That doesn't surprise me Rhian, it is the same in my town. Of course, we pay for our doctors, no bulk billing in country towns, & few new arrivals will be found paying for medical services, or anything else for that matter.

I did mention this was a major public hospital, even us Ozzies get it free at them, as do all these blow ins.

One good thing I noticed was all those fool transit lanes that cost greatly to install a few years back, have disappeared from the expressway. Thank god for that. I wonder where a little burst of common sense came from. It could not have been from our idiot town planners who pushed the things through in the first place.

The stupidity of giving busses & taxis preference could only come from a town planner.

We the motorists have even a little win over the fool planners out in the suburbs. A new roundabout built by a developer of an industrial estate had dictated bike lanes. Not only that, but it had little concrete islands with, would you believe, steel posts a bit less than a metre high, sticking up out of them delineating the bike lanes.

Very hard to see at night, these posts had been hit many times over about 3 months by cars, & stupidly replaced. The other day the islands, complete with the offending posts were removed by jack hammer.

I wonder that bit of stupidity by planners cost to build, & remove. Probably only a small fraction of the cost the long suffering motorists in repairing the cars that hit them.

What is it in the nature, or education of planners that makes them so hate motorists?

Rhian,

Growth in wages certainly has occurred, but it has been very anemic compared to growth in house prices and utility bills especially in the biggest cities. See the graph in this link for house prices in Australian cities over time as multiples of the median wage

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-02/janda-why-housing-affordability-isn't-being-fixed/6514766

Wages have gone up, but people's main expenses have gone up even more. The people who are selling the houses are obvious winners from this - a clear distributional effect. Population growth is not the only factor in this, of course, but it is hard to see how house prices could have been driven up so much without it.

Electricity prices have doubled over the past 7 years, and the government tells us that this is primarily due to network costs, which would have to go up with population.

http://www.industry.gov.au/Energy/EnergyMarkets/Documents/ELECTRICITY-PRICES-FACTSHEET.pdf

Government spending as a share of GDP has been fairly constant since 2000, but our government has actually been spending less on us on a per capita basis according to Richard Denniss of the Australia Institute

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/07/the-australia-institute-slams-the-population-ponzi/

You can claim that the infrastructure problem only exists because Bob Carr and other politicians are incompetent, but I would be interested in your explanation as to why *all* of them in every city and state are apparently incompetent.

Hi Divergence

Many factors have contributed to rising energy prices including the need to invest in networks because of previous under-investment, government policies, especially growth in renewables, and rising fuel prices. The need to update existing networks is the main reason for growing network costs, not the need to expand them. And, as I have already indicated, these costs are full reflected in the price index used to calculate real wages.

House prices are not fully reflected in the Consumer Price Index, and I agree housing has got less affordable. Immigration may have been a factor, but so has natural population growth, falling household size, low interest rates, deregulated financial markets, government subsidies for first time buyers, rising construction costs and regulations that prevent supply for increasing to match demand growth. The article you link to points says that “Record low and stable interest rates are precisely the reason housing has become less affordable.” Not population.

I didn’t say Carr was incompetent, but he has indulged in a common sleight of hand used by politicians to make it seem that their governments have increased spending a lot on something when in fact they haven’t – by showing the aggregate increase over a long period of time. I merely pointed out that the growth in investment he described is almost exactly in line with GDP growth. Put another way, real growth in capital spending of two thirds over 15 years equates to 3.4% growth a year.

All levels of government have cut their levels of spending on capital relative to other things. This partly reflects economies of scale ( e.g. a bigger population will probably spend less per capita on roads) but also the fact that government has prioritised other things. This has created some infrastructure bottlenecks, but outside Sydney these have not been severe. Most Australian capitals compare well internationally for liveability.

tbc ...

... cont

Richard Denniss is right to say that it’s real per capita spending that counts, not total spending. But he is wrong to say these have declined (as he is often wrong about many things). Between 2005-06 and 2014-15, Australia’s population rose from 20.4 million to 23.7 million (16%) while its Consumer Price Index rose from 84.9 to 107.3 (26%). So government spending over that period would have to rise by 47% to maintain its real per capita value. But in fact, health sending rose by 79%, education by 70%, and total general government spending by 75%. Or, by my preferred measure (not to do what I accuse Bob Carr of doing), real per capita health spending rose at an average of 2.2% a year over the past nine years, education at 1.7%, and total spending at 1.9%.

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5512.02014-15?OpenDocument

Rhian,

It clearly costs money to expand networks as well as updating them. You haven't given figures on the actual percentages. Talk about real wages also obscures very real differences between social classes. People in the bottom deciles spend a higher proportion of their income on energy than those in the top ones.

So far as housing is concerned, construction costs haven't gone up in real terms since 1996. See the 4th graph from the top

http://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/the-road-to-private-serfdom,8870

The Institute of Family Studies says that household size has changed little since 1996.

http://aifs.gov.au/facts-and-figures/households-australia

Yet house prices have gone up enormously since then. According to the ABS (as of Dec. 2015) 54.3% of our population growth in the previous year was due to immigration and the rest to natural increase. Natural increase doesn't just include births to Australian born people, however. Migrants have babies just like everyone else. Second generation migrants are about 20% of the population, and I have read that about a third of babies now being born in Australia have at least one parent born overseas. With no net immigration and a fertility rate that has been slightly below replacement level since 1976, we would still be getting some population growth due to demographic momentum, but only at perhaps a quarter of our current population growth rate and declining all the time.

Here is an age distribution app.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-09/interactive-infographics-census-2011-australia-transformed/2829132

Obviously the demand for houses would be very much less, so it would be much more difficult to drive up prices.

People in Melbourne would be surprised to know that they don't have any infrastructure bottlenecks. I read complaints about it all the time.

If the politicians can afford to fix the infrastructure problems and have simply chosen not to do so, then they are incompetent.

Much of the 'population growth', 'immigration' and 'unemployment' perceptions are wrong.

There is a low correlation between NOM net overseas migration (movements of all travellers) and population growth, whilst the emerging driver is the cumulative effect of an increasingly ageing population, e.g. 85 years and over is the fastest growing cohort.

Nor is there any linkage between immigration and unemployment, according to research (as opposed to confected 'truisms' and opinion):

'Immigration is not to blame for cuts to jobs and wages. The suggestion that bringing 457 visa workers from overseas is coming at the expense of “local jobs” reinforces the myth that immigration causes unemployment and drives down wages.

In fact evidence from Australia and internationally shows that immigration actually creates jobs. In his book, Immigration and the Australian Economy, William Foster’s surveys over 200 studies on immigration and wages. He found there was, “a marginally favourable effect on the aggregate unemployment rate, even in recession”.

In a 2003 paper economist Hsiao-chuan Chang wrote that, “there is no evidence that immigrants take jobs away from the local Australian over the past twelve years… This supports the conclusion from existing research”.

This is because new migrants generate demand for products and services, such as housing and food. Many of them bring savings to help pay for these things, further boosting the economy and jobs.'

http://www.solidarity.net.au/mag/back/2012/48/immigration-is-not-to-blame-for-cuts-to-jobs-and-wages/

Further both (temp + permanent) immigrants and younger generations have become net contributors, supporting ever growing numbers of oldies and net beneficiaries who have access to services, benefits and the vote.