Ignore the NIMBY nonsene. Adelaide is far from full | David Penberthy

If you’re one of those South Australians convinced that Adelaide can’t handle anymore people, there are a few home truths you need to accept, writes David Penberthy.

If we are going to maintain our quality of living, South Australia needs to have a much more sensible and worldly discussion around the question of population.

The idea that South Australia is somehow “full” is nonsense.

The idea that urban infill is at the point where our suburbs are now inhabitable is completely overblown.

The idea that building a few thousand homes in regional SA spells the end of farmland as we know it is an exaggeration at best.

SA wants everything and nothing when it comes to questions of housing and population.

We want better hospitals, better aged care, better public transport, more police.

We also want no more people.

At a time when employers both public and private are unable to find workers across every key industry, how is our state going to operate without any increase in the number of humans living here?

The rate at which our population is growing is sluggish both by world and national standards. To drive up our population there are two things we can do.

We can get off the couch and into the bedroom and increase our birthrate. Or we can attract more migrants beyond the current small proportion who choose to settle in SA, versus the much larger numbers in the eastern states.

Premier Peter Malinauskas jokes with apprentice Zac Holt at a Seaton housing. Picture: NewsWire / Roy VanDerVegt

Neither of those things are happening. The one thing that is driving population growth is the downward reduction in the number of South Australians leaving to find work elsewhere, a welcome reversal of the long standing brain drain, but that alone is hardly creating an unmanageable surge in people.

Despite these three facts, the view from so many South Australians is that we are already full to bursting.

To people who say that, I’d politely suggest they get out more.

In terms of ease of movement, South Australia and Adelaide remain an absolute breeze compared to most cities in the world.

Think about how long it takes to travel the short distance from Kingsford Smith Airport to the Sydney CBD during peak hour. In that amount of time you could get from North Tce to the Barossa and be sitting at Rockford having a chilled glass of black shiraz.

Think about how long it takes and how much it costs to get from Tullamarine into central Melbourne.

Think about how much it costs to use a car in Sydney or Melbourne with all their toll roads too. I have friends in Sydney who were paying close to $100 a week to get from A to B, before the Minns government acknowledged cost-of-living concerns with a $60 weekly cap on the toll road spend. Imagine living in a city where you still had to pay up to 60 bucks a week just to use the roads.

There are three things we South Australians are fond of saying which are mutually inconsistent.

SA is a great place to retire.

SA is a great place to bring up kids.

SA has such a great quality of life that you wouldn’t change a thing.

In the minds of many, the assertion that we shouldn’t change a thing means we should cap our population at current levels, or wind it back even further to address the apparently crushing level of dysfunction we have already reached.

Good luck with that if you also want SA to be a great place to retire or bring up kids.

The sixth and most recent edition of the Commonwealth’s Intergenerational Report was released in August 2023.

Former Prime Minister John Howard with Treasurer Peter Costello in 2007.

The report was the brainchild of former federal treasurer Peter Costello, first released in the early years of the Howard government as Australian began to confront the realities of its ageing population.

I was in the Canberra press gallery when the first report came out and in the almost three decades since the scale and nature of our ageing challenge has worsened to a degree no-one foresaw in the 1990s.

The 2023 report showed that over the next 40 years – by 2062 – the Australian population will increase to 40.5 million.

Anyone who is alarmed by that figure should read on.

The report also showed that over that same time frame, the number of Australians over the age of 65 would more than double, while the number over 85 will more than triple.

The report warned that this demographic shift would require the aged-care sector workforce to double by 2062.

The problem here is that so many of us are now going to live forever, or close to forever, compared to the early 1900s when the pension was framed with a retirement age of 65.

Back then, if you lived to 65 you were regarded as some kind of machine. These days if you die at 65, everyone bemoans the fact that you were cut down in your prime.

So the question becomes how on earth are we going to staff our aged-care homes and retirement villages without any corresponding increase in our population?

How are we going to make sure that our grandchildren have access to properly staffed childcare so that our adult children can work to pay off the now exorbitant cost of their house?

A new aged care facility proposed by Resthaven for Marion. Picture: Brown Falconer

The short answer: We can’t, unless we have a whole lot more people.

For the purposes of this piece, I have only focused on those two areas, aged care and childcare, which are already experiencing huge challenges filling positions.

In passing, I’d say good luck delivering on the AUKUS contract without a sizeable extra chunk of humanity.

We saw this week that the population debate in this state remains trapped in a silly pincer movement, with Unley Residents Against Urban Infill on one side and People of Roseworthy Against Urban Sprawl on the other.

The bottom line is that we need more people and we need to put them somewhere. A blend of regional development and urban infill seems a fair answer.

The alternative?

By 2062, our local Resthavens will look like those Japanese love hotels where you swipe yourself in with a credit card and spend the night there, untroubled by the presence of any actual staff.