Population ponzi takes to the skies

Via the Herald Sun comes the latest bone-headed population ponzi notion:

MELBOURNE’S skies could soon be crowded with people-carrying drones with two out of three Victorians believing that drones will be used to transport people as well as goods in the future.

The research, undertaken by the Tourism and Transport Forum Australia, also found an intrepid 39 per cent of all Australians are keen to be part of this airborne revolution.

TTF chief executive Margy Osmond said the research posed some very serious questions about the design of our cities into the future with Victoria’s skies potentially thick with human-laden drones.

“Melbourne has again been ranked the world’s most liveable city, but to maintain that mantle into the future it will need to reassess not just what the transport requirements of tomorrow are, but the transport requirements of the next generation,” Ms Osmond said.

“The reality is that in the years to come the skies of cities like Melbourne will potentially be thick with people-laden drones, which will require a complete rethink about how we design our cities into the future.

“Melbourne has always had the confidence to assert itself as a global arts and cultural leader, and I would now challenge Melbourne to take up the challenge to establish itself as a global leader in preparing for the future of transport and embrace the potential of on-demand transport, autonomous vehicles and personalised automated flying drones.”

The research also found that three-quarters of Victorians want to see the State Government prioritise investment in public transport services compared to just 23 per cent who would prefer funding allocated to new road infrastructure.

I wonder what the result would be if they asked the more sensible question: should immigration be cut?

When it was asked in Adelaide recently the response tells you everything:

Meanwhile, the truth for those ponziteers that reckon it’s all a planning failure is laid bare at Domainfax:

The boss of the Department of Infrastructure has delivered a blunt assessment of some of Canberra’s most powerful public servants and political staffers, calling out central agencies as dollar-driven policy killers.

In a speech to the Institute of Public Administration in Canberra this week, Mike Mrdak said sending reform proposals to Parliament House or the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet early was a sure way to have good policy ideas killed off, arguing line agencies were better placed to deliver development through constructive relationships and cooperation.

A former PM&C deputy secretary and Commonwealth coordinator-general, Mr Mrdak said more long-term planning and evidence-based decision making was needed to overcome the short focus of governments.

He said “forward-leaning steps” were often needed on infrastructure planning, including sometimes ahead of public opinion.

Mr Mrdak warned reform proposals born in central agencies or prime ministers’ offices often did not serve the public or the states and territories well.

“If you want to see a reform agenda killed early, hand it over to the PMO, PM&C or premier’s departments, and you’ll not see it ever come to fruition,” he said to laugher from the room.

…”Electoral cycles are very short, the focus of government tends to be very short.”

Big Australia is the planning failure. From last week’s Auditor General Report:

Experts warn that repeated failures by planners to predict Melbourne’s massive population growth risks causing shortages of maternity and childcare services in the city’s outer suburbs.

Research by the Urban Development Institute of Australia as well as Australia’s largest property advisory firm, Charter Kramer Keck, has found that figures compiled for the state government’s “Victoria in Future” report­s have been repeatedly underestimated when compared with actual Australian ­Bureau of Statistics figures.

Victoria’s Auditor-General called on the Andrews government yesterday to review its planning and forecasting procedures in light of the research findings.

In defense of Victoria, it is the feds that set the immigration targets which have driven most of the overshoot:

Moreover, what kind of economic idiot would have planned for federal authorities to ramp up immigration directly into the labour market bust accompanying the mining boom adjustment? If you were remotely logical you would have scoffed at such. Yet that’s what we got because the feds are completely pre-occupied with short term calculus such as supporting the housing bubble at all costs.

Having said that, one does wonder if some political calculus does not transpire at the state level, deliberately lowering population growth forecasts so as not to be blamed for unpopular high growth.

Either way, it all goes directly to the argument put by immigration boosters such Peter Martin, Rob Burgess and Saul Eslake that the falling standards of living resulting from the failure to plan properly for population growth is the key problem. How can it be planned for when there is no national population policy, no rationale for it beyond short-term politics and no co-ordination between state and federal authorities? This is a kind of population version of the endlessly frustrating vertical fiscal imbalance that dogs large swathes of the public sectors in Australia as it hands responsibility for certain public services to states but not the corresponding revenue mechanisms to fund them, driving immense inefficiency.

Honestly, you could probably not find a national governance structure more intrinsically unable to cope with swift population growth than our own.