Western Sydney residents: population ponzi destroying housing affordability

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By Leith van Onselen

Fairfax yesterday published its latest Fairfax-Ipsos focus group findings, which saw Western Sydney voters fuming over the deplorable state of housing affordability, driven to a large extent by the federal government’s mass immigration program:

Unaffordable housing has surged to the top of the list of undecided voters’ concerns in western Sydney…

And while the problem angered younger voters unable to buy a home, it also troubled an older generation who feared for their children’s future.

Foreign investors and immigrants were blamed; neither of the main political parties were seen as having the solution…

“I live in drive-by shooting territory and a dump costs a million dollars – are you joking?” said an older female voter in a western Sydney focus group convened last week by Ipsos Research for Fairfax Media.

Another added: “It used to be a dream, a million dollars. Now it’s nothing.” A third said: “My daughter has to wait ’til I cark it to buy a house”…

“Houses in Wentworthville are going for $1.2 million, a knockdown. It’s a joke,” said one man. “I heard on the radio that a policeman married to a nurse can’t afford to buy a house in Sydney. What are we doing?” posed another.

Ipsos research director Laura Demasi, who moderated the Sydney groups, observed: “Housing affordability was the number one issue that cut across age, gender and political leaning.”

There was “absolute consensus on housing affordability being the number one issue for them personally – themselves or their children – and as an acute social issue, leaving them with a sense of despair for the next generation and concern about the implications for Australian society in general.

“They were looking to government for action here at any level, level not specified”…

There was a common view, unchallenged, that the main culprits were foreigners and immigrants…

While some on the left will be quick to decry the Western Sydney residents’ views as “racist”, “xenophobic” and “dog whistling”, the data supports their concerns.

Sydney’s population has ballooned by 844,000 people (20%) in just 20 years on the back of mass immigration, with most of this growth taking place in the city’s west:

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And over the next 20 years, Sydney’s population is projected to increase by an insane 1.74 million people on the back of mass immigration – the equivalent of adding a Perth to Sydney’s population:

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Again, with the lion’s share of this population growth projected to occur in the long suffering West – home to Sydney’s working classes:

In June, former Labor leader and Western Sydney resident, Mark Latham, penned a call to arms against the immigration ponzi destroying living standards in the West:

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Instead of cutting immigration numbers to bring down housing demand and housing prices, Liberal and Labor are focusing on just one side of the housing market: increased supply.

They want to flood the Sydney basin with wall-to-wall urbanisation.

They are building a vast metropolis, extending to Appin in the southwest and abutting the Blue Mountains in the west.

Most of the growth is concentrated in a new residential corridor between Penrith and Camden — building a city the size of Canberra along the spine of the narrow, two-lane Northern Rd.

This is the snake oil of our time: the fantastic notion that in a city ­already heavily congested, we can swamp Western Sydney with new arrivals and new suburbs and somehow the magic of “improved urban planning” will produce a metropolitan ­nirvana…

It will never be a liveable city as long as massive immigration numbers overwhelm our suburbs and clog up our roads…

The business lobbyists, economists and MPs pushing for big migration numbers do so safe in the knowledge that overcrowding and congestion will never affect the gentrified, inner-city boroughs in which they live…

We need an Australia-first migration program, designed for the benefit of the people who live here, not those wanting to come here.

For Western Sydney, this means abandoning Big Australia and limiting population growth into the ­region.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: Sydney’s (and Melbourne’s) population pressures are a direct result of the federal government’s mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ program, which has committed to an intake of 200,000 permanent migrants a year ad infinitum:

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All these extra migrants – which overwhelmingly choose to settle in Sydney and Melbourne – need to be housed. So as long as this mass immigration madness continues – supported by the Coalition, Labor and The Greens – your suburbs and infrastructure will continue to be crush-loaded. It’s that simple.

My advice to residents of Sydney’s West is to:

  1. lobby your state and federal members of parliament to slash Australia’s immigration intake; and
  2. make sure that you vote Sustainable Australia at the next election and put the three major parties last on your ballot paper.

It’s the only way that your voice will be heard by our tin-ear politicians intent on destroying your living standards.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.