With NSW’s (read Sydney’s) population growing at a break-neck pace (see below chart), there is a revolt underway from within the NSW Liberal Party against the federal government’s mass immigration program and over-development across Sydney.
In August, former NSW Planning Minister, Rob Stokes, pushed-back against the federal government’s blind march towards a ‘Big Australia’ and called for a national population strategy:
Education Minister Rob Stokes said the state government was left trying to retrofit the NSW’s infrastructure and services to an expanding population, without a clear, transparent trajectory of NSW’s future population.
“It’s impossible to plan if you don’t know what you are planning for,” Mr Stokes said. “There’s no overarching narrative of where we are going.”
A former planning minister, Mr Stokes said states were at the mercy of the federal government’s migration policies while bearing the bulk of the infrastructure costs associated with adapting to a growing population.
“Whether it’s planning for patient beds, medical services, the number of new schools and where they are located, housing affordability, or transport routes, ultimately we are planning in the dark if we don’t know what the population is going to do.
“Why are we frightened about having a policy on this? We have policies on everything else.”
The Turnbull government needed to lead on the issue by putting it on the national agenda, he said, and bringing states on board to devise a long-term strategy.
“If we don’t do it, the shape of our country will not change. Development will continue to hug the coast, our major cities will continue to increase in size and the imbalance in our population will continue to accelerate.”
Now a group of NSW Liberal MPs have gone one step further and called for the federal government to review its immigration policies and for a ban on high-rise developments in their electorates. From Nine News (watch full video report above):
Drummoyne MP John Sidoti slammed plans for 3600 new homes and rezoning for towers as high as 40 storeys in Rhodes East as part of a “priority-precinct.”
“My personal belief is it should be totally abandoned, we’ve got it wrong,” Mr Sidoti said.
“Unless we get good infrastructure with community benefit this part of the suburb is closed for development.”
The idea behind the priority precincts is to increase housing supply to help with affordability and a growing population.
9NEWS understands there are at least three more government MPs unhappy with similar proposals for their electorates.
Victor Dominello is against any large-scale development in Macquarie Park without schools and roads while David Elliot is angry about the 8200 homes flagged for Bella Vista and Castle Hill.
Mr Elliott slammed the proposal in an email to Hills Shire councillors admitting to have used “unparliamentary terms” when talking to Planning Minister Anthony Roberts.
“This would have seen a population the size of Singleton move into The Hills Shire,” Minister Elliott said in the email.
“I have advised the Premier that I cannot accept plans to gazette these amendments.”
Damien Tudehope is equally unimpressed with the more than 3750 new dwellings slated for Epping and Cherrybrook.
Mr Tudehope wrote to the Greater Sydney Commission expressing concerns.
“Those buildings will exist some fifty years into the future,” Mr Tudehope said.
“In worst cases (it will) become a scar on that landscape.”
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said that while the Planning Department has its targets she along with the community will make the call.
“At the end of the day it’s the government who makes decisions. I don’t care what’s in a department document they can write what they like. I’m the Premier, we are the government, we make decisions based on what’s in the best interests of the community,” Ms Berejiklian said.
The most important quote comes from the video report which notes:
“Government MPs have all told me the same thing: Sydney is full. They believe the federal government needs to have a difficult conversation about curbing immigration or it simply will not be possible to keep up”.
The massive increase in Australia’s immigration program from the early-2000s was mismanaged from the get-go.
Anyone that lives in Sydney will agree that living standards are being eroded, with roads, public transport, schools and hospitals all crush-loaded and housing becoming hideously expensive.
Worse is yet to come with Sydney’s population projected to grow by 87,000 people per year (1,650 people per week) to 6.4 million over the next 20-years, which would effectively add a Perth to the city’s population:
The situation is made worse by the vertical fiscal imbalances embedded in the federal system, whereby the Commonwealth raises 82% of total tax revenue, the states and territories 15%, and local government just 3%.
This has left the states – who are the primary providers of public services – to being heavily reliant on the Commonwealth for funding to cope with the population influx bestowed on them by the federal government’s mass immigration program.
How do our federal politicians propose that our state governments provide all of the economic and social infrastructure necessary to accommodate such rabid population growth in Sydney as well as Melbourne? Because the experience of the past 15 years of mass immigration has been one of monumental failure.
The reality is that maintaining a mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy means that Sydney and Melbourne will continue to be crush-loaded as their populations swell by the millions, placing extreme further pressure on infrastructure and housing, and destroying living standards for incumbent residents.
The NSW Liberal ministers are right to push back. Victoria’s politicians should too.
