CEO of Stockland (and former Property Council President), Mark Steinert, is loving the Australian economy right now, with the company making out like bandits from the immigration-driven population crush occurring across Melbourne and Sydney. From The AFR:
Steinert looks at Melbourne and sees a city experiencing the strongest population growth since the nineteenth century gold rush. It is handling the pressure thanks to strong jobs growth and what Steinert reckons is the leading urban planning processes in Australia.
He says the Victorian government’s approval of the infrastructure plan for the Mt Atkinson residential project in Melbourne as a prime example of the commitment and planning needed to build liveable communities.
The plan includes schools, a new train station, a bus service and a range of new community facilities. Stockland plans to build 5000 new homes…
Housing affordability is a key reason why Melbourne is the go to city for young families. Housing costs in the growth corridors of Melbourne are about half the cost of growth centres in Sydney…
While Sydney loses out on housing affordability it is, in Steinert’s opinion, going to experience a boom from the multiplier effect of new infrastructure investment.
NSW is investing about $80 billion in new infrastructure in Sydney and Steniert says that based on past experience this will generate seven times that amount of economic activity…
The sectoral growth trends identified by Steinert are feeding through to strong financial performance at Stockland. It has record residential contracts on hand, high occupancy rates across its portfolio, sales productivity in its retail town centres above industry averages and it is redeveloping its commercial assets in Sydney.
Why wouldn’t a growth lobbyist like Stockland love Australia’s population-ponzi economic model?
126,000 extra people were stuffed into Melbourne last year, whereas 92,000 were stuffed into Sydney. And the ponzi is expected to continue for decades to come, with Melbourne’s population projected to increase by 97,000 people each and every year and Sydney’s by 87,000 people.
All of these extra people will need to be housed, infrastructure will need to be built, and there will be loads more consumers – all of which is money for jam for a company like Stockland, which gets to privatise the gains from ongoing rapid population growth.
In the meantime, Stockland doesn’t need to worry about the huge costs that come from rapid population growth – you know, things like worsening traffic congestion, crush-loaded schools and hospitals, deteriorating housing affordability, the escalating cost of new infrastructure (due to dis-economies of scale), and environmental destruction – these are all socialised by the broader Australian community.
Nor does Stockland need to worry about the sale of public assets, the escalation of debt, and the blowout in Australia’s current account that occurs with such ponzi growth, because again these costs are borne by the broader Australian community.
No, to a growth lobbyist like Stockland, endless mass immigration and a ‘Big Australia’ is all upside and a no-brainer. This is why they campaign so strongly for it and warn of ‘economic catastrophe’ if immigration is cut. And our lapdog politicians, sadly, represent them not the ordinary voter.
