Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When Prime Minister Rudd boasted about updated forecasts of a population explosion in Australia over the next four decades, it was a hackneyed and somewhat grating pronouncement of support for a big Australia that ignored the very warnings of the Secretary of the Treasury of the policy challenges such population growth presented. Mr Rudd’s reaction was a default to his diplomacy DNA that makes bigger always better for those claiming representative status in foreign lands, when a bigger nation makes the diplomat a bigger deal. It was a really careless remark from the Prime Minister, with Mr Rudd thumbing his nose at genuine community concern and already evident problems and growing pains in our major cities. Traffic congestion, water shortages, energy demand pressures, climate impacts, sprawling suburbs, public transport underservicing and overcrowding, work and family life dislocation, food security concerns as near-city productive agricultural land gives way to housing pressures, land use tensions and land release blockages, poor access to some key services, and diminished liveability and amenity are just some of the current population concerns the Rudd Labor government seems perfectly happy to ignore.

The plea from Secretary Henry for coherent and coordinated policy action to address the predicted population growth has been passed over by Prime Minister Rudd and his Labor government in favour of more big talk and political spin. The lack of any coherent strategic plan to accommodate Australia’s rapidly expanding population in a sustainable and durable way while maintaining and improving the quality of life and living standards is one of the most glaring failures of the Rudd government on the eve of its second anniversary in power. That is not just the coalition’s assessment but a shared view from across the community.

A report commissioned by the Business Council of Australia has echoed the concerns raised by the coalition. The Business Council is reported to have said:

People won’t have confidence in population growth unless they feel their standard of living is going to be better as a result.

Accounts of the Rudd government infrastructure spend put the proportion of spending towards productive infrastructure at only $1 in $7. There is no sign that this expenditure has been used in a catalytic way to better prepare infrastructure, city systems and policy for a cleaner growth economy. This was the theme of the Australian Davos Connection transformational change work that the Prime Minister was happy to be associated with but apparently unwilling to embrace.

Just today, the Property Council of Australia pressed for new action and institutional structures to cope with urban renewal and future growth in Sydney, reflecting the coalition’s call for coherent and coordinated city-wide strategies for our major cities. Bringing strategic land use, infrastructure and transport planning together will help to better use existing land and assets and will help cities cope with and prepare for forecast population growth.

Just last week, the Rapid, Active and Affordable Transport Alliance canvassed the related themes of land use planning, density challenges, infrastructure improvements, capacity limits and congestion and the need for integrated and interconnected strategic plans that encourage investment in a more sustainable set of options for citizens so they can choose to help cities better cope with current pressures and the added challenges of vastly increasing populations.

Despite Mr Rudd’s pre-election noises, two years on and we still have no coordinated strategic plan on how our future population will be settled, no accountable plan to fund and deliver the infrastructure needed to accompany this population explosion he so welcomes and embraces, no cleaner growth strategy to provide the employment and economic vigour to maintain prosperity and living standards, no identification of the critical natural systems and essential land uses most at risk or challenged by growth pressures; and no accounting for the liveability of great cities like Melbourne but with twice the population. Population size, composition and settlement trends are both a key input and a consequence of policy action and inaction. How to influence it and what to do with it are key ongoing pressures for any competent government concerned about the national interest, as was evident with the former coalition government’s intergenerational analysis and action in response to this groundbreaking report’s findings.

Mr Rudd has opted to do nothing, in favour of a boast of a more populous Australia on a business-as-usual basis—a population explosion in Australia. He has displayed a complete lack of any clear forward agenda. What is desperately needed is the kind of leadership and joined-up government policy responses offered by the coalition, where policy is not constrained by departmental ‘silos’, and a whole-of-government approach and strategies can be implemented by a portfolio dedicated to dealing with two of the great policy challenges of our time: rampant population growth and cities growing and groaning under their own popularity. It is time for the Rudd Labor government to take these compelling policy issues seriously. The Prime Minister’s glib attempts to say that he has the consequences covered are simply not backed up by facts and are as contemptuous as they are concerning. (Time expired)