In October, the head of the Greater Sydney Commission (GSC), Lucy Turnbull, outlined a plan to split Sydney into three activity centres, which the GSC claimed would help relieve stress on both housing and infrastructure.
In reality, the GSC’s plan involves crush-loading Sydney’s West. As shown in the below graphics, the overwhelming majority of Sydney’s 750,000-strong population growth over the past decade has taken place in the city’s West:
Moreover, of the 1.74 million forecasted increase in Sydney’s population over the next 20 years (1.53 million from net overseas migration), the lion’s share of the growth is projected to take place not in Lucy Turnbull’s wealthy East, but in the long struggling West (see below charts).
Yesterday, the CEO of one of Sydney’s leading property developers – Frasers Property’s Rod Fehring – labelled the GSC’s plan unrealistic. From The AFR:
“I think funding models are, frankly, broken in Australia, governance structure is fractured and incapable of focusing politically on setting priorities and following through,” Mr Fehring said on a panel at the Property Council of Australia’s Growth Summit. “I wish Lucy well in relation to Greater Sydney but the fundamentals are building in, if you like, a lot of inertia and a lot of difficulty in actually translating plans into action.”
Fehring also suggested that user costs will have to rise if the infrastructure required to keep up with population growth is to be built:
Mr Fehring said governments’ inability to fund the needed infrastructure investment meant private sector capital needed to be tapped.
“I think the application of user pays more broadly has been a very, very effective tool in being able to release capital to keep pace with demand,” he said.
Of course, there is an easy solution to easing the crush in Sydney: get Lucy Turnbull to tap her husband on the shoulder and demand the federal government abandon its mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy:
As noted in MB’s submission to the Department of Home Affairs’ Managing Australia’s Migrant Intake review:
It took Sydney around 210 years to reach a population of 3.9 million in 2001. And yet the official projections have Sydney adding roughly the same number of people again in just 50 years.
Few Sydneysiders want a city of 8 million people mid-century. The one they have currently is barely functioning at 5 million.
As long as the federal government persists with mass immigration, ordinary workers’ living standards will continue to be crushed.
