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Bigger population ‘needs homes and roads’ – The Australian

Mar 29, 2012 |

BY 2030, Australia’s population will have expanded by another 6.2 million people.

And they will need an extra 2.7 million homes, 125,000 retirement facilities and 24,000 more hospital beds.

The trouble is, Australia’s population is rapidly ageing, which means fewer people are paying the tax needed to fund necessary infrastructure growth.

Grinja

The truth is that this growth is neither inevitable, or desirable by the majority of Australian citizens. A recent survey shows that about 73% are opposed to further population growth. You might argue its all about providing infrastructure however if we didn’t spend when we had the mining boom delivering a windfall then how will we afford the infrastructure now? Australian cities were not designed to comfortably accomodate 4+ million citizens, you would need to spend insane amounts of money to accomodate public transport and roads to allow for growth up to 6 million. It’s not going to happen so give up your dreams of perpetual growth. And you haven’t even addressed issues of climate change and peak oil which are exacerbated by city growth.

Ken_Morrison_Property_Council

Grinja – You’re wrong about population growth. Australia will be having more births than deaths for decades, and no government is going to take immigration to zero. The Our Nation app lets you play with different migration settings, but there’s still more Aussies in the future than now. All we’re saying is lets do a better job of planning for what we know is going to happen instead of sticking our heads in the sand.