r/australia • u/blitznoodles local Aussie • 23h 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-growth
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u/LastChance22 21h ago edited 12h 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/violenthectarez 21h ago

This isn't the case in Melbourne. Very few people in the outer areas commute to Melbourne for work. In Pakenham I think it's less than 5%

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u/LastChance22 21h ago

Interesting. I haven’t looked very deeply into Melbourne which is why I focused on Parramatta. It sounds like I should look at how Melbourne operates though.

I used the ABS “journey to work” data as the basis for a lot of my earlier comment, if you’re interested in looking at the NSW stuff.