Remember this chart? It shows that Victoria’s population surged by an all-time high 149,374 people in the year to March 2017:
And remember this chart showing that Melbourne’s population grew by a record 126,175 in 2016:
As well as this chart showing that the lion’s share of Victoria’s (Melbourne’s) population growth is being driven by mass immigration:
We already know that this insane population growth is wrecking living standards in Victoria, courtesy of packed metro trains and trams, packed regional trains, packed roads, packed schools, packed hospitals, as well as smaller and more expensive housing. Now you can add packed maternity wards to this list. From The Age:
A record number of babies were born in Victoria last year – and public maternity wards in the fast-growing outer suburbs and regional towns are scrambling to deliver them.
Cameron Loy, a GP practising in Lara, said there was a “common understanding that public hospital maternity units are under a lot of pressure and have been for a long time”.
This was largely due to new suburbs being built without hospitals nearby, he said…
Northern Health has warned that “without expanding its capacity and lifting its capability in the near future, it will reach its physical capacity by 2018”, according to a recent report by the Victorian Auditor-General…
But the Victorian Auditor-General’s report from August concluded there was a “high level of uncertainty that birthing … infrastructure will be provided when and where they are needed in areas of rapid population growth”.
The uncertainty was largely due to “stakeholders’ limited participation in the land use planning process, hospitals generally being built after a population boom rather than before” and underestimation of population growth by both local councils and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, the report said.
…the number of births in Victorian public hospitals surged by 24 per cent in the decade to 2015-16, to almost 60,000.
Over the same period, the number of births in public hospitals in Melbourne’s northern growth corridor skyrocketed 68 per cent.
That’s because Cardinia, Casey, Hume, Melton, Mitchell, Whittlesea and Wyndham councils on Melbourne’s fringe have become home to a huge chunk of Melbourne’s new residents since 2011.
And as Greater Melbourne’s population exceeds 6 million by 2031, these areas are forecast to accommodate 42 per cent of the state’s new citizens…
Who would have thought: migrants also have children, thereby requiring a huge increase in maternity services just to keep up with rabid population growth?
This is just another example of why the federal government must slash Australia’s permanent migrant intake – the driver of Australia’s world-beating population growth – from 200,000 currently to the historical (116-year) average of around 70,000:
Our living standards depend on it.
