I just returned back from our annual visit to Australia to see family, etc. We've done this for the past 5 years or so - every 12 months we get to spend 3 weeks back home. Each year it feels more and more crowded. Not that Australia isn't some massive landmass with only 25 million people in it. I mean on the surface it appears like it has a wealth of resources, and you could spread population well over its vast landscape.
However where it took hundreds if not thousands of years for other countries to grow their population, Australia is attempting to do this so fast that it is literally killing the country. The following graph shows the rate of population increase in the past 13 or so years, as compared with more mature countries in Europe that have actually reduced their population. Funny thing is that the European countries have had better GDP and productive wealth increases when compared with Australia, particularly in the past 5 or so years.
The rate of growth is not healthy or sustainable. This growth is fueled by immigration, specifically from Asian regions (e.g. China, India, etc.). When we landed in Sydney airport, 80% of the people frequenting the international terminal were of Asian decent. When we left the Sydney airport 3 weeks later, all the workers directing traffic were of India descent. I'm not specific about an individual race here, and I'm definitely not a racist, but the reality is that the open immigration policies that the Australian government have had over the past 10 or so years has created such a problem with chaos, turmoil and high real estate costs, that the burden is shifted onto the backs of existing citizens who live there. The cost of an average house in the Sydney surburbs is north of $1 million and wages have not grown to enable people to afford it.
In my home town of Adelaide, there is an inner city in a square mile that is surrounded by parklands. In that city, where all the skyscrapers are, half of the city has been literally taken over with short term accommodation flats growing high into the sky - fueled by foreign student VISA programs that are offered by the University of South Australia. All the restaurants on the west side of the city cater more to the student population, and as a result the signage looks more like something in Hong Kong, than in Adelaide.
There is no planning to accommodate this increase in population. No city planners are growing infrastructure to support it - certainly not fast enough to keep pace with the influx. The railways were pretty much shut down 20 years ago, and airports get little or no upgrade attention. Roads are pathetic and dangerous - I've only seen worse driving in Mexico, to be honest. The amount of road fatalities are high, and I have been a victim in a fatal car accident in Australia to testify to the authenticity of that.
You would think that a country with these obvious issues would be investing in infrastructure. Nope. Apparently Australia has a AAA credit rating and the government do not wish to borrow any money to support the future of the country. They are willing to increase population in the endless pursuit of "growth" but have no plans for sustainability. The children will inherit this mess, but well before that the politicians will have left with their golden parachutes for greener pastures.
There are some willing to speak out, the most prominent is Dick Smith. Dick Smith has become the reality check to this in Australia and is kinda like the "Down Under Ron Paul". 8 out of 10 Australians agree with his sentiment, which is best summed up in this video:
But the problems in Australia are just an example of the same issues that will face the rest of the world as we race towards 10 billion population. Food supplies are limited, housing no longer affordable; famine and war is inevitable. When resources are constrained, craziness ensues.
This is not in anyway support for US policies that are clearly anti-immigrant. I mean there are ways to handle immigration in a humane and decent manner. But there is still a need to handle it. Walls don't help anyone, but maybe recognizing that a neighbor who may have something really good to offer could have their economies supported and bolstered and then you wouldn't have tens of thousands of their own people fleeing for a better life, because they had one at home. One with their families and in their local community. Not some frayed pretend family where members are on one side of a border, living in fear, in the shadows, just trying to make money to send it back home, only to find banksters stealing 30% of what they make as extortion to pass the money back to the family.
We have so many problems here in the pursuit of population exploitation, but if we don't recognize this now, we will never have any chance to solve it. I don't know the solution, but I do recognize unsustainable growth when I see it. I just hope the Australia public do as well, and they put pressure on their leaders to curb this vagrant abuse of immigration policy in pursuit of economic short term gain and long term destruction.