On Tuesday night, I gave an interview with Sky News’ Sharri Markson where I explain how the 14.2 million population increase projected in the 2023 Intergenerational Report poses a “massive problem” for Australia.
Australia hasn’t coped well with the 7.4 million population increase this century. We haven’t built enough houses, and we have congested roads and public transport, shortages of schools and hospitals, etc.
How will we cope with another 14.2 million people in just 40 years?
Where will the housing, infrastructure, and water supplies come from?
And how can Australia possible meet “net zero” emissions by 2050 with such a large increase in the population?
Below are key excerpts from the interview:
Sharri Markson: “Australia’s population is set to exceed 40 million people in the coming decades. Can our population handle it and is it a problem when we’ve got a housing crisis at the moment?
Leith van Onselen: “It’s a massive problem. Under the Intergeneration Report’s projections, Australia’s population is going to grow by 14.2 million people in just 40 years. Now to put that into perspective, that’s like adding another Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide to Australia’s existing population in just 40 years”.
“Now, I think your viewers would agree that Australia hasn’t handled the last 20 years of extreme immigration very well. Our population has grown by 7.4 million people this century and we’ve obviously seen the impacts. You know, massive shortages of housing, we’ve got congested roads and public transport, we haven’t got enough school places, enough hospital beds, etc. The list goes on”.
“So obviously, if you’re going to grow the population by 14.2 million people, where are the houses going to come from? Where’s the infrastructure going to come from? It was only four years ago that we were experiencing a severe drought and Sydney was coming close to running out of water”.
“So, what are we going to do next time drought comes around and we’ve got literally 14 million more people here? Sure, we could do wall-to-wall desalination plants. But that’s very expensive. It’s also environmentally destructive”.
“And one final point. The Albanese Government has committed us to “net zero” by 2050. Now are we going to achieve net zero when the population has grown by more than 50% and the built environment – so housing and infrastructure – actually accounts for a quarter of Australia’s carbon emissions on its own?
“So we have to build five and a half million homes as well as a whole bunch of infrastructure, which is obviously going to blow our carbon budget out of the water”.
“So the whole thing doesn’t make sense and it’s a recipe for a high-rise future where everyone’s living in high-rise slums basically suffering a degraded environment and degraded living standards”.
There’s some other discussion around productivity growth and the like, which you can watch below.
But the above transcript are the key bits from the interview.
