelter each year before they meet to decide the intake number.
(Seriously guys you need to fix this shockwave plugin thing asap)
Abbott stayed in remote Aboriginal communities for 1 week per year and he still attacked the poor after becoming PM.
There is/was also “Vinnies CEO Sleepout” where rich people sleep rough for a night – and yet do nothing for the homeless the next week or month.
But the property rent-seekers love it!
Our politicians and policy makers don’t ignore the property rent-seekers.
X
Why is it a foregone conclusion that our population will just keep growing?
All these plans to build more infrastructure may not have to happen if we have a true debate about population.
What a joke.
And…
Y,
John Merritt of VicRoads…”There is no way for Victoria to “build its way out” of congestion”.
When the answer is well-known by politicians and they choose to ignore it and thus ignore the wishes of the people, you know our system is broken.
Cut immigration for god’s sake.
There’s a reason people are turning to Pauline Hanson and it has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with living standards.
It’s clearly time we had a revolution in Australia.
Tax wealthy boomers if the true solution can’t be achieved – they can afford it.
The youth can’t afford it – wages are not keeping up.
hospitals, train stations http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/southern-cross-station-overhaul-flagged-after-booming-passenger-numbers-20161004-gruhlo.html
everything
once again flufferfax treats overcrowding as a chest-beating opportunity. wow, we’ll be bigger than Sydney!
any chance of them asking if any mug wants this?