Melbourne’s rapid population expansion threatens to turn the city into an unliveable hellhole.
Melbourne’s population is forecast to rise by roughly 500,000 over the five years to 2026-27, after increasing by an astounding 1.7 million people (52%) so far this century.
That is the equivalent of two Hobarts’ worth of population growth in only five years, but obviously without the necessary infrastructure and homes to match.
Indeed, Melbourne is expected to grow by one million people over the next ten years.
According to the Federal Treasury’s Centre for Population, Melbourne will have 6.1 million residents by 2033, with net overseas migrants accounting for nearly three-quarters of these new residents.
It would also mean that Melbourne’s population had nearly doubled since the turn of the century, from roughly 3.3 million people at the 2001 Census, owing mostly to high net overseas migration.
Last month, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews told the Italian-language community newspaper Il Globo that he has been lobbying the federal government to increase immigration even more:
“I’ve always been a very strong supporter of more skilled migration”.
“And the new federal government have taken some important steps towards increasing the amount of permanent skilled migration, but I think they might need to do more again”.
“Prime minister Albanese knows this. I’ve spoken to him about it personally and part of it also is clearing the Visa backlog”.
As Melbourne’s housing crisis worsens by the day amid the fastest population inflow in history, Dan Andrews announced a plan to squeeze an extra million homes into established districts by the middle of the century.
One significant component of Andrews’ plan is to force-feed development by depriving local governments of decision-making authority over big developments.
The Andrews Government’s housing and planning overhaul, slated to be released next month, is expected to protect developers from battles with councils and resident groups before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).
A senior government source told The Age that the overhaul would shield developers from local council opposition provided they agreed to a specified proportion of affordable homes.
With Melbourne recently overtaking Sydney as Australia’s largest city, Premier Daniel Andrews said “we need to create more housing with the best design standards where people want to live”.
The Age recently noted the enormity of squeezing one million homes into the existing urban footprint by 2050:
“Considering there are currently about 2.1 million dwellings in Greater Melbourne, hitting the target will require roughly one new dwelling for every two existing homes within the city’s boundaries”.
“Having taken about 188 years to get to our current situation, accommodating 50% more houses within existing boundaries in the next 20 years represents a major policy challenge”.
Premier Dan Andrews also seems to have a poor memory of last decade’s high-rise building boom:
Melburnians suffered from huge volumes of defective and flammable apartments that the state is still trying to rectify at enormous cost.
Indeed, The Age recently reported that “inspections of 339 buildings that received government funding to remove flammable cladding found half had other faults and one-in-four had balcony defects”.
“More than 550 balconies were found to be defective”.
“Cladding Safety Victoria is concerned that the situation in relation to defective balconies is widespread and has proliferated over at least two decades”.
“They have been built to an absolute minimum price and a minimum standard”, said Paul Viney, Victorian president of the Association of Consulting Architects.
“I think we will continue to see significant numbers of building defects emerge”.
Other systemic problems have been uncovered across Melbourne’s recently built apartment developments.
What does Premier Dan Andrews predict would happen if a large number of apartments are built quickly to accommodate Melbourne’s record high levels of immigration-driven population growth?
Does he think construction standards will remain stable, deteriorate, or improve?
The obvious answer is that build quality will decline even further in order to construct apartments as quickly as possible to house the rapidly growing population.
Thousands more faulty high-rise apartments will be built across Melbourne to house the Albanese Government’s and Dan Andrews’ reckless mass immigration program.
Infrastructure will also become increasingly overloaded, causing Melburnians to have less access to hospitals, schools, green space, and other public services. They will also be forced to spend more time stuck on congested roads and crowded public transport.
The obvious solution to Australia’s (and Melbourne’s) perennial growing pains and declining liveability is to limit net overseas migration to levels commensurate to our capacity to supply new housing and infrastructure.
Nobody voted for Labor’s record immigration, and the vast majority of Australians oppose it. Stop wrecking living standards by force-feeding our cities with huge volumes of people.
