Over 60 per cent of Australia’s population lives in our top five most populated cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.
In the United States, fewer than 20 per cent of people live in its top five most populated cites of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Houston.
Australia faces a housing crisis because we have not built enough cities. There is only so many people we can continue to cram into our major cities especially in a short space of time.
In a major city there are barriers to expanding housing development. Some of these are natural, as Sydney extends to national parks and mountain ranges. Others are political. In large cities active local groups form against more development making the building of new housing a slow and cumbersome process.
So, we end up not building enough homes.
Last October, the new Federal Labor Government promised to build 1 million new homes over the next five years. Even if we meet this target, it will not end the housing shortage because of our record high level of immigration.
New figures in the last few weeks show that Australia’s population is set to grow by 650,000 over the next two years because of migration. This is a whopping 50 per cent higher than predicted in the Budget last October.
The Government has not explained why we should be taking in so many more people when many Australians cannot find a home. We should put the housing needs of Australians first.
In any case, the Government is already failing to deliver its 1 million homes promise. The Housing Industry Association reported this week that we are not on track to build the required 200,000 homes this year.
Instead of announcing targets the Government needs a real plan to build new homes. The easiest way to build new homes is to do so in regional locations where there is ample land and support for population growth.
We should set a target to build new cities independent of our existing major population centres. This would require a concerted effort to provide new infrastructure, industries and job opportunities in new locations. The rise of work from home arrangements also makes it easier for families to move to a new location for a better home.
Instead, the Brisbane Olympics seem to doom us to persist with the failed approach of investing too much in our already congested major cities. Of the billions of extra revenue coming from increased coal royalties almost all of it is going to Brisbane for the Olympics.
America’s development has proceeded differently because it has many more states than Australia. One hundred years ago, Texas was a rural backwater with little industry. Then oil was found and because it was its own state, the oil revenues stayed in Texas. If you look closely at the list of top US cities you will notice that two of the top five are in Texas.
That needs to be the real answer. We need a new state of North Queensland so that we can keep our wealth here, prioritise the development of our cities and do a service for the whole nation by creating new places for Australians to live and have a home.
