Over the weekend, newly minted NSW Labor Leader, Michael Daley, launched another hypocritical attack over the rampant over-development across Sydney via The SMH:
NSW Labor leader Michael Daley will tear up the city’s housing supply targets if elected, arguing western Sydney has been hit with “rampant” development while affluent areas have been spared…
Mr Daley said the Coalition’s so-called priority precincts “deliberately” disadvantaged western Sydney and favoured blue-ribbon suburbs, with “lenient development limits”.
“The current housing supply targets have seen councils in Sydney’s west smothered by development while councils in the Premier’s backyard have not been allocated their fair share,” Mr Daley said…
“Sydney is growing and will continue to grow but we need to manage that growth well to make sure Sydney remains a great place to live,” Mr Daley said.
While Daley’s concerns are justified, given Western Sydney is bearing the brunt of immigration-driven population growth and the associated over-development, he did last month attack calls to lower immigration as racist and xenophobic in an exclusive interview with The Guardian:
Daley has so far resisted the urge to use migration as a campaigning tactic. While Berejiklian has called for a cut in the state’s migration intake, Daley laid the blame on poor planning and infrastructure.
“What the Victorian election showed is that when some politicians want to talk about migration, it’s to distract from the fact that the infrastructure build is not taking place,” he said.
“That’s what people in the suburbs know. They know Sydney’s growing. They know they’ll be asked to take on more neighbours and they’re happy to do that.
“They’ll accept the growth, if they get the schools and the gardens, the community centres and the transport that goes along with it.
“Be careful of the xenophobia, the dog whistle, I don’t ever want to see that enter the political mainstream.”
Michael Daley cannot have his cake and eat it too. Mass immigration is behind the massive 800,000 increase in Sydney’s population over the past decade (80,000 people a year), which is the primary driver of the “rampant” overdevelopment afflicting the city.
Worse, the ABS’ middle (Panel B) projection has Sydney’s population growing even faster by 94,000 people a year for the next 48 years, with Sydney’s population to hit 9.7 million people by 2066:
Infrastructure Australia has already told us that under every build-out scenario for Sydney, traffic congestion will deteriorate further, as will access to jobs, schools, hospitals and green space, as the city’s population balloons to a projected 7.4 million people by 2046 (let alone 9.7 million people by 2066, as projected by the ABS):
It will also see Sydney transformed into a high-rise ‘battery chook’ city:
The NSW Government is frantically trying (but failing) to keep pace with extreme population growth by spending record amounts on infrastructure – $87 billion in the last four years alone – and in the process has turned Sydney into a giant construction site. So for Daley to suggest that the NSW Government just needs to plan better and build more is flat out ridiculous.
The “rampant” overdevelopment that Michael Daley decries is inevitable as long as almost 100,000 additional people are sardine packed into Sydney every year. So, if Daley thinks overdevelopment is bad now, imagine how bad it will get as Sydney adds another 4.6 million people?
Rather than playing the deplorable race card in an attempt to shut down debate, Michael Daley needs to display common sense, represent his constituents, and vigorously demand the federal government halve the immigration intake, as Premier Gladys Berejiklian has done.
Otherwise, the quality of life that Sydneysiders have enjoyed for generations will be irreparably destroyed. And for what? To fatten the wallet of wealthy rent-seekers like Highrise Harry?
In all our days tracking Australian economics and politics, MB has never seen a policy vision so destructive to our living standards. The mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy needs to be shredded and Michael Daley must join the fight.
