Opinion
When is this madness going to end? The derangement of record-high mass immigration is so out of hand that even the bien pensant lefty readers of The Age can see it.
Even if the scribblers at Pravda-on-the-Yarra can’t quite bring themselves to.
But how much longer can anyone keep turning a blind eye to the sheer insanity of this?
The populations of Sydney and Melbourne swelled by a record 310,000 in a single year as migrants surged back into inner city areas and student accommodation while many financially pressed Australians moved to outer suburbs.
In the largest annual change to the nation’s two biggest cities, Melbourne’s population surged by 166,000 in 2022-23, or almost 455 people a day. Its previous one-year record increase in population was in 2016, when it added 126,000 residents.
Sydney, which grew by 90,109 in 2016, added 142,600 residents, or 391 a day.
It is the first time the two cities have added more than 140,000 residents each in one year. Combined, the nation’s capitals and largest regional centres accounted for 92 per cent of the 634,000 increase in population through the year.
So, it really is a case of cashed-up Chinese and Indians scarfing up all the rentals in the inner city, while Australians are forced further and further to the fringes of their own cities. Cities which have become sprawling megalopolises, relentlessly swallowing what were once quiet country towns. Not to mention formerly productive market gardens now buried under jeek-by-jowl suburbia.
If not for overseas migrants, Sydney’s population would have fallen as its natural increase of 28,511 was offset by 38,425 people leaving the city. Melbourne lost 6678 residents, but births outnumbered deaths by 27,390.
That’s a whole lot of babies named “Muhammad” and “Khadija”.
Johanne Martens, a biologist from Germany, and her husband, Santiago, a materials engineer from Argentina, both moved to Geelong eight years ago and met at Deakin University. Their son, Leon, was born 11 weeks ago.
After initially renting in fast-growing Waurn Ponds, the young couple bought their first home in Corio – a more affordable, historically disadvantaged suburb in the city’s industrial north.
Martens has already noticed rapid change during her relatively short time in Victoria’s second-largest city – particularly around Armstrong Creek, and near Lara, to the north.
“When I first moved here, it was all paddocks, and now it’s all houses,” she said.
Martens wished more green spaces and neighbourhood shops were prioritised in the new estates, rather than big shopping centres and single-storey homes jammed together.
Well, you can have green spaces or you can record-high immigration. You can’t have both.
Even the Age’s readers are finally admitting it, as the comments on its article show:
“Like many im tired of the excuses for our rampant population growth.”
“The only people who benefit from high population growth are the greedy corporates and the property speculators. The government won’t be happy it seems until we have tent cities like America and more and more people living in poverty and homelessness. Never have i seen such a reckless government so intent on making life worse for its own citizens neither side is fit to govern.”
“Nobody voted for this. Governments don’t make population a talking point on their election platform. It is happening by stealth.”
“There’s nothing good about new arrivals moving to city centres while Australians have to move further away from jobs and infrastructure. For crying out loud, stop the planes.
“When has there ever been an open discussions about population growth? And the use of good land for housing? or the kind of city we really want? and who would ever willingly choose an outer suburb with little or no infrastructure and the limited to no prospect of ever getting decent public transport and other services? Who is the growth actually serving?”
“I just wish I could get on a train tomorrow morning in Footscray without it having people spilling out of the carriages onto the platform.”
“I think most people would look back fondly of how enjoyable a smaller city was.”
The Age
But then where would all the Uber drivers and wage-slave fruit pickers come from? How else would the Treasurer be able to technically keep us out of recession, without the never-ending sugar hit from mass immigration?