Imagine building half of Perth in three years because that’s what’s needed to accommodate the nearly one million people that are expected to arrive between 2022 and 2025.
Australia’s population surged by a record 563,200 in the 12 months to March 2023 driven by the return of foreign students and temporary workers, boosting the labour pool.
The numbers look like this; 400,000 came in 2022-23 and numbers are expected to hit 350,000 in 2023-24, and 300,000 in 2024-25. We all know that the lure of Melbourne and Sydney is so great, well over half will fly in and never leave these growing cities which are now so big they would fit within the top ten in population of the United States.
Mind you, better Sydney, and Melbourne than us having to deal with a flood of migrants. Perth already has an overstretched health system which would struggle to cope with the fact that 18 per cent (180,000 of the l million) will come with long term health conditions and nearly 25 per cent of the humanitarian migrants will need a range of services.
The actual number who are expected to make Perth home is only 12 per cent or about 120,000, that’s building Albany every year for three years, which would be fine if they did happen to spread themselves around the State. The only problem is all of 1 per cent or 10,000 will make it outside of Perth with many of them going no further than Mandurah.
Lucky for Melbourne and Sydney they will get to add to their populations 29.3 per cent and 26.6. per cent with just 3.1 per cent and 2.6 per cent electing to live in their regions, which could well be the “remote” communities of Geelong, Ballarat, Newcastle and Wollongong.
No doubt, some will trek inland to the smaller country towns but don’t expect them to stay long as the Federal government has recently moved to introduce new visa rights making it easier for migrants who have taken one of the regional work visas to bail from the bush and retreat to the big cities, leaving the businesses that sponsored them in the lurch.
Noting the self-interested politics of the Labor Party, that migrants and particularly migrants living in the capital cities tend to become solid Labor voters and end up populating swing seats. The government is close to closing one of the few targeted policies that push people to the bush.
Not that our version of the bush is the same as Canberra’s. To them, a major regional city and centre is, believe it or not, Perth, Adelaide, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Canberra, Newcastle/ Lake Macquarie, Wollongong, Illawarra, Geelong and Hobart. Go figure.
Putting aside the fact Canberra thinks Perth is remote, where are the incentives to go rural and remote? I can’t find any. In fact both sides of politics think it is unfair to link a visa to working in regional Australia.
The entire system is mad. Millions of people want to migrate to Australia, so I’m sure if the State government can link regional incentives for school teachers to go rural, regional or remote and gain a range of benefits including early access to permanency, then I’m sure the Federal government can do the same with migration visas.
