Mass migration isn’t good for Australia, and it’s never “properly planned and well managed”
Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) has questioned the claim by the Business Council of Australia (BCA) that ‘two thirds of Australians believe that properly planned and well managed migration is good for Australia’.
BCA has asked a loaded question, to get the answer they wanted. Their result is directly contradicted by the more reliable Australia Population Research Institute survey. Here, 70% want net migration at somewhat or much lower levels than the pre-COVID 240,000.
SPA says current mass migration levels (400,000 this year and 315,000 the next) won’t be properly planned and well managed. BCA totally ignores the environmental stress and damage caused by the consequent rapid population growth.
“There is no way infrastructure will be adequately provided, when this year’s influx adds tens of billions of dollars to the unfunded infrastructure backlog,” says Ms Goldie,
“There is no way Australia can provide housing for this mass influx of people as well as deal with the backlog in housing requirements of the existing population.”
“There is no way we can meet the energy needs of another 1.5 million people over the next five years and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030.
“The huge amounts of energy required to house all the extra people, never mind that required to transport, feed and educate them, will offset any shift to renewable energy.
“Without huge infill and high rise development, which nobody welcomes, new housing will inevitably encroach on native vegetation at the very time we need to preserve habitat for other species, not least the koala. Urban expansion has meant koalas are nearly extinct in south-east Queensland and have declined in the Sydney Basin Bioregion by an estimated 22% in the last 20 years.”
Ms Goldie says the government’s “commitment” to building one million new homes over the next five years, which the BCA welcomes, means little more than offering bribes to property developers with no guarantee they will deliver more housing than they would anyway.
“According to a recent report by the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC), only 57,000 homes a year will be built over the next five years, 40 per cent down on levels experienced in the late 2010s.
“Migrants need homes just as much as existing residents,” says Ms Goldie. “It’s not fair to bring them here if there is nowhere for them to live.”