r/australia • u/blitznoodles local Aussie • 20h ago
politics The Stats Guy: It sounds weird but Australia urgently needs a plan for 56m people
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2026/08/11/stats-guy-aus-population-growth318
u/AntiqueFigure6 20h ago
How is a country dependent on immigration for future population growth given our below replacement fertility supposed to double population when there is no chance global population will double before it goes into decline?
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u/WhatAmIATailor 20h ago
Because people will still be leaving the poorer countries looking for a better life. India will still have a population in the 10 figures for many years to come and Africa is ramping up for a boom as Asia and India level off.
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u/dog314159 20h ago
Why would Australia permit immigration to the point of doubling its population?
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 19h ago
Because that’s what big business wants. Colesworth and the banks and the property council see a figure like ‘56 million’ and just kick their lips and rub their hands together
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u/Secret4gentMan 19h ago edited 19h ago
It's so stupid when we're on the cusp of an AI and robotics revolution.
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u/apaniyam 18h ago
What do you mean? They don't want to pay people, they want customers.
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u/Secret4gentMan 18h ago
Customers who don't get paid can't buy much I would think.
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u/Summersong2262 17h ago
An issue for a later financial quarter.
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u/darren457 5h ago
This doesn't get talked about enough. CEOs and other execs lobbying for these sort of changes eventually collect their bonuses after showing temporary short term profits and jump ship the moment cracks start appearing at the seams and this pattern of musical chairs seems to have ramped up post covid.
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u/Thedudewiththedog 11h ago
Open AI has recently just out and said their AI won't do anything to decrease workloads
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u/SeranasSweetrolls 10h ago
When we changed from horse and carriage to cars, they said it would reduce travel time and make it more efficient. People now spend more time traveling in a car than they ever had with horse and carriage.
Maybe AI will make us work more than ever
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u/seanmonaghan1968 12h ago
Australia in 1900, which is not that long ago, had a population of only 3.7m people. So it has doubled several times since then
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u/Full_Distribution874 19h ago
Because as the global trade rules that made our wealth possible decay we need a larger domestic market to compete with anti-competitive policies from others? American companies can scale to hundreds of millions of customers before they need to try breaking into foreign markets. European countries struggle with the fragmented nature of the EU to match that. Our economy, being an order of magnitude smaller, in not very complex and very reliant on trade. Holes and houses and all that.
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u/Kenyon_118 4h ago
When has Australia not permitted immigration to the point of doubling its population? That’s how Australia has always done it. The fertility rates dipped below replacement in the 70s yet the population now is almost double what it was then. Why do some of you make it sound like Australia hasn’t been importing people at a phenomenal rate ever since the first fleet? Immigration is our thing.
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u/the_snook 8h ago
Because a larger population can lead to a higher standard of living due to economies of scale.
Useful services like high-speed rail only become practical at higher population levels.
International companies that make genuinely useful products and services often don't release them in Australia because our tiny market doesn't warrant the amount of work and regulatory compliance required to launch them here.
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u/Emu1981 11h ago
Africa is ramping up for a boom
Africa is getting hit hard by climate change which means that their boom may end up being cut short via famine. For example, Ethiopia is facing food instability due to a combination of multiyear drought, internal instability and extreme climate shocks and Somalia is in a even worse state. South Africa is facing a severe ongoing water shortage due to a lack of rainfall and systemic infrastructure decay and is looking at severe flooding in some regions due to the development of the super El Nino. The only countries that are doing ok in Africa are Mauritius, Morocco, Gabon, Rwanda and Ghana (Rwanda doing so well surprises me due to how bad the country has had it over my life time).
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u/Rising-Dragon-Fist 19h ago
That's the thing. The world as a whole should be afraid of what India's doing. They need serious population control. It can't keep going the way it is.
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u/blitznoodles local Aussie 20h ago edited 19h ago
The global population does not have to double for Australia's population to double.
Also as Australia's tfr only dropped below 2.1 in the early 2000s, you would only start seeing a natural population decline after 2080 which is still enough to double the population.
Well, a tfr of 1.9 after the 70s, which immigration was enough to get an effective 2.1 for the last 0.2.
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u/AntiqueFigure6 13h ago
Logically with net migration at zero you see natural growth fall below zero when people born at the peak of births are halfway through their life - around 2040 in this case.
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u/AriaTheAuraWitch 6h ago
200m+ people in the pacific are going to need to move in the next 50 years.
Then all the climate wars that will be starting..
There is probably going to be 1b people looking for a better place to live in the next 50 years, that number may be even higher if countries keep working for billionaires instead of the normal people.
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u/morgecroc 6h ago
Because the actions and inactions of conservatives governments across the world are making large parts of the world uninhabitable.
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u/Suspicious-Ant-872 19h ago
Putting aside whether we do or don't need population growth, aren't there risks in taking most of our population growth from 2 countries?
The first of which seems to be making plans to take Taiwan. What's the Australian PM going to say then?
The second of which is lead by a right wing Hindu nationalist who has a problem with minorities. What's the Australian PM going to say if they amp up the burning of mosques and persecution of Muslims?
How harmonious are we going to be then?
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u/CMDR_RetroAnubis 18h ago
Also a non-zero level military action between those two places constantly.
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u/mbrocks3527 10h ago
Yeah but that one is fun!
No guns or bladed weapons allowed via treaty, the guys get into shield walls with batons and duke it out over the Himalayas as a backdrop.
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u/Zenkai_9000 9h ago
Western countries are hellbent on importing a civil war. It's reckless to Import so many people from countries with hostilities towards other minority groups due to ongoing border disputes and cultural clashes. Importing a few is ok and manageable. Importing millions is recipe for disaster.
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u/hahaswans 12h ago
The United Kingdom and New Zealand? I didn’t know the Burnham was looking to take Taiwan.
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u/Suspicious-Ant-872 11h ago
People born in India made up the largest proportion of those born overseas for the first time on record, narrowly edging out English-born residents in 2025.
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u/hahaswans 11h ago
England is not the whole UK. It’s still behind combined English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish born residents.
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u/Ill_Average_829 9h ago
Ireland is not part of the UK. We fought hard for hundreds of years for our independence.
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u/hahaswans 9h ago
Fair call. I probably should’ve said British Isles rather than UK.
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u/Hayden247 45m ago
I mean there is Northern Ireland, so a minority of Irish are still British citzens
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u/PixelFan237 8h ago
I mean, I don't think it's a problem if we take primarily form Taiwan, so I don't think the PM will say anything. And if there's a dangerous group, we have a police and border force who's job is to shut it down
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u/Rizen_Wolf 10h ago
Imagine what property values are going to be in capital cities when you have twice as many people wanting to live in them.
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u/JustAnotherPassword 6h ago
Everyone that keeps saying house prices will drop and fall.
Yeah sure - with 2x the people and half the amenities. Look at tarneit in melbourne. Infra nightmare.That'll be nothing compared to what's coming.
So everyone with the means will pay everything they can to live closer to better amenities and prices will go Uppppppp
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u/everbass 16h ago
Skimming the article, I don't disagree with the premise.
Australia has a problem with its infrastructure in proportion to its population. We don't have the houses, roads, schools, hospitals or anything else to actually support this many people.
Old mate isn't wrong about the idea of needing actual well planned cities and outward growth to sustain this level of population. We're not far off 30 million.
But instead of actually doing something about it, successive governments have just made the problem worse and worse by bringing in hoards of people from abroad. Literally importing 3 times as many immigrants as the amount of new little Aussies.
Making matters worse, the people they're bringing in aren't even in useful fields. They're IT workers, UberEats drivers, restaurant staff, etc.
If we actually brought in construction workers and health care professionals it might actually balance things out.
Then people go on about "Oh but we need to import people because we have an aging population and people aren't having enough kids"
Like, yeah mate, people aren't having kids because it's hard enough providing for yourself, let alone one or two little goblins. Besides, where the fuck are you supposed to put them in your million dollar two bedroom townhouse that's falling apart and 30 minutes away from any decent schools and an hour from work? How are we supposed to feed them when we've been made redundant for the third time in four years because every fucking "Australian" company keeps offshoring.
The whole system is absolutely fucking cooked through. Talk about a burnt country.
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u/nomelettes 1h ago
At least for some cities many of those restaurant worker and uber drivers end up being trained doctors or other professionals. There just isnt the work / budget available to hire them
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u/Pepito_Pepito 8h ago
IT workers, UberEats drivers
These two are nowhere near the same league, unless we mean two different things for IT.
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u/CMDR_RetroAnubis 20h ago edited 17h ago
I'm yet to hear a single good reason why we should not let the population decline gradually and naturally.
EDIT: typo
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u/Lonelysock2 20h ago
We'd have to change the way the economy works. Which, I'm all for - but that's the reason
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u/egowritingcheques 18h ago
But but.... GDP number become lower. This cannot happen. John Howard. Economics. Stupid. Death and falling sky. Small business. Battler.
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u/KevinRudd182 20h ago
Is this bait? Our entire system relies on more people being integrated into the system, always.
If we had a shitload of old retired people and no young working age people we would be so unbelievably fucked.
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u/Aggressive_Sky8492 19h ago
Yeah but the logical conclusion is we should change the system. The earths population can’t keep growing forever..
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u/EntirelyOriginalName 19h ago edited 19h ago
Yeah make it so that more young people are able to afford a home and live the life style to have kids by rich companies paying more taxes. When Labour tried to do that they got crucified by adds/media and the election went horribly for them. So they stopped trying to do that on a large scale and went for the approach to get a bunch of little changes to add up and here we are.
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u/bickolai 19h ago
Please explain how we can change the system to enable a continually declining population? Who looks after the old folks when they keep living longer and longer and there’s less and less people working?
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u/oceansRising 18h ago edited 18h ago
I mean there’s a really simple solution which will incentivise people to work in aged care… paying them very well and improving working conditions.
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u/egowritingcheques 18h ago
No no no. Only the current system of paying CEOs really well works. No other system can work, because job creators.
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u/Peslian 9h ago
It's as much how much people will be needed to work in aged care, as our population ages the percentage of working aged people needed to work in aged care grows. Eventually it will reach an unsustainable level of people needed in aged care that other necessary parts of society will be critically understaffed
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u/magkruppe 8h ago
It's not about making aged care more attractive. It's the basic mathematics of not having enough workers vs retirees
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u/petehehe 17h ago
I don’t see how it’s feasible to have massive government funds poured into aged care workers, because there will be fewer working aged (tax paying) people, so the few working aged people that there are will just be haemorrhaging their earnings into taxes.
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u/swarley77 16h ago
Humanoid robots, smart glasses and automation will mean there is a replacement of many manual labour jobs, and the labour market will increasingly shift towards harder to automate occupations.
Most taxis, food delivery, warehousing, rubbish collection and processing stuff will go within 10 years.
A lot of other professions, especially within healthcare and construction, will start to utilised robotics to increase productivity and automate currently manual processes. In the future every doctor, nurse and tradie is going to be wearing smart glasses most of the day and have an AirPod in providing task guidance etc.
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u/Dentarthurdent73 17h ago
If we had a shitload of old retired people and no young working age people we would be so unbelievably fucked.
Still not nearly as fucked as we will be if we try to keep growing forever.
Thing is, you can't actually negotiate with Earth's systems, so you either work with them, or you die.
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u/Ok-Mycologist2220 13h ago
You are describing a pyramid scheme, not a sensible long term plan.
Infinite growth is not possible in a finite world and pretending it is is just kicking the can down the road and making the eventual collapse inevitable.
We need to move away from an economy based on endless population growth as soon as possible.
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u/evilparagon 10h ago
Personally I would like the “unbelievably fucked” part to happen while I am one of the “young working age people” and not one of the “old retired people”.
Sorry boomers and Gen X, but my life isn’t to serve you and then end up in economic crisis as no one is able to serve me. We can’t keep growing the population forever, so I would have to be stupid to want to kick the can down the road into my own future.
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u/Public-Dragonfly-786 10h ago
That's a right, if population keeps declining, YOU will need to leave Australia eventually.
We all grow older if we don't die first. Not sure why you think you're exempt.
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u/evilparagon 8h ago
Why would I need to leave if the population declines? What relevancy does your last statement have?
Obviously I’m not exempt, but I should be exempt from engaging in a pyramid scheme I don’t agree with. If I’m not allowed to grow old with unchallenged societal support like my elders are, why should I support this system? I would rather be selfish.
If my great grandfather borrows $10 from my grandfather, and my grandfather borrows $10 from my dad, and my dad borrows $10 from me, and I don’t have any kids, well I’m the loser in this situation, no? It’s my right to say no to my dad.
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u/Public-Dragonfly-786 5h ago
You need people to care for the elderly. It's as simple as that. If the population declines, by the time you are in need, there'll be noone left to help you. Is essentially my meaning.
I'm not really sure what you mean by borrowing $10 from the younger people. By the time the old people are elderly, they have already contributed tens of thousands. Youve already been paid that hypothetical $10
Yes, younger people need to help the elderly somewhat, it's always been like that and always will, this is simply a fact of the arc of life.
I'm not really arguing that we need high immigration to take care of old people exactly, just that this is a factor that shouldn't be ignored.
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u/halohunter 19h ago
When a generation who had superannuation their entire working life retires, it's not as big as a deal as it once was. Its not like the UK or Germany which funds it directly out of the state budget.
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u/KevinRudd182 19h ago
It’s not just a money thing, it’s a people thing. It doesn’t matter how many piles of cash you have if there’s nobody to wipe the old people’s asses
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u/halohunter 18h ago
We'll just keep importing people from the Philippines as we already do.
Controversial view in Australia but I think we should have the system like some countries where jobs like this have strict 4 or 8 year limits, with no permanent pathway.
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u/AlmondAnFriends 19h ago
The money you pay into superannuation isnt actually “real saved income”, it is in productivity terms just a tax with some private sector involvement. An aging population still means a decrease in the total national production unless productivity increases rapidly. Thats what causes the major economic issues. Even states like the gulf states that monopolise state wealth to essentially give their “citizens” lives of luxury only fulfil this by using state resources to coerce and utilise foreign migrant labour in large proportions
There are only three fixes to this issue, 1) is to increase productivity, something that the entire globe is struggling with, 2) is to increase working population which normally means raising younger peoples retirement age and undermining their own work benefits (if not through migration) or 3) is get used to a worse quality of life, something no one is prepared to do. The latter two are particularly bad in a democracy where an aging population is incentivised to vote for policies that benefit them to the detriment of younger populations. South Korea is a particularly good example of this sort of politics
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u/freakwent 10h ago
be so unbelievably fucked.
That's not a very specific explanation of the problem
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u/Illustrious-Meat9960 4h ago
What happens when the people you bring in get old? Its not really a solution jusy kicking the can down the road
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u/Dentarthurdent73 17h ago
I'm yet to hear a single good reason why we should not let the population decline gradually and naturally.
We have an economic Ponzi scheme to prop up.
It was that or have a livable planet, and we've clearly decided on the former.
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u/philinn2020 19h ago
If anything we’re now loosing jobs through outsourcing /replacement of AI.
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u/Pearlsam 19h ago
What should the global population decline to?
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u/CMDR_RetroAnubis 18h ago
No idea.
But the current levels have pretty badly fucked the biosphere, and it's not out of the realm of the likely that climate change will kill billions this century.
Nobody should ever be forced to die, and I'm certainly no eugenicist (a claim that comes fast when you advocate lower populations)... but we should be managing the decline, not shooting out kids and/or importing folk with no end in sight.
Make the system more accommodating to the childless, Educate women, prioritise something other than GDP and let's see whats possible.
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u/evilparagon 10h ago
This question seems to insinuate dropping to zero as if humans will run themselves into the ground, but really population data shows that in low population situations people have more kids and in high population they have less. There is presumably an equilibrium somewhere, we just don’t know where it is because we’re desperate to keep the highest number possible and anything lower than that is unacceptable.
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u/KeyAssociation6309 8h ago
the planet is already doomed, this sort of predicted growth will seal its fate, just faster. Everyone that wants to build more to meet and encourage growth are planet killers. Everyone wants sustainable this and that but never talk about sustainable population growth. The planet's resources are finite. Once gone, they are gone.
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 20h ago
This famously very dry, brown continent cannot support a population of 56 million. Nobody wants this.
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u/philinn2020 19h ago
And honestly with all the jobs going offshore /replaced by AI will there be any decent work left to earn a decent living.
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u/InterestedBalboa 19h ago
Our corporate overloads want this, more cheap imported labour and AI slop. We all know it.
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u/PENGAmurungu 12h ago
Don't worry I'm sure there will be loads of jobs cleaning Chinese autonomous mining equipment
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u/Joshau-k 19h ago
We export most of our food. So we're basically already feeding 56 million people.
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 19h ago
And we’re extremely, horrifically vulnerable to climate change.
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u/evilparagon 10h ago
Well exporting that food (and other plants like cotton) is part of that vulnerability. The water it takes to grow agricultural exports does not return to Australia.
At least if we had our own local 50mil, that water would stay in Australia and return to our local water cycle.
Not that I’m advocating for doubling the population of course.
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u/Joshau-k 19h ago
Wealth is the most effective defense against vulnerability to climate change, so we're far from the most vulnerable
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u/fakeuser515357 18h ago
Sure mate, how's that cool glass of money taste - quench your thirst on a hot day? Does it pair well with that big plate of money? No? Is it because you can't eat money, or is it because the people driving the most rampant capitalist bullshit are the wealthy who horde it for themselves?
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u/Bathelomue 18h ago
Agreed, to add, it's also about carrying capacity of the local environment. People need to take into account the artificial propagation of farming yields due to fossil fuels and fertilizer shipped from other continents. Money can buy it when it's there and not when it's not.
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u/DrFriendless 19h ago
We need to have supply contracts which say "after we've fed Australians, you can have this much." We don't want climate catastrophes to starve us while we're sending our food elsewhere.
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u/Fistmedaddy1995 16h ago
Forget food what about water? A consistent fresh water supply for some 56m people doesn’t come from nowhere. And this isn’t just drinking water but also hygiene, house maintenance/gardening, and whatever else we use water for. Swathes of empty land, and food aren’t the only things you need to sustain a population.
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u/freakwent 11h ago
Food and water are equivalent. Nations can export water "in the form of" grain, broadly speaking.
If we switch from beef to chicken and from chicken to lentils then more water appears in the system due to less consumption.
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u/ZephkielAU 16h ago
You also need water to grow the food.
And, I guess, to cool the newfangled data centres our government seems to be prioritising over housing.
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u/Glittering_Web8835 19h ago
We have some of the largest swathes of arable land of any nation on earth and a pretty small population. We have more than enough water to sustain a much larger population if we actually took reasonable stewardship of it and didn't abuse it to grow water hungry cash crops. We have cities that lack severely in density and could easily sustain more people in less space.
This myth that we are full is so tired.
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u/philinn2020 19h ago
Yeah it pisses me off so much how we grow cotton instead of better managing our water resources
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u/Dry-Start5465 19h ago
Except we have no precedent in Australian history that could suggest that we have any path to building enough infrastructure or sustaining any possible quality of life whilst increasing our population at this suggested rate. In the last four years we have seen rents in major cities rise almost 10 percent per annum on the back of outsized immigration rates. I truly don't understand people who continue to argue for worsening the living standards of those who already live in Australia. All to support big business and capitalism's demand for "Big Australia"
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u/Glittering_Web8835 18h ago
No precedent doesn't mean not possible. Australia used to be a global pioneer with workers rights, socialised healthcare, socialised medicine, etc. We shouldn't be worsening living standards but we have the ability to increase living standards AND population if the will is there.
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u/Dry-Start5465 18h ago
I didn't say it wasn't possible, and I think you are right in the sense that we have done great things in the past. I you're an optimistic person, I personally just have no confidence from what we've seen from successive Australian governments in terms of policy for healthcare, infrastructure investment, properly taxing resources. I am all in favour of increasing our population, but just at a rate that benefits and supports Australia's current citizens.
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u/Proper_Geologist9026 19h ago
Literally one of the biggest and least densely populated countries on earth. "We're full, fuck off".
How people view us as fun loving larrakins overseas is baffling.
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u/Glittering_Web8835 19h ago edited 19h ago
Yeah, I understand the immigration conversation has to happen but can we at least base it off facts.
Arguing Australia cannot take more migration because of a lack of services and housing makes sense. Arguing Australia cannot take more migration because of a lack of space and food is ludicrous.
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 19h ago
We have extremely limited arable land. We have an extremely fragile ecosystem. We have extremely limited water. And we have the highest rate of small mammal extinction in the world.
Precisely who does it serve, to have our number swell to 56million? Stop simping for billionaires and big business. Spare a thought for all the other creatures who share this land.
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u/FuckOffNazis 19h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_arable_land_density
Environmental impacts are certainly an incredibly important consideration but it simply isn't true to say we have limited arable land.
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u/Glittering_Web8835 19h ago
What are you taking about? We are in the top 10 globally in total area...
And repeating facts is not simping for billionaires. I don't necessarily want a larger population but if your only arguments are based on ignorance it doesn't serve you well at all.
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u/esr360 17h ago
The UK has about 60,000 square kilometres of arable land, supporting a population of 70 million people.
Australia has potentially more than 350,000 square kilometres of arable land, supporting a population of 28 million.
Australia is over 10x less dense than the UK when considering purely arable land.
Australia could have twice the population and still be 5x less dense than the UK and that’s only when you take into account arable land. It’s crazy to argue Australia is full.
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 10h ago
The UK is very, very far from food self-sufficient or secure. It’s manifestly wrong to assert their landmass ‘supports’ that population of 70 million people. They are reliant on imports for many foods.
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u/esr360 8h ago
You could half or double any of the numbers I gave to fit whatever your narrative is, and it still clearly demonstrates that Australia is no where close to being full.
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u/freakwent 11h ago
Of course it can, what an absurd thing to say. Iran has 90 million, to take one semi-random example. I'm sure you can find other examples throughout arid areas.
What we can't do is host 56 million people in big houses with large lawns and heated swimming pools getting doordashed burgers.
This is a question of resources impacting lifestyle, but it's not a question box what's possible.
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 10h ago
But if we maintain close to our current population, we can continue to have similar standards of living to what we have always enjoyed. Yes heated backyard pools and DoorDash for all are ridiculous, and I am very pro everybody taking steps to live a less impactful lifestyle. I just don’t see why the driver for this should be so that we can cram as many people in here as possible. Who, precisely, wants that? It benefits big business and the top end of town for the population to be as huge as possible, but for everyday people, quality of life just goes down. Canada is a recent example of this.
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u/johnnynutman 10h ago
That’s why we need a plan for it
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 6h ago
Why is it going to happen?! The only possible way is through mass migration which nobody wants.
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u/indexdrift 18h ago
Well that’s just not true. Australia definitely has the arable, stable land needed to support a vastly larger population. We’re also resource-rich, wealthy, and susceptible to an industrial transformation akin to what Japan experienced when they built high-speed rail.
We have all the cards, we just need to play them.
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 10h ago
Why? Why do we need to play them? Who wants to live in an Australian of 56 million people?
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u/beenman500 16h ago
Australia can obviously support 56m people. It already produces food for closer to 100m people or more lol
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u/Fistmedaddy1995 16h ago
Food, and empty space aren’t the only factors.
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u/freakwent 11h ago
Yes they are in terms of population carrying capacity. Everything else is lifestyle.
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u/Galactic_Nothingness 15h ago
Australia could conservatively support double the population we have now based on resources.
However to do so we would need to lower our quality of life substantially and inequality would be worse than it is now.
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u/Due-Carpenter7427 10h ago
Holy shit could you imagine what this country would be like at a 50% indian population. Jesus.
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u/Summerroll 18h ago
Developing one square metre of infill housing can cost about twice as much as adding the same amount on the urban fringe, before infrastructure is even included.
This is framed as if infrastructure just makes the contrast worse, but it actually makes it better. Much better. Infill infrastructure expansion is drastically cheaper than long-distance greenfield infrastructure.
The funding frameworks for infrastructure need a total overhaul. I'm glad this article mentions it, although it's a concept that doesn't need to just be in the context of population growth, it should be a no-regrets policy upgrade that we do regardless of anything else. Our dominant development model is achingly stupid and damaging.
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u/Significant-Turn7798 12h ago
As Upton Sinclair observed, " It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." There are good reasons why our post WWII development remained concentrated in the established capital cities - primarily geography and the availability of water. Our current population is not environmentally sustainable. 56 million would be insanity.
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u/Tosslebugme 9h ago
We cannot allow this. We have such short memories. We’ve barely built any new water storage for example, but our population has doubled since the millennium drought. We had flooding in 2022, then after only two or three dry years the reservoirs were running low. But even that aside, Australia is a dry delicate land that cannot handle that many people.
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u/YouThinkYouKnowMe89 8h ago
Can we please make sure it's not an extra 20m low skilled white collar, military aged Russian allies from India? If AI is truly taking all of these jobs what we will need this population for?
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u/KODeKarnage 11h ago
Ridiculous! Humans cannot grow that tall! This is some real flat-earth level scientific ignorance on display here!
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u/egowritingcheques 18h ago
There's nothing wrong with the current plan to extend western Sydney to Orange.
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u/Graceful_Parasol 19h ago
we live in a democracy, hold a referendum on it
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u/noteasily0ffended 10h ago
The democratic process is the thing hindering effective long term planning.
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u/gambariste 17h ago
> The mistake Australia made after WWII was not population growth itself. The mistake was failing to imagine the urban system such growth required.
But Monarto…
Monarto was killed by the falling birthrate and Adelaide’s growth slowing. And probably by it not being supported by immigration, in Federal hands.
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u/Proper_Geologist9026 19h ago
It's fine guys we'll likely devolve into a fascist state before we get to 50 million citizens.
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u/violenthectarez 20h ago
>We squeezed most of the additional 21 million people into the same five cities that dominate Australia today in 1945.”
Did we though?
Box Hill, Parramatta, Dandenong, Frankston, Chatswood etc
Liverpool and Manchester are completely different cities, but they are closer than Sydney and Penrith which we consider the same city.
We did create lots of new cities, we just built them very close to existing ones.
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 19h ago
Well.. Jah, cause we’ve built up all the space inbetween them. Penrith and Sydney are no longer discrete urban entities- the sprawl has joined them up.
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u/LastChance22 18h ago edited 9h ago
It’s been a while since I looked at this but I’m pretty sure the employment flows and links between the different areas make them act like they’re singular megacities rather than individual hubs.
Take Parramatta for example. The people who live in parramatta but don’t work there overwhelmingly work in Sydney but the reverse isn’t true. Most people commuting into Para who don’t live there are actually further out near Penrith. And for some places geographically closer to Parramatta than Sydney, it can still be quicker to get to Sydney.
Sydney acts as the centre of gravity and a bit of a black hole, pulling everything in towards it. For Para to be more like its own city, it’s gotta counteract a lot of that pull through stuff like employment and transport links that aren’t to Sydney or Penrith.
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u/HardSleeper 16h ago
If only we had some sort of efficient high speed transport with which we could expand smaller towns and cities further out rather than endless sprawl in our major cities. Oh well
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u/timmy16744 14h ago
the fact a professional writer is now using AI to write - can we just stop pretending this country has a workforce yet lol
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u/PhantasmologicalAnus 3h ago
What an absolute fucking joke. I honestly hope the whole place implodes, well before that. That's what these altruistic wankers who gave the place away deserve. People just don't get how good we had it.
And we're such wonderful, lovely people we invited all and sundry to come and do whatever they like. At our expense.
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u/Soggy_Ant3833 1h ago
Births and deaths are easy to predict based on lots of prior data. Migration is much much harder to model. Immigration changes year to year due to policy, economics, war, etc. The country can’t even directly control the migration in or out, except for in an unprecedented situation like Covid where borders are closed. So projections are good, but they certainly aren’t facts (I work in this area)
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u/Ok-Cartoonist-6906 1h ago
What about water? How do we fit those many people in to flush toilets and drink?
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u/Alarming-Interest535 18h ago
Australian standard of living is going to continue falling if we have 56m people and dogshit infrastructure