Big Australia destroys Aussies’ happiness

By Leith van Onselen

NAB’s latest Australian Wellbeing Report has revealed that Australian wellbeing fell to a new survey low 62.8 points in Q1 2018, with home ownership holding the key:

Australians who live in and own their house or apartment report much higher levels of overall wellbeing than those who rent, according to new research released today by NAB.

NAB’s Wellbeing research has consistently shown that the home we live in is the strongest contributor to our sense of personal wellbeing. And this latest report clearly shows that it is home ownership that goes a long way in boosting Australians’ wellbeing – much more than for those who rent the home they live in.

Home owners reported much higher levels of wellbeing across all key measures – life satisfaction, life worth, happiness and anxiety…

…house owners had the highest levels of overall wellbeing.

…the NAB Australian Wellbeing Index fell to a new survey low 62.8 points in Q1 2018. This was down from 64.6 points in Q4 2017 and now sits well below its long-term average level (64.4 points).

Lower wellbeing was driven by lower levels of happiness (down 3.7 points to 62.6), life satisfaction (down 3.6 points to 62.5) and sense of life worth (down 3.0 to 65.4 points).

Clearly, Australia’s mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy must share much of the blame for reducing Australian’s wellbeing.

After all, it is this policy that has flooded Sydney and Melbourne with people:

Driving up property values:

Helping to destroy home ownership:

And forced people to live in apartments:

It has also wrecked overall quality of life through broader measures like worsening traffic congestion:

Not to mention lowering wages and exacerbating inequality.

As noted recently by social researcher Mark McCrindle:

Mark McCrindle, social researcher and founder of McCrindle Research, says Australia’s rapidly rising population is a fundamental driver of demand for housing.

The population growth for Australia over the past 10 years is 18 per cent, which is very high by world standards…

Driven by high property prices and an increasing preference to live closer to the city centre, two in five people in Sydney and Melbourne now live in apartments, McCrindle says.

Whereas the average adult earnings has increased 54 per cent to $80,000 over the past 10 years, the median house price in Sydney had increased by 130 per cent, to $1.21 million. Home ownership rates have fallen to 25 per cent in 2014, from 36 per cent in 2002, McCrindle says.

Property ownership is considered as central to the achievement of the great Australian dream, but is increasingly out of reach for younger people and low-income earners…

Why then is the federal government persisting with mass immigration when it is clearly destroying the wellbeing in incumbent residents?

Who decided that Sydney and Melbourne must turn into crowded, expensive, high-rise hellholes?

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