Welcome to sunny Big Australia, the land of opportunity, where you’re welcome to be one of 36 million of us by the year 2050 - as long as you’re prepared to live, oh, about 4,000 kms from the Opera House.
The Punch set out last week to find out just how tolerant Australians are of the idea of the kind of population growth being considered by the Federal Government, and more to the point, how it should be managed.
What we found on the streets of Sydney, the country’s most under pressure city, is a political nightmare for both sides of politics. While Sydneysiders are quite open minded about welcoming more Australians, 70 per cent said we’d need a whole new city to house them, and that city should be far, far away.
The most popular location, with 17 per cent of the 100 people we spoke to, was on the West Australian coast.
A distant second, on 9 per cent, was Central Australia. Both suggestions are probably the most impractical, expensive options available - but more on that later.
We started by asking people what the population of Australia should be 40 years from now.
15-22m: 10%
22-28m: 26%
28-33m: 29%
33-38m: 23%
Warren, 48, from Gosford, was a typical respondent. He thought the population should be between 28 and 33 million by 2050 and wasn’t fussed about where the extra people would come from. He sees the water shortage as the biggest problem Australia will face as the population grows.
When asked what the biggest problems are with population growth, 58% of people raised concerns about infrastructure, including supply of water and houses, as well as city congestion.
Only 6 people said cultural or racial tensions could be a problem.
Asked if the growth should be in state capitals or regional centres, 88 per cent said regional centres while 18 per cent say capitals. (It’s more than 100 because some people said both)
Asked if they would support building a new Australian city, 70 per cent said yes.
If it could be shown that a new city would alleviate some of the problems caused by a growing population, support for a new city rose to 78 per cent.
If it could be shown that a new city would boost the national economy, support rose to 87 per cent.
But where do we build? This issue has the potential to be a far greater hand grenade for the two major parties than any discussion about numbers.
Two decades on and the location of a second Sydney airport is still something neither side ever really wants to get in to - so deconstructive has been the ongoing political nightmare over it.
And while voters might want some of our vast brown land used for development, experts say it’s not the best way forward.
Professor or Urban Research Patrick Troy is at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the ANU. He told The Punch the answer is more likely to be more than one major new development, and that realistically it/they had to be located somewhere along the East coast communication and transport spine taking in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.
“We’d need to go for locations along that axis that have commercial, industrial and economic potential, and that can be connected to one another,” Prof Troy said.
He named Wagga Wagga and Goulburn as two possible candidates, saying both would be suited to being significantly developed into major cities.
Goulburn, about 200 kms South West of Sydney, had the added advantage of being geographically suited for a major international airport, which could be connected to Canberra and Sydney by high-speed rail. (The airport would also, unlike Sydney and Brisbane, be quarantined from the effects of climate change).
Expanding south from the Gold Coast, or developing in the rich pickings of the Lachlan Valley (around Cowra) was also worth investigating, Professor Troy said. The development would require more than just infrastructure such as roads, schools and hospitals. It would also need cultural elements to attract residents, starting with a major tertiary education facility.
“If you picked the places that have the correct natural resources you could start to see the benefits within the timeframe of growth they’re talking about (2050),” he said. “But we’ve got to get our skates on and commit to doing this and stick to it.”
Which is the major political issue. Which ever political party takes a location to an election, both will have to agree to stick to it or it will never happen and cities such as Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne will be choked.
And as Professor Troy pointed out, it would also require an end to the “posturing on behalf of the state premiers.”
Where would you put a new Australian city? Where voters want it - or where it makes the best sense? It’s a Big Australia, big question for the new minister for Population Tony Burke.
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