Labor’s population
obsession
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While Labor’s craven capitulation to the forces of Little Australia is deeply disturbing, there’s a chance it might actually produce quality policy. In essence this is a major economic policy retreat by both sides of politics driven by a small number of voters in outer-suburban seats. Many of those voters undoubtedly have legitimate concerns about the poor provision of infrastructure in outer-suburban areas. Others are simply bigots of the “f-ck off, we’re full” variety. The tiny numbers of these voters is evident from the polls. While the majority of voters want lower migration, the number for whom it is an important issue is tiny. Yesterday’s Essential Report showed that only 12% in total of voters identified it as either the most important, second most important or third most important issue for them in deciding their vote — fewer than in May. But their disproportionate significance comes from being located in marginal seats in outer-suburban suburbs. Population pressure is not an issue in regional Australia — one regional MP told Crikey he had raised the issue several times but had had no reaction at all from his electorate. Nonetheless, in its effort to not merely defend itself on the population issue but, apparently, actively campaign on it, Labor has produced the beginnings of a sensible policy. The “Building Better Regional Cities” policy announced by the Prime Minister on Sunday and reinforced in yesterday’s trip to Townsville, targets one of the most key problems preventing the supply of housing responding to higher demand, the inability of state and local governments to provide appropriate utilities and transport infrastructure for greenfields housing developments at a sufficiently rapid rate. While there are other significant housing supply issues — most importantly, the lack of competition in business and property development lending following the GFC — infrastructure planning and provision is a critical impediment when different levels of government are unable to roll out the expensive infrastructure needed before housing developments can proceed. Labor’s policy is aimed at providing about $15 million each to 15 councils to enable them to provide housing development infrastructure in conjunction with the private sector, in effect introducing Commonwealth-level funding to directly remove the infrastructure impediment. The only problem is, it’s aimed at councils in major regional centres, not at the outer suburbs of major cities, where the real problems of infrastructure provision are driving house prices up while supply is unable to keep up. Labor must surely move to address this gap before the campaign is over. However, the cost of making a serious dent in infrastructure provision on the outskirts of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane is going to be a lot higher than the $200 million or so Gillard has committed to the Building Better Regional Cities policy. But there’s a strong policy case for a substantial investment by the Commonwealth in this area, in effect using the Commonwealth’s strong credit rating and low debt to invest where state and local governments can’t afford to. This is government spending that actually reduces pressure on interest rates and inflation by assisting in the provision of new dwelling stock. It should be a temporary measure. The long-term goal of all levels of Australian governments should be a housing market from which the current array of impediments that prevent supply responding to demand are removed and in which governments play their roles of co-ordination, infrastructure provision and regulation as effectively as possible. That would mean governments could get out of direct intervention in the housing market, except for provision of social housing, another area where governments have underperformed for years until Kevin Rudd invested heavily in it. But for the moment, the gap between Australia’s housing stock and its population continues to grow. A policy aimed at better outer-suburban infrastructure would be a valuable start in dealing with it. |
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62 Comments
You bet!
$200 million would just about cover the billboards and other advertising to trumpet the “initiative”.
Just what we need…more money going to financially illiterate local councils.
Best this money goes to the states, or if given to the councils, make it conditional on having financial controls and reporting requirements implemented.
Careful what you wish for. Spending $200 million on infrastructure that has as its sole purpose to perpetuate the sprawl of our cities will only accelerate problems like climate change, traffic congestion and the poor quality of services and life ‘on the outer’. What it would do is stuff money into the hands of property developers, builders and inefficient councils while completely failing to make housing more affordable.
Is it too much to ask that the new PM, with money to throw around in an election campaign under the heading Building Better Regional Cities, could read up on what ‘better cities’ really look like and what drives poor housing affordability? Let’s see the money committed to urban renewal and affordable inner city housing - including in regional cities - thereby “moving forward” (just a little) in the direction of a mroe sustainable future.
@Phil Harrington:
No it’s not and those are exactly the sorts of questions that journalists like Red Kerry ought to be pressing her on, rather than focusing on cliches and slogans de jour.
Australian Government funding of the infrastructure needed to expand housing can’t be temporary if the ‘grow at all costs’ advocates like Keane have their way, for expanding public transport, water, sewerage, hospitals, schools, playing grounds, etc, fast enough to keep up with their desired growth of the population can never be funded from existing mechanisms.
Of course roads, public transport, water, sewerage, broadband and other infrastructure should be charged at a rate sufficient to fund capital replacement and expansion as well as recurrent costs, but that still leaves a lot of ‘public commons’ goods that either shouldn’t or can’t be charged at full rates, such as health, education, recreation, police.
Keane’s calamitous closet Catholicism continues callously.
Bernard wrote, “The only problem is, it’s aimed at councils in major regional centres, not at the outer suburbs of major cities, where the real problems of infrastructure provision are driving house prices up while supply is unable to keep up.”
Missing the point entirely, I think.
The idea is to discourage people from settling in the major cities. As settlement in these areas diminishes and moves to regional & rural centres pressure is reduced in the major cities’ suburbs. That’s the theory anyway, let’s see how it pans out in practice.
Build up, idiots.
David Allen, I agree that the aim should be to support development in the regions and decentralisation generally. But Keane’s point in yesterday’s ‘grow at all costs’ piece was that Australia should increase the density of its big cities. Of course building infrastructure in the outer suburbs and outskirts of the big cities hardly increases their density, but the ‘grow at all costs’ policy has far bigger flaws than that.
We cannot tell people where to live and we cannot stop the global tide of population growth spreading here.
This is pure semantics and a silly story they are telling.
And when you get congratulated by John Pasquarelli for turning into Pauline Hanson?
And what about the 500,000 lovely foreign students attending our universities with their big bang for their bucks.
they all live in cities.
1. Keane’s grow at all costs is not my cup of tea.
2. Infrastructure construction within our cities should not become national priority. Live in outer suburbia if you wish, or cram into the city. Do whatever, but do not seek my money to pay for your preferences.
3. The Constitution has a bit to say about State Vs Federal responsibilities. Housing and infrastructure are not on the Federal list.
4. Who says that we are short of shelter/dwellings? Australia is in no way short of dwellings, unless you take the extreme view that places each adult or pair of adults in a single dwelling, perhaps a McMansion. There is no universal law which states that all kids must leave home at 17. No requirement that unused bedrooms are somehow unfit for use by boarders. I believe that there are more beds in Australia than there are people, including the homeless. The issue becomes one of lifestyle and personal preference.
5. Surely the building industry and the mob of well-fed gluttons known as property developers can use their talents to produce more desirable smaller dwellings? Perhaps with their own room for gardens (lawns serve little purpose)?
For goodness’ sake, somebody - do a proper study of the real wants and needs regarding housing, rather than just falling into the aspirational model which ties up hugs amounts of capital, binds purchasers into long term indebtedness and results in suburban sprawl and the three car family.
Now, there’s a good subject for a politician - a State politician.
I’m building up a list of words that Crikey’s silly software considers in requirement of moderation.
Meanwhile, I’ll try again …
Gillard should sue that fas*cist Pasquarelli for defamation.
Sorry - typo.
For goodness’ sake, somebody - do a proper study of the real wants and needs regarding housing, rather than just falling into the aspirational model which ties up HUGE amounts of capital, binds purchasers into long term indebtedness and results in suburban sprawl and the three car family.
How exactly do “the real problems of infrastructure provision”, as such, drive house prices up in outer suburbs?
The logic escapes me, but I guess I am missing the point.
@Kevin Tyerman
Many councils fund the infrastructure they provide from levies and charges they impose on developers, and the Victorian Government recently introduced or changed substantially a similar charge it imposes on big developments for the infrastructure it provides.
Why is that Socra, Gillard has always been Pauline Hanson.
No, unlike the Oxleymoron, Gillard has a brain.
If she’s to be likened to another female politician, then for me it’s Margaret Thatcher.
Really, what we need is a good dose of well-conceived urban consolidation in which we sharply increase population densities and shrink to reach/hal;t ther growth of the sprawl.
We need to put an effective squeeze on housing credit, ratcheting up minimum equity and maximum loan service rates over time, and restraining drawdown. We also need to rezone in such a way that medium-to high density becomes the norm in the major cities/conurbations.
We need to foster the growth of equitable housing developments, giving them conditional access to soft loans, subject to high quality sustainable socially mixed development and wage-based rent with optional longer leases.
We also need to think about the layout of our suburbs so that most of them cannot be driven through or have only quited limited entry and exit points (emergency vehicles aside). In this schema, one would enter and exit suburbs by car at main connecting roads, but could move between major suburbs only on foot, by bicycle/similar or via public transport (hard rail links, buses etc).
@ Phil Harrington
“Let’s see the money committed to urban renewal and affordable inner city housing - including in regional cities - thereby “moving forward” (just a little) in the direction of a mroe sustainable future.”
Dead right. Unfortunately, the inner city seats (Melbourne, Sydney and Grayndler) are marginal too, the Greens are close to capturing them all. And there Nimby issues rule,. Existing very wealthy and privileged (the antithesis of outer suburban “battlers”) residents fight higher densities tooth and nail, and have aligned themselves to the Greens. Who are only too happy to encourage unsustainable urban sprawl.
Not all Greens oppose higher density redevelopment of the inner city. The Green councillors for Moreland City Council support a 10 story residential and mixed use development in Brunswick East in trendy inner Melbourne.
Gee complicated isn’t it. I can’t help but think that decent public transport would go a long way to easing many of the problems and I don’t care who provides it, state or federal.
Julia said she is all for discussing thing’s,so give her a chance, housing needs to be looked at but! this is just a start, a lot more than the Libs have bothered to do. I don’t know what sort of house you all live in but I;m in a area where new housing is going up, and fair dinkum you could hold a ball in some of them.When I was young you bought a little house and gradually progressed up, now-a-day’s it’s all or nothing and people are willing to pay BIG price’s, that’s what’s killing the market. Let’s listen to her idea’s before we start bitching. There should be more little flatettes for the uni kid’s, Kings Cross used to be full of them( had one myself) were have they all gone,Big Business, Hotels, same old same old the rich get richer, that’s who should be picketed.
The population debate has been hijacked. It started when Federal MP Kelvin Thomson ran up a flag on it to see who saluted. He was soon overwhelmed with environmental responses. People were deeply concerned about water and food - human issues to be sure, but also extinction rates and resource use - the impoverishment of farm soils as well as the mess left by mining - consuming the natural environment.
Alas the nuance soon went out of the issue as exemplified by Bernard’s article and it became incorporated into the silly debate we keep having on asylum seekers and immigration.
It is perfectly possible to be in favour of a smaller population and less growth - growth which lets face it feeds the sorts of consumption which drives climate change and ruins people’s lives in poor countries - and still be in favour of accepting refugees and generally not being racist.
To turn it into an infrastructure debate is to be completely narcissistic about being human.
@ Fran - On the worlds league table of lowest population density for major cities (>3M people) 3rd from bottom = Melbourne, 5th from bottom = Sydney.
For Melbourne @ 5 Million (2036 projected) the additional cost of maintaining only 440 people per Sq H has been calculated at $110Billion. Semi rural quarter acre types cost the rest of us millions and millions in support of their necessity for ‘tranquility’ and hours and hours either in traffic or waiting from the train.
And the evidence of Gillards “brain” resides where?
exactly Tom
I read somewhere that Sydney’s population density was something like 30 people per Ha across 1600km2. Densely packed cities can have 140 people per ha.
I’m not advocating that level of density but it seems to me that 80 people per ha ought to be viable. Densities like that radically reduce the cost per person of maintaining importan infrastructure. Fibre to the home, (public and private) transport, water, sewerage, power, housing etc all become radically cheaper per capita. We also save on commuting time.
We can choose to spend that on better services and lifestyle or pocket the difference.
When doesn’t 12% of the population become an issue for pollies?
If you didn’t have the conservative side of politics and media, which aren’t even affected by population growth where they live dog whistling to the naive on these issues, they wouldn’t be issues. It’s the same with refugees, dog whistling on an issue that doesn’t even affect their way of life on the north shore or eastern suburbs. The hypocrisy is obvious, but hey, it’s whatever it takes to get power. Sometimes all the money in the world is not enough, sure can get any amount of their racist bullshit across the mainstream print and airway these days thou, high brow stuff indeed.
The distance from employment is the biggest deciding factor in population density.
Australia cannot support 36 million people if we continue to live the way we do. Either people need to move out into satellite towns, and/or house have to become smaller. While some supporter of ‘little Australia’ are racist, most of them are people who simply wish to maintain their current way of life. Of course, given the aging demographic, what they wish is not possible. The Left have a tendency to label anyone who is anti-immigration as a ‘racist’ and totally ignoring the trade off between quality of life, maintaining Australian cultural heritage, and economic growth.
@Marilyn, her LLB for a start.
You only need to look at the North West of Sydney to see the failure of building infrastructure and lack of quality planning. The train line out to the NW still hasn’t been built. Of course why would the state ALP government spend billions of dollars for a train line to an area that is fanatically Liberal?
And why is the federal government viewed as omnipotent who can solve city planning and infrastructure in a sweep of its hand? This is a state and local government issue. Three tiers of government - why would you expect anything other than what we have?
I would like to know the exact meaning of the notion of ‘sustainable’. For some people it seems to be the amount of residential houses, God forbid, Housing Trust or Commission, with boat people inside using toothbrush under running water, and multiple aged parents using our Medicare, Social Secuity, cab charge and very fragile energy. Some of them may choose studying English at night!.
I am not sure how Julia Gillard wants to shrink Australia. We are already very small.
I would suggest Julia Gillard takes John Bennetts for a study trip to … Skandinavia and study the word ‘sustainable’ in terms of scientific research, high technolog, social services, architecture (they do spend billions on prisons in the desert), alternative energy, transport, and EDUCATION.
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland are much smaller than Australia; they haven’t got even 1/10th of our resources, they covered with snow most of the time and their population is comparable to Australia. Their refugee intake is much higher than ours. Their standars of living, technology, salaries, equal opportunities are much, much higher.
They do not discuss non-issues endlessly. They just develop … sustainably
Another source of study can be Singapore, and … Hiroshima 65 years after the nuclear destruction of the city.
SOCRATEASE
No university may be substituted for a good primary school. And we lack good primary school education system in Australia.
Australian LLB is not comparable to i.e. Swedish diploma.
There is a lovely comparison between Hiroshima and Detroit on the Internet. John Bennett is most welcome to have a look; perhaps pictorial method would work on you:
http://snardfarker.ning.com/profiles/blogs-hiroshima-and-detroit-65yrs?xgsource+shorten_twitter
@Rena Zurawel
I have no idea what you are on about here. I was responding to ShepherdMarilyn’s 4:54pm question.
With the current rate of population increase we are not keeping up with infrastructure. Surely, Bernard, it makes sense to slow population growth at least until we catch up. Continued economic growth based on population growth will help business and the rich but will degrade the standard of living for most of us.
I don’t follow the news all that much, I don’t know what exactly Gillard has said regarding Australia’s population growth. But I can guess she has given no definite figures on what Australia’s population should be limited to, no real plans on how to stabilise Australia’s population. Has she instead given a lot of vague pronouncements about “sustainability” and “smart growth”? Read between the lines. Rest assured Mr Keane, Labor and Liberal both intend to continue rapid perpetual population growth into the indefinite future. You can relax.
Since we are the greatest producers of greenhouse gases per head the best way to reduce greenhouse gas production would be to limit population growth.
I thought that the best way to reduce greenhouse gas is to reduce…greenhouse gas.
SOKRATEASE
It does not apply only to Julia Gillard. It applies to every politician; they should know better how to address important issues whether they have a uni degree or not. It is usually called a HOMEWORK.
One may be an accountant without a degree but he/she has to know how to do accounts.
“However, the cost of making a serious dent in infrastructure provision on the outskirts of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane is going to be a lot higher than the $200 million or so Gillard has committed to the Building Better Regional Cities policy.”
By abolishing that deplorable policy of welfare for the rich ie negative gearing, an extra $4 billion would be available to invest, helping ‘little australia’ and perhaps demonstrating that Labor has not completely kowtowed to the elite…wait a minute, was that a pig that just flew by my window?
They have just reprised Howard’s 2001 election campaign only they are calling hunting refugees “stopping people smuggling”.
Good fucking grief, what does it take for someone, anyone in this country to get that people seeking asylum is nothing to do with fucking people smuggling.
@Rena Zurawel: our best university courses are as good as, if not beter than any Swedish, French, UK (yes, Oxford, I know, and Cambridge) or US (Harvard, Yale, Stanford - whatever!) university course. And, many would be surprised to find that the ‘sandstone’ unis aren’t the only providers: the redbricks and the newer ones produce truly excellent courses.
Not every course of course, but I’d put my Arts Honours degree up against any comparable international one…
Fran Barlow…I live in Macau. 28 sq km of peninsula and two islands. Population density, almost 20,000 people per sq km. Macau-Chinese, Portuguese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Mainland Chinese, Vietnamese, Aussies, Burmese and more; a true melting pot. An almost crime-free city and certainly a very safe one. A few tensions between the long-term residents and new immigrants and guest workers, but nothing to write to Crikey about. It can be done. Immigration, when properly controlled, is nothing to worry about.
I know a lot of very dumb lawyers.
Oh, the ironing.
The irony in this program is that state govt utilities — water, sewerage, power, roads, etc — and councils have increasingly been levying these greenfield infrastructure costs directly onto developers, who of course pass the costs straight onto the new home purchasers in the area. These monies used to be taken from consolidated tax revenue — in other words, the entire community used to contribute to the development of new subdivisions. No longer — some liberal ideologues in the lower tiers of govt one day decided it would be ‘user pays’ all the way, just like introducing road tolls or $15 airport link train tickets.
Now the Fed govt, faced with ballooning house prices and regional centres which have not grown in size appreciably in 30 years, is rebating the cost-shifting that has been assiduously carried out by the other tiers over this time — so it’s just swings and roundabouts of tax money — effectively the charges are now cost-shifted back to the Feds. Something like putting on a toll road, then allowing anyone who lives in an area to claim back their tolls on the Internet because user pays excessively inflates their cost of living!
More broadly, while it does represent the missing regionalisation plan in terms of how we plan to increase the population, it is still inviting a program of booming immigration by stealth — assuming you can even get new arrivals interested in living in the sticks with no existing ethnic commnities and limited job and career options. More likely, disaffected long-term residents of Australia will move out of Sydney and Melbourne etc in disgust at the low levels of affordability to the regional centres, thus allowing more overase arrivals to slot in to the big cities and get gouged for a while by vested property interests. Apparently these new arrivals have certain valuable ‘skills’ that no Aussie has or is ever able to develop, by the way.
By the way, housing around Australia has become unaffordable MAINLY due to rivers of cheap overseas wholesale credit flooding the country, leading to a speculative and unsustainable boom in house prices and debt, just beginning to unwind in the GFC, and as the international wholesale cost of lending goes up in response. The price inflation suits a cartel of FIRE interests — the banks and real estate interests like developers and real estate agents — and politicians traditionally celebrate massive house inflation as a sign of a successful economy. The ALP Fed govt has been incredibly slow to see the real economic drivers behind the price boom, and continues to turn a blind eye to the problem, even as it turns to bust.
Denis
as hectares are 1% of the size of km2, 20,000 persons per km2 = 200 persons per ha … higher IIRC than Hong Kong, but as you say doable.
Here, the cultural expectation is for a lot more space per person. As I said, we could easily do 80 per hectare here and not seriously change the character of our major cities. We could nestle coherent parcels of shared multi-use (active and passive recreation) greenspace between the suburbs, allowing very pleasant transitions between them that could be used only by person in non-motorised vehicles. Either side of these could be more structured recreation such as swimming pools, skating rinks, soccer fields etc …
On the rtraffic question. With hindsight, it was poor policy to allow urban sprawl and then to match that wiht more high volume highways/tollways and manin connecting roads. All that could do was to encourage … more urban sprawl and incerasing per capita infrastructure spending demands.
Of course, it’s too late to fix that. Why not instead make better use of our poor public investment by extending their functionality?
Suppose at distances from the city of, say 12 and 25 km we build major multi-level car parks (5000+ vehicles) along the major multi-lane roads?. We put shuttle buses (capacity of 250+) at the entrance and these go non-stop to the city (unless under 75% capacity in which case they stop at the intervening car parks). We’d have to think about entry and egress of course, but this would massively reduce traffic on major traffic routes, shrink commuting times, encourage car pooling, reduce GHG intensity (indeed if we built the car parks with charging facility we could underpin the roll-out of EVs because with shortened distances and downtime charging the limited range problems would be moot. You drive the 1-20 kms from home to the car park, and then drive back fully charged.
These car parks could include other facilities — residential, commercial, retail, government offices so the development could be partially privately funded. What makes them so cheap is the sunk cost in the road infrastructure. Because some of these developments have MAE clauses and were built with toll revenue to the builders in mind, they would probably in practice have to be bought out to end of contract life, but that would still be worth doing.
That’s a good idea, Fran. Then, one week later, remaining oil reserves will triple in price as they run out, and, 1 year later, they will have run out altogether for all intents and purposes.
(Although we already have those massive carparks, thery’re called Westfield shopping centres.)
It was similarly ironic that Central Station in Sydney was built in the early 1900s as a lavish new central railway station with a marble lined foyer for the stationmaster, and within a few years, people discovered cars and the suburbs and stopped using the trains.
Maybe we will be reusing the electric trains, but what will the massive car parks become?
PS I don’t know any current road-using shuttle buses with a capacity of 250+ persons, I rather think that describes a multi-carriage train, which travels on a road of iron.
In Brazil there are bendy buses with capacity of 270+
We’re not that close, but even if that were so, and perhaps especially if that were so, my plan would work. The buses themselves could be electric and much of the vehicle fleet could be too. Some people might cycle to the car parks, and ideally, we’d have tall lockers to put people’s bikes and gear in.
Multi-carriage trains in Sydney carry up to 4000 passengers.
Does this the underlying tone of the debate on population and ‘congestion’ strike anyone else as like trying to placate a spoilt child by agreeing it has the hardest life in the world? Our cities are consistently at the top of the ‘most liveable’ lists, for what they are worth, but does anyone seriously think it’s more difficult living in suburban Sydney than Cairo or Bangkok or Beijing?
Surely the solution to the scenarios Fran and Sean are sketching out is to shift commercial and cultural focus from the CBD to smaller areas, build housing tightly in and around the suburban centres that Westfield has conveniently already created. Maybe people could even live in walking or cycling distance from their place of employment. Wierd, I know.
Instead of wasting $16 billion on school halls the govt should invest in better public transport, water storage and nuclear energy - something that we all need for a bigger australia. But then ALP only cater for the beloved “ozstralian working families” in lieu of all aussies. This govt panders to the minority and what is politically nice as opposed to what needs to be done. No backbone in any of them otherwise they would rekindle the Naru solution and stop paying the baby bonus to those with an IQ less than 100 - but then they would not be voted in - assuming they can read the ballots.
@ Lorna;
Why pay a baby bonus at all?
There is room for discussion about the role of public pensions and other government support when it comes to single parenthood and children within non-working families. I suspect that there are opportunities to improve outcomes, but this is a very touchy subject. My intention is not to give offense, but to point out the perception that several public policies are at cross purposes:
Child welfare (children born to supported families are less likely to enjoy the best of lives);
Offering cash handouts for parenthood - a breeding bonus; and
Population policy, especially ZPG type iniatives based on environmental imperatives.
Now, talking somewhat like an ageing fool, I comment that till about 1960, single parents often released their children for adoption; likewise parents with very low incomes. This had obvious drawbacks, but at least surved one purpose, which was to provide kids for childless couples to adopt. A far more exensive system now provides an alternative system via fertility clinics and IVF. Again, I am not saying that either was good or better than the other: I simply do not know.
What I do wonder about is the view of politicians, sociologists, psychologists and demographers on these interrelated subjects. After all, this is presumably the core territory of the Minister for (Sustainable) Population.
Over to the experts!
Personally, I am dead against “baby bonus-like” payments, not ebcause I oppose supporting those who may need assistance but because it brings welfare into disrepute. Even the name implies a kind of trade in human life that I find unsavoury.
I’d prefer to give various kinds of support in kind. If for example, someone needs paid parental leave, then the kind of scheme the government has rolled out seems fair enough. I’d even be inclined to offer new parents a budget, from which they could employ a suitably qualified and accredited person to support them in those early months with respite time and/or domestic assistance. I also favour the idea of ensuring that every parent/copule approaching confinement get someone like the community nurse look in on them to ensure they are suitably prepared for the new arrival, and that they are aware of the range of services in their are, have contact lists and so forth. In the case of those who clearly aren’t ready, a plan is devised to get them ready and that is followed up in a couple of weeks. As the child approaches developmental milestones, care should be taken to identify deficits and their etiology and to supply apt and timely service.
Where it became clear that the person/couple was at major risk of not meeting basic standards of provision for the new child (or for that matter existing children) other services (budgeting, parental skills, substance abuse issues, family counselling etc) could be engaged to bring them up to speed. We also need to be providing respite care centres for at least the first 12 weeks of every newborn’s life, as this is the time when post-natal depression and the stresses of a new child can entrench poor parenting practice and do major damage to a new child’s life chances. In the long run, the costs of such developments end up as major externalities even putting aside the humanitarian consideration that children ought to be entitled to a fair chance of being happy and accomplished.
The focus ought to be on the interests of children and working backwards, how to get good primary nurturing for them, through timely and effective case management and the rollout of well tailored services and other system intervention. An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.
There’s two main reasons for the baby bonus:
1) the ALP and LNP both seem to want to grow the population — I can’t quite fathom the real reasons for wanting to boost the population, but they could simply be a ‘populate or perish’ concern, they want say 40M to be a ‘real’ country with the ability to defend itself and throw the population into war if necessary. There was a question with Rudd over whether he just wanted to grandstand on the diplomatic stage and needed a big country to do it. Or is it vested interests like the Gerry Harveys and the property industry who want more consumers? And employers who want to slash the price of labour?
2) The housing Ponzi scheme has reached a point where people can no longer afford to have children, or as many. They are stuck in a double income trap just to pay off basic housing. The kids will be raised in institutionalised concentration camps called child care centres and schools, just like in Brave New World, as it is more ‘economicall efficient’ to put one adult in charge of 20 or more kids than staying at home. The people behind this are vested interests like the greedy banks, developers, land vendors and real estate agents. If you made housing much more affordable for ordinary Australian ‘working families doing it tough’, I’m sure they would be happy to produce one or two more offspring, and would have more time to enjoy with their families and instil those Aussie ‘values’ the pollies keep talking about.
I have a very cool hardware/software solution in mind to provide some of the flexible transport ‘glue’ you’re talking about, Fran, in a very practical way — all it will take to implement will be some programmers time and very modest venture capital. Anyone interested in providing either? Venture capital in Australia for good ideas? No, didn’t think so… (If anyone out there is interested, write me at housingaffordability@gmail.com)
Lastly, don’t forget that the ALP and the LNP receive most of their funding from big business donations — their actual rank and file membership and donations and dues have shrunk away to almost nothing. Attached to those donations come strings, and you can bet the public will NEVER hear about the proceedings of the constant secret dialogue the ALP and LNP are having with big business. Relative affluence has brought you the illusion of a democracy. Whenever you hear the pollies prevaricating (‘talking from both sides of their mouth’) as Julia Gillard has started to do on immigration settings, you can bet there is a moneyed vested interest behind it — favours owed to donors and mates. Gillard is still not coming clean on why she is not going to adjust immigration quotas, she is just ‘putting the new skills where they belong’ — people should have twigged that something was wrong with this new PM from the start. They are telling you one thing to assuage your fears on the one hand and carrying out their quite different secret agendas on the other.
Heres a quote from another article here which I can’t seem to comment on:
“And won’t the world be laughing at the selfishness of Australia, a nation that could comfortably accommodate 100 million people.”
Why would the rest of the world care? And why are you worrying? Politicans are going to push our population beyond 100 million. Way, way beyond that point. The current pronouncements about a “sustainable” population and cutting growth have less credibility than your average smoker promising to give up the cigarettes. It ain’t gonna happen. Population growth is just too pleasurable for business leaders and economists, and these are the people who set government policy.
@ Chris. The only business leaders and economists who care about how “pleasurable” population growth is are 1.’ Big Pharma (Viagra, cosmetics) and 2. the Porn Industry.
When we have have real policies to limit population growth, and politicians brave enough to act on your wishes Chris, 2. is the only industry which we will have left. For at least one generation, anyway.
I agree with John Bennetts above. Especially point 3:
Gillard’s plan is a Johnny-come-lately ripoff of Barry O’Farrell’s NSW Coalition plan to “Restart Regional NSW”.
The difference being -
(i) Julia Gillard will decide exactly where the new development go - marginal seat pork barrels, anyone?
(ii) O’Farrell’s plan does not try to micromanage the movement, as long as it’s out of metropolitan Sydney.
(iii) O’Farrell’s plan is genuinely regional, not just suburban sprawl on the city edges.
(iv) O’Farrell’s plan includes jobs, transport infrastructure, healthcare, and working conditions for police, teachers and nurses. Julia Gillard only want to build more houses, surprise surprise.
(v) The state has a constitutional mandate for this sort of policy and the Commonwealth does not.
@Rena Zurawel
What is sustainable? Not sure, but someone asked once: “Would one stay in a relationship that was merely described as sustainable?”. The answer was pretty obvious, a relationship described as sustainable sounds pretty middle-ground boring. Are we to keep talking about our ideal circumstances to only be sustainable as in just getting by. I guess it is better than what we are doing now, but I would hope not…