The Victorian Liberal Party has promised to release land for 290,000 homes from within Melbourne’s existing growth boundary in a bid to ease the city’s housing affordability crisis:
LAND to build at least 290,000 homes in outer Melbourne suburbs would be released to help ease housing affordability pressures, under a state Coalition plan.
Opposition Leader Matthew Guy today will promise that a Liberal/Nationals government would fast-track precinct plans in outer growth areas and release the land within two years in order to stimulate price competition.
All of the new residential lots would be within the current urban growth boundary. Target areas include Melton, Wyndham, Hume, Whittlesea, Mitchell, Cardinia and Casey…
At a speech to the Housing Industry Association today, Mr Guy will pledge to finish metropolitan precinct plans by mid-2020 to speed up the pace homes are brought to market and to ensure families are connected to parks, schools and transport…
[Guy] promised to “streamlined processes to slash unnecessary and unreasonable delays”.
Meanwhile, Victoria’s peak business lobby – the Victorian Chamber of Commerce – has called for a gigantic infrastructure building program to mitigate the pressures brought about from Melbourne’s “population explosion”:
The Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Transport Taskforce Report, released today, has identified a list of projects and policies that, if adopted, could handle the population explosion expected over the next decade.
Chief executive Mark Stone said the state needed a clear vision to keep living standards high and bring billions of additional dollars to the local economy.
“As Victoria’s population increases by 120,000 a year all sorts of things come with the transport agenda,” he said…
Key infrastructure recommendations included the building of an East West Link, North East Link, the West Gate Tunnel and a rail line to Melbourne Airport.
But the chamber also called on governments to be proactive by planning for a second metro tunnel and identifying land for a second airport in the southeastern suburbs.
Mr Stone said there was a genuine need for the East West Link that would see the project become a reality at some point…
“We’ve been told Melbourne could get up to 8 million people by 2050, with 10 million in Victoria overall,” he said.
Both are band aid solutions that fail to address the major cause of Melbourne’s housing and infrastructure woes: rapid population growth caused primarily by the federal government’s mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy.
It is this Big Australia policy that has driven the 1.2 million (33%) increase in Melbourne’s population over the past 13 years:
Which has driven a massive increase in Melbourne’s traffic congestion:
Driven up Melbourne house prices:
And rents:
Moreover, with Melbourne’s population projected to balloon to more than 8 million people mid-century, housing and infrastructure will forever remain under intense pressure, crushing liveability:
Don’t just take my word for it. Infrastructure Australia projects that Melbourne’s liveability will deteriorate further through worsening traffic congestion and reduced access to jobs, schools, hospitals and green space, under every build-out scenario:
Stop band aiding over the Melbourne’s problems. Address them at the source and lobby the federal government to slash Australia’s immigration intake back to the historical average of 70,000 people a year:
Melbournian’s living standards depend on it.
