The lack of planning and foresight to cope with the never-ending population (immigration) deluge into Australia’s big cities never ceases to amaze. After a conga-line of reports about overcrowding across roads, public transport, schools and hospitals, now we hear that Sydney is running well short of sporting grounds:
The equivalent of an extra 120 sporting fields will be needed across Sydney’s northern region over the next two decades, prompting demands for the state government to help councils build more facilities
Sydney’s northern suburbs will be facing a major shortfall in the supply of sporting grounds across the combined seven council areas of Hornsby, Hunters Hill, Ku-ring-gai, Lane Cove, North Sydney, Ryde and Willoughby, a new report has found.
The issue is not limited to Sydney’s north. Across the city, local sporting grounds are in high demand or already over capacity, triggering a slew of councils to review the management and availability of their facilities.
This was precisely the outcome noted in Infrastructure Australia’s recent report, which projected that liveability in Sydney would be crushed as the city’s population reaches 7.4 million by 2046, with traffic congestion worsening and access to jobs, schools, hospitals and green space all declining relative to today:
Thankfully, more commentators are waking-up to this reality, with Latrobe University Vice Chancellor, Tony Walker, over the weekend joining the chorus calling for immigration to be cut to save infrastructure and living standards:
Australia’s population expanded between 2003-16 at 2.5 times the OECD average. The NOM is running at three times the national average in the years since Federation…
In a country with one of the world’s most fragile ecosystems, these sorts of population increases are not sustainable, whatever self-serving arguments for a bigger Australia might be advanced…
What should be making Melburnians’ and Sydneysiders’ blood boil is the failure of successive governments – federal and state – to get on top of infrastructure challenges. This reflects a monumental planning failure – and demographic forecasting that vastly underestimated population growth…
What all this means is that as governments scramble to accommodate population growth way beyond demographic predictions, they are being forced to retrofit strained infrastructure at a vastly inflated cost.
The backlash at the local level is also growing, with Sydney mayors demanding the NSW State Government reform planning rules to prevent high-density boarding houses from being built in residential zones:
The Hills Shire mayor Michelle Byrne… accused developers of doing “sneaky things” to gain approval for boarding house developments…
Cr Byrne said boarding houses were too easily approved in low density zones…
Cr Byrne said boarding houses were a “medium density product” that caused congestion, impacted neighbouring properties and increased pressure on local infrastructure…
[“They] shouldn’t be in residential streets that cannot cope with the immense growth these types of developments bring”…
Cr Byrne’s concerns are shared by the mayor of Northern Beaches Council, Michael Regan… [said] “We’re seeing proposals for 100-unit developments where a single house once stood on a quiet suburban street”…
The Liberal member for Baulkham Hills, David Elliott… said he would not support any large-scale developments or rezonings until “the infrastructure backlog in my electorate is cleared”.
The equation is simple: running a mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ 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), will have access to less open space, and will experience lower overall living standards.
