The lack of planning and foresight to cope with the never-ending population (immigration) deluge into Australia’s big cities never ceases to amaze. Over the past year or so, we have received numerous reports about overcrowding across schools in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as other collateral damage including worsening traffic congestion, crush-loaded public transport, and deteriorating housing affordability.
The story with respect to schools is always the same: the explosion in the number of high-rise apartments and fringe houses across our major capitals is dramatically driving up student enrolments, resulting in “jam-packed” public schools.
On Friday, we got yet another taste of this dysfunctional population ponzi in action, with Fairfax reporting that public schools are being squeezed by surging enrolments at the same time as the number of government schools around Australia declines:
Government schools’ share of student enrolments rose to 65.6 per cent in 2017, up from 65.4 per cent in 2016 and 65.1 per cent in 2014…
But at the same time, the number of public schools in Australia has fallen. There were 58 fewer government schools in 2017 than in 2012 – in that period, NSW lost 18 public schools, Victoria 10 and Queensland five. In the same period, the number of students enrolled at NSW public schools rose by 70,000, and in Victoria by 85,000.
State governments have been accommodating the rising numbers of public school students in demountable classrooms, with the use of demountables forecast to double in NSW and Education Minister Rob Stokes declaring the makeshift classrooms are “here to stay”…
So at the same time as the federal government is flooding Australia’s cities with 200,000-plus migrants a year, as well as relaxing visa rules to allow 6 year-old foreign students and their guardians visa entry into Australia’s primary schools, the number of public schools across Australia has declined! You can’t make this stuff up.
Remember, according to Peter Goss, School Education Program Director at the Grattan Institute, Australia will require an additional 765 new schools in the decade to 2026 merely to keep pace with the projected 650,000 increase in student enrolments, with most of the increase in student numbers to occur in VIC, NSW and QLD:
Where is the schools investment required to keep pace with the population influx?
But wait, it’s not only schools that are being crush-loaded, but Sydney’s train system as well. Check out this from John Brew, NSW State Rail chief executive, who wrote the following in Fairfax yesterday:
The current woes of Sydney Trains suggest to me that the system has finally reached the limits of its ability to carry passengers.
Heavily congested trains and stations, and severe delays and interruptions to services, are symptomatic of a rail network operating at full capacity. In other words, there is no room to carry more passengers…
Small wonder when you consider that the pattern of electrified railway tracks around Sydney today has remained virtually unchanged since being approved by Parliament as long ago as 1915.
When opened between 1926 and 1930, it was designed to serve 2.5 million people and now, 90 years on, we should not be surprised that the system is struggling to cope with a population of twice that size…
And what about Sydney’s prisons, which are also crush-loaded, thereby necessitating the building of rabid built “pop-up” jails?
The second rapid-build prison in New South Wales has opened in the Hunter Valley town of Cessnock to deal with prison overcrowding.
The jail was built in just one year, a third of the usual construction time, because no cells were needed in the dormitory style accommodation blocks…
The state’s first rapid-build prison was opened in the central-west town of Wellington last month, as part of a $3.8 billion Government spend on prison infrastructure to deal with a surging prison population.
Between 2014 and 2016 the number of prisoners surged by 3,150, an increase of 33 per cent, which coincided with the 2014 introduction of tougher bail restrictions…
Figures released by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research yesterday showed the trend steadied last year, with an increase of just 0.7 per cent for the year.
Bureau executive director Don Weatherburn said the NSW prison population would have continued to increase but for a large increase in the number of offenders released on parole.
“Between 2014 and 2017, the average monthly number of offenders released on parole increased by 35 per cent, from 504 to 682 offenders,” he said.
The increase in offenders released on parole offset the rapid growth over the same period in the average monthly number of new prisoner receptions, which was up 20 per cent.
But wait, there’s no personnel to man the services anyway, at least none that aren’t stuck in traffic for three hours per day:
Sydney’s inner and middle-ring neighbourhoods are being sapped of locals who work in essential services including nurses, teachers and police as high house prices alter the make-up of the city’s neighbourhoods.
New research has revealed a dramatic slump in the number of key workers living in long-established Sydney regions during the past decade while areas on the urban fringe have experienced significant net gains.
Australian property prices continue to fall, led by steeper declines in Sydney prices, which have now dropped for a fifth straight month.
The Parramatta region had the biggest net loss of essential workers between 2006 and 2016 with a decline of 21.4 per cent. Next was the eastern suburbs (-15.2 per cent) followed by Sydney’s inner south west (-14.6 per cent), Ryde (-14.2 per cent) and inner west (-11.3 per cent).
During the same period the Southern Highlands, on the extremity of Greater Sydney, experienced a 17 per cent net increase in the number of essential workers living in the region. There were also big net gains in the Hunter Valley (+13.6 per cent) and the Illawarra (+10.5 per cent).
As I 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.
- It took Melbourne nearly 170 years to reach a population of 3.3 million in 2001. In just 15 years, Melbourne expanded by 34% to 4.5 million people. And the official projections have Melbourne’s population ballooning by another 3.4 million people in just 35 years.
Running a mass immigration program without adequate planning and investment means incumbent residents will spend more time lost in traffic, spend more on (smaller) housing, receive less public services (e.g. health and education), and experience overall lower living standards.
The equation is that simple, but largely ignored by our negligent politicians, policy makers and mainstream media.
