The government wants to boost migrant numbers but they’ll end up in Melbourne

Melbourne is already too crowded, with traffic chaos — so why does the mayor want more people? And why would we want more migrants?

Under a smiling headshot of Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp we learned last Sunday that she wants Melbourne to have a population of six million people.

The head of the city council — that has turned the CBD into a no-go zone — was bragging that Melbourne will be bigger in population than Sydney.

Capp talks it up as if it’s some achievement and something to be proud of. Why?

Sally tells us this will happen in 2032 — less than 10 years from now.

No matter apparently that Sally Capp has no role in wider metropolitan Melbourne, and that she presumes to speak for all of us.

Capp says she’s not surprised Melbourne will overtake Sydney in population numbers and then makes the tortured argument that people want to come to Melbourne because of affordable housing and lifestyle.

Lord Mayor Sally Capp wants Melbourne to have a population of six million people. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Adding to the housing and lifestyle claim, she says one attraction of Melbourne is better job opportunities than rival city, Sydney. As usual, I’m not sure Sally looked at the latest unemployment numbers before making this boast.

In Australia in January the ACT (Canberra) had the lowest jobless rate at 2.9 per cent, down from 3.1 per cent, with NSW next best at 3.2 per cent, while Victoria posted 3.6 per cent, up by 0.1 per cent.

But hey, why let facts get in the way when you are prosecuting the case to jam another 800,000 people into a city that clearly can’t cope with the population it has now?

That’s another eight grand final crowds and their cars on the road, with more pressure on housing prices, competition for childcare places and beds in a hospital system on the brink of collapse.

How could anyone who lives here actually make the case that we need more people jammed into our city?

You really wonder if the chief cheer leader for a bigger Melbourne ever travels outside her inner-city bubble — between Carlton and her mayoral office at Town Hall.

I guess if you live that close to work you could use one of the street-polluting Lime scooters to commute rather than sit in a traffic jam at the Hoddle St end of the Eastern Freeway?

How else could you explain enthusiasm for making Melbourne and its overcrowded major roads even more of a commuting headache?

Just take the past Tuesday as a snapshot of the already crowded Melbourne we live in.

The Monash Freeway, which was a construction zone for years to widen its capacity, was at a standstill — both in and out-bound — with merging accidents creating chaos.

The West Gate Freeway in-bound was dealing with a nose-to-tail and the construction of the over budget and late West Gate tunnel, that makes travel from the west a daily nightmare.

Motorists experiencing three hour delays on the West Gate Freeway on December 28, 2022, when four lanes closed. Picture: Mark Stewart

This is the reality of life in Melbourne in 2023 unless you are one of thousands of public servants still allowed to work from home.

State government transport projects – if they ever get built – might relieve some of the frustrating commuter pressure in the future but that’s on a current population of 5.2 million people not the six million Capp is clapping her hands for.

Nationally, Canberra is no better with the federal government planning to throw open the immigration gates boosting new migrant numbers from a pre Covid level of 248,000 annually to 300,000 a year.

And guess where the bulk of those 300,000 people will end up? In either Melbourne or Sydney.

Rather than celebrating adding to Melbourne’s population, people in positions like the one Sally Capp holds should be trying to work out how to spread Australia’s population out to the regions.

Naturally that doesn’t suit an outfit like the Melbourne City Council because it’s desperate to boost population within its boundaries to grab rates revenue and development levies.

Protesters at a rally in Sunshine in February this year chanted “migrants and refugees welcome, Nazi gyms are not”. Picture: Josie Hayden

This becomes obvious as the Lord Mayor, in the same population celebration piece, spruiks two new housing projects — one at Fishermen’s Bend and another in North Melbourne.

For anyone living around Fishermen’s Bend – people in suburbs like Port Melbourne, Garden City and Beacon Cove – get set for Sally Capp’s prediction of houses for 80,000 extra residents.

That’s her claim — 80,000 more people!

In North Melbourne, more figures plucked from the sky by the Lord Mayor, include catering for 34,000 workers and 15,000 residents.

Centred around the Metro Tunnel’s new Arden Station you had better hope all those workers can catch the train to these new unspecified jobs.

The West Gate Bridge is already heaving with traffic at peak hour, so why would Melburnians want more residents and people on our roads? Picture: Mark Stewart

Capp is also celebrating the fact we have welcomed back 104,000 international students to study in Melbourne this year.

Melbourne can be a great place to live in and work — no-one can argue with that. The problem is, however, that Melbourne is at breaking point right now.

It’s full.

Local politicians like Sally Capp should be working overtime making life for the people who live here already more comfortable not pushing for inane records like being Australia’s biggest city – who cares about something as destructive as that claim?

Living day to day in Melbourne, if you are forced to commute to work, has become a traffic nightmare.

Post Covid traffic numbers are about back to normal and not everyone can access public transport.

Sally — our hospitals can’t cope, rents are through the roof, the medium house price is nudging a million dollars and you claim we offer “affordable homes”?

We don’t want to be bigger, Sally, just better.

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Originally published as The government wants to boost migrant numbers but they’ll end up in Melbourne