Late last year, RBA boffin, Professor Ian Harper, spruiked the riches that supposedly come from Australia’s mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy:
The Productivity Commission’s five-yearly review noted that 80 per cent of Australia’s output is produced in cities, and half of that comes from Sydney and Melbourne. Making our two biggest cities more efficient, affordable and accessible will raise the living standards of almost all Australians, directly and indirectly, and deliver growth in which we all share. As the cities grow, they will deliver more and better jobs and business opportunities, including in regional areas that service them…
None of Melbourne’s growth has been driven by extracting resources from the ground. It has been driven by the type of knowledge-intensive service industries that also are concentrated in Sydney. These industries have led to a self-referential, virtuous circle — people come because there are jobs, and there are jobs because they come.
