Over the next two years Australia is adding over 700,000 people to its population through migration. We are adding more people than live in Canberra in just two years but we are not building a new Canberra over the next two years.
This decade it will be 100 years since Canberra was made our national capital. It is the last time Australian governments got serious about building a new city. Despite the derision it receives, Canberra is a success. Canberra is our largest inland city and its population is growing.
Australia is a big country and we should build new cities especially if we remain committed to having so many migrants.
In a country with so much land and resources it is a great failure that we cannot provide enough housing for people. There are reports that working people are living in tents in our major cities. This is not because they cannot afford a home, they just cannot find one.
The tragic failure to provide adequate housing is a consequence of relying too much on Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Australia has an unusual concentration of people in its major cities. Over half our population lives in our five biggest cities. In the United States less than 15 per cent of people live in their top five.
Our housing crisis will only get worse if we do not develop new areas where people can live. Some dream that we should build up (with big apartment complexes) rather than out (into new cities). But local politics shows that inner-city people vociferously oppose new urban developments and it is not even clear that people want a shoebox apartment over a backyard in a regional town.
How can we create new cities? Well, the same way we have done it previously. When Canberra was built governments built infrastructure, they sold land to young couples at cost and they provided jobs for people willing to move.
All of this can be done again. Indeed, it is much easier to do today than 100 years ago. Technology has made living away from major cities much more comfortable.
When I first moved to Central Queensland, someone (ignorantly) told me that I would regret taking my wife to a town without a Myer. Not that we have ever missed that but now we can order whatever we want online regardless of what stores we have in town.
The key benefit to this technological revolution, however, is to make sure small towns have the services necessary to thrive. For one postal services are incredibly important and Australia Post has been struggling to deliver packages in a timely fashion in recent years.
Banking services remain crucial and while much of that can be done online, the physical presence of a bank is still necessary, especially for many businesses.
The current Labor Government has shown little interest so far in supporting the development of smaller towns. Their solution to the housing crisis is to spruik a housing fund that even by their own numbers would build just 30,000 homes in five years. With 700,000 people coming to Australia in the next two years, this fund won’t make much difference.
Building new cities would make a difference, however. Building new cities would strengthen our nation by spreading our population centres around. Building new cities would take the pressure off the creaking infrastructure in our capital cities. But most of all building new cities would provide more Australians with the opportunity to fulfil a dream of owning a home with a backyard for their family.
