By Leith van Onselen

Yesterday’s annual population data for Australia’s capital cities revealed that Melbourne’s population grew by an insane 108,000 people in the 2015-16 financial year:

With the city adding a whopping one million people (a 27% increase) in the 12 years to 2016:

Micro-data from the ABS also revealed that the lion’s share of Melbourne’s population increase has occurred in the Northern and Western Suburbs:

And predictably, this has caused massive problems for infrastructure in these areas, which has reached breaking point. From The Age today:

When Gaurav Surati moved to Australia 13 years ago, he went to Sydney. Shocked by the cost of living there, he came to Melbourne, moving to the city’s north “without much knowledge of the suburbs”. After he’d been there a while, he realised something: Melbourne’s outer northern suburbs are in a bad way. “The congestion on these roads … [they are like] something that was designed 50 years ago,” says the Indian-born IT worker. Melbourne is booming, faster than ever before, and the city’s northern and north-west suburbs are bearing the brunt of this rapid growth – which is outstripping anywhere else in Australia. But new infrastructure has not kept up with the demands of new residents… A month ago, Mr Surati started posting in a closed Facebook group, Dire state of infrastructure in Northern suburbs of Melbourne. It now has almost 700 members… “Everyone’s gripe is the same thing: the roads, the train station, the traffic. As a side effect, because of this frustration, people are more prone to breaking the laws”… “They should have done a lot earlier, with roads and other infrastructure. They’re just trying to play catch up now, and I’m not sure they ever will.”

I’ve got news for you, Mr Surati: the infrastructure situation is going to get much worse. The Victorian Government’s own population projections have Melbourne’s population growing by 97,000 people per annum (1,870 people a week) over the next 30 years to more than 8 million by 2051:

The fact of the matter is that there is no way that the State Government can build enough infrastructure to keep up with this growth. It hasn’t done so as Melbourne’s population ballooned by one million over the past 12 years, and it won’t do so as it’s population rises by another 3.4 million people over the next 35 years.

Instead of complaining to your Facebook group, how about you and your 700 members lobby the federal and state government to rein-in Australia’s mass immigration program? It is mass immigration, after all, that is driving Melbourne’s population growth and destroying living standards for you and your fellow citizens.

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