Labor infrastructure and transport spokesman, Anthony Albanese, has given yet another weak defence of mass immigration and a ‘Big Australia’, offering a whole bunch of strawman arguments, motherhood statements, and worthless platitudes defending the 1.74 million extra people expected to inundate Sydney over the next 20 years. From The Daily Telegraph:
ONE issue guaranteed to spark animated discussion at a barbecue or pub in Sydney is whether our city can accommodate more people and, if it can, exactly where they will live.
The truth is that by international standards, Sydney has a relatively low population density…
But whatever the international comparisons, there’s no doubt Sydney, which was initially designed around low-density housing, is experiencing growing pains.
Now is the time for governments of all levels to think more seriously about how we can manage those growth pressures over coming decades in ways that will allow us to maintain and improve our quality of life.
As an optimist, I say that is possible — if we get it right.
Getting it right means putting livability at the centre of policy development.
It also means accepting that successful cities are inclusive cities.
The process itself must engage with people and communities, rather than impose change on them.
We must ensure that jobs growth occurs closer to where people live…
The next stage of Sydney’s infrastructure development will require better links within the Western Sydney region to enhance its ability to deliver economic growth as a discreet entity.
As residents of Australia’s biggest and most dynamic city, Sydneysiders have every reason to feel positive about our economic prospects.
But our other great challenge in coming decades will be to manage growth and increased density without surrendering the human values that have served us so well in the past two centuries…
The issue of housing affordability just has to be addressed.
It is time to accept that absurdly high property prices have given property investors an economic advantage over first-home buyers.
That’s not in the public interest.
We must give young people the fair go they deserve by addressing housing affordability through modest changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax arrangements.
Albanese’s claim that “Sydney has a relatively low population density” is a classic strawman argument. Just because other cities like London, Tokyo and Beijing are more crowded, why does this mean that Sydney needs to be? Why should Australians necessarily be crammed like sardines into apartment shoeboxes just so that Sydney’s population can expand by a projected 87,000 people a year, almost all via net overseas migration (NOM)?
Albanese’s claim that “we must ensure that jobs growth occurs closer to where people live” and that “next stage of Sydney’s infrastructure development will require better links within the Western Sydney region” is hilarious given that the overwhelming majority of Sydney’s break-neck population growth is projected to occur in the long suffering west of the city, where commuting is already a nightmare and jobs are scarce:
To expect places like Parramatta to double in population without livability being destroyed is the hallmark of delusion.
It’s also worth pointing out that Anthony Albanese seems to support densification, just as long as it isn’t in his backyard:
“GREED gone mad” is how political heavyweight Anthony Albanese has labelled plans for an “enormous” development in the heart of Marrickville’s Carrington Rd creative hub.
About 1400 jobs and 150 businesses are under threat from plans released by Mirvac and NVT Group this week for 2600 homes on 7.8ha of industrial land between Carrington Rd and the Illawarra railway line…
The proposal relies on rezoning changes flagged under the State Government’s Sydenham to Bankstown Urban Renewal Corridor Strategy, which aims to add more than 35,000 homes along the 13km corridor during the next 20 years.
Federal Member for Grayndler Anthony Albanese, who was briefed by Mirvac last month, described it as “massive overdevelopment”.
“It is greed gone mad, and I told Mirvac that,” he said.
If that development houses, say, 5,000 people then Sydney only needs to find 17 similar sites every year for the next 20 years. Good luck with that!
Albanese also can’t credibly claim to be concerned about “absurdly high property prices” while at the same time supporting an expansion of Sydney’s population by 87,000 people a year (77,000 via NOM). Sure, Labor’s negative gearing and capital gains tax reforms will help at the margin, but they pale into insignificance against the perpetual wave of migrants flooding Sydney, pushing-up both house prices and rents.
But hey, why should Albanese care about housing affordability when he is neck deep in investment properties:
THE recontesting ALP politician Anthony Albanese has expanded his portfolio after buying a $1.175 million investment property in Dulwich Hill…
Albanese already had a decent property portfolio, owning another investment house in Marrickville along with a Canberra bolthole apartment in Barton.
The opposition front bencher lives elsewhere in Marrickville with retired state politician Carmel Tebbutt.
Their house in Marrickville was bought in 2006 for $997,500.
The initial nearby investment acquisition came in 2012 when a three-bedroom house was bought for $1.115 million.
Instead of ‘growing and hoping’, Albanese would represent his constituents in Sydney far better if he committed Labor to halving Australia’s permanent migrant intake, bringing it closer to (but still above) historical norms:
After a decade whereby Sydney added 77,000 people a year, the city is already bursting at the seams. Adding another 87,000 people a year for the next two decades, as projected by the State Government, would clearly be a catastrophe, destroying Sydney’s livability and locking an entire generation out of the housing market once an for all.
More broadly, Anthony Albanese honestly seems to believe that never-ending immigration and infrastructure spending is some kind perpetual motion machine. That is, Australia can just keep importing migrants and building infrastructure and housing for them, and the economy will remain strong. This argument completely ignores the corresponding blow-out in the trade deficit and the current account deficit, as well as the escalation of debt, that would accompany such an economic model. It also only considers the economy in aggregate, not on a per person basis.
Sadly, like so many of his federal parliamentary counterparts, Anthony Albanese is clueless and appears to have zero interest in maintaining individual living standards. So much for “Labor” representing ordinary workers.
