Sensational-Adelaide.com

Heaven can wait: SA needs more people now!
Ron Dent

Spotted lunching quietly at a city restaurant recently were business supremo Peter Vaughan and the state government’s Social Inclusion Commissioner and man of the cloth, Monsignor David Cappo. Treasurer and deputy premier Foley was sufficiently intrigued at seeing the pair together to leave his own lunch party for a heads up. Separation of church and state prevailed and the minister of the crown had to content himself with heartfelt thanks about payroll tax relief and big budget social infrastructure development.

The Review understands the representatives of heaven and mammon hit it off famously, the more so when the Monsignor told Vaughan that the thing South Australia needed most was population growth. Perhaps the good priest had done his pre-lunch homework but that was music to the ears of the business lobbyist who passionately believes the issue is the Holy Grail of South Australia’s future prosperity.

Vaughan has continued to evangelise to anyone who will listen that the state plan to achieve a population of two million by 2050, while a step in the right direction, is not bold enough. While latest figures show we could have two million souls on the ground by 2035, Business SA wants that critical mass achieved inside a decade.

Inspired by the interchange, Cappo might just have championed the cause in the inner sanctum. Though the topic might reasonably be included in any catholic priest’s prayers, the Monsignor also has the ear of Premier and Cabinet, and since the meeting over broken bread and wine there appears to be new movement afoot. The Review went diligently about the requisite digging required in such matters – only to find all parties, especially the relevant government agencies, very coy about providing information. That suggests there’s almost certainly something afoot, and it’s probably good news, so, as we sometimes say, watch this space, and, you saw it here first.

Meanwhile, there really is good news to report. President of the Australian Population Institute in SA, Michael Hickinbotham, is delighted with the progress being made to swell the state‘s numbers, pointing to last year’s full one per cent increase being at a 16-year high. “It’s a breakthrough,” Hickinbotham said, “a really good result for SA – up from a steady point four of one per cent to the full one per cent is just a brilliant result and a turnaround I wouldn’t have believed achievable if you’d suggested it to me three to four years ago.

“You know I was thinking about it walking through the city today. It was busy and looked lively with lots of students and other young people. It was good to see some dynamism.”
Hickinbotham warns, however, against complacency, saying that while the recent increase is a good start there is still a long way to go. “There’s been some terrific work done on this. It just shows we can achieve a lot by working together”. He pointed to various government agencies, business and both sides of politics pulling in the same direction, with a “special mention for the federal Libs”, who played a major role in getting preferential treatment for migrants willing to commit to settlement in South Australia, a booster that has had a positive effect and is attracting the ire of Western Australia and a concession Hickinbotham says we should fight to keep.

Earlier in the week population growth and migration were on the national lips through ABC radio’s Australia Talks Back program, albeit that supporters of the need for growth were drowned out by the cacophony of those opposed on ecological and, more sadly, on nakedly racist grounds. A retired economics teacher floating somewhere along the coast pushed the Geoffrey Blainey view that Australia should only encourage migration when it needed it. South Australia does! ‘Trev’ from Perth neatly ignored the fact that not being of Indigenous stock meant he was able to stride the wide brown land only because someone in his family tree had come here from somewhere else. He railed against migrants to Britain causing all its troubles, at best a broad brush of the canvass, and certainly ignorant of the Home Office study raised by former Economic Development Board chief Robert DeCrespigny who pointed to its findings that for every one per cent of migration the local economy grows by up to one and a half per cent. Radio callers included the usual bunch of miserable, white supremacists whose forbears arrived as “Anglo-Saxon Christians” and their offspring want to keep the place just the way they made it. Other callers to the ABC pushed the eco line that the world is already over populated, while someone else countered that those consumers of the world’s resources will do so wherever they are. A rare correspondent saw the three major reasons in favour of migration as being the cultural enrichment of Australian society, the economic benefit and a humanitarian obligation – “perhaps our biggest responsibility to the world” – to share the opportunity for a better life with its poorer people. Hickinbotham is adamant South Australia has the capacity to encourage more migrants to call South Australia home but advocates a measured, deliberate approach. “It brings its own set of challenges – managing environmental issues, sustainable water, urban growth, available housing and jobs – all legitimate issues to be raised, discussed and planned for (but) these growth challenges are far better than dealing with the disaster of spiralling population decline.”

Vaughan, who first floated the idea of SA being made a migration “zone of special significance”, advocates migration to help build capacity, especially to ease the chronic nationwide labour shortage that is being felt here as the economy begins to surf the resources and defence manufacturing waves.

Apparently, those beyond our borders are beginning to hear the message. Very positive stories have appeared in the national press in the past week about South Australia’s continuing economic resurgence. Besides raising our morale, that will help attract the people we need to grow and prosper and may also go some way towards countering the drift of people, especially our younger best and brightest, across interstate borders – the one dark cloud on an otherwise brighter horizon.

Vaughan has continued to evangelise to anyone who will listen that the state plan to achieve a population of two million by 2050, while a step in the right direction, is not bold enough. While latest figures show we could have two million souls on the ground by 2035, Business SA wants that critical mass achieved inside a decade.

stelaras wrote: Ide be following very carefully, even though i think that achieving 2million people in the next 10 years is a little laughable....

Im struggling with the concept that people from the eastern seaboard and to the North of Australia, would move en mass to Adelaide.

stelaras wrote:Mass migration won't help in my opinion either, because other than refugee's you would be hard pushed to get 1 million people moving from the US, England and Europe.

AtD wrote:One small hurdle, many international qualifications aren't recognised anywhere in SA. For example, a German Masters of Economics only counts as Bachelors here, even though it's a year longer and requires a thesis. If your degree is from somewhere like India, forget it.

Or else we’ll have doctors driving taxis, and brain surgeons running bakeries.

AG wrote:Paris has very few buildings taller than 10 floors within it's city proper limits (most of the tallest buildings are in La Defence), yet it has densities in some of it's city's districts well in excess of 20000 people per square kilometre.

AtD wrote:One small hurdle, many international qualifications aren't recognised anywhere in SA. For example, a German Masters of Economics only counts as Bachelors here, even though it's a year longer and requires a thesis. If your degree is from somewhere like India, forget it.

stelaras wrote:Yes, Im sure that if we rezone all immediate suburbs on the borders of Adelaide City to be inculded within Adelaide city we to, can have a Paris like density and get real close to the magic mark of 65,000 people.

The ultimate idea, is to have high density living within the current city of Adelaide designation.

AtD wrote:One small hurdle, many international qualifications aren't recognised anywhere in SA. For example, a German Masters of Economics only counts as Bachelors here, even though it's a year longer and requires a thesis. If your degree is from somewhere like India, forget it.

Or else we’ll have doctors driving taxis, and brain surgeons running bakeries.