Queensland Premier Anna Bligh recently floated the idea of dishing out $3000 bonuses to people to go and live in the ‘bush’ instead of in the population-stressed southeast corner of the state. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3238

This was ridiculed and she seems to have entirely dropped idea or any debate on it.

If Bligh is willing to commit many millions of taxpayer dollars in bonuses to incentivise people to locate away from southeast Queensland, then why wouldn’t she be willing to implement disincentives for people wanting to move into SEQ, by way of erecting new taxes, levees, surcharges, etc for new residents??

She’d be increasing state revenue and not imposing a further drain on current taxpayers (and voters). Sounds eminently sensible and politically achievable to me! Wouldn’t she get a lot of support from the voting public of SEQ if she did this?

This really is so basic. In a region with obvious population pressure, people should definitely have to pay extra to move in. Either this or we should have a one-in, one-out system, whereby people can only move in at the same rate as current residents leave or drop off the perch!

On Stateline yesterday evening, Bligh said;

“With 2000 new people coming here every single week, I need to make sure, any Government needs to make sure that we are getting ahead of the infrastructure and the services that people need.” http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/12/04/2762723.htm

She clearly sees this population growth as presenting major pressure on existing infrastructure and that it will take enormous efforts just to keep up the same level of infrastructure and services for ever-more people and her absolute best efforts to actually get ahead!!

And yet she has dismissed the idea of a population cap or of even doing anything to slow the influx!!

Surely it is absolutely time to consider ways of slowing Queensland's population growth rate!!

Is there anybody out there who disagrees?

Well, you see, in Qld twenty years ago a new pin-up premier did away with most departmental blue collar housing, housing which enabled many working people to stay & live in so-called isolated areas. many such places were cohesive, fairly smooth running social communities because of the available housing. This premier (being academic) was unable to comprehend the consequences of sending all these departmental workers back to the southern centers & replacing them with short-term career public servants at double the wages costs & renting the now private speculator owned housing for up to ten times the cost.
So, twenty years later we have another premier who can't incite much needed blue collar workers to remote communities because housing is now unaffordable at $1200 to $1600 a week. Inconsequential bureaucrats occupy 99% of such housing because the Government can afford to fork out this kind of money. The communities are regressing because local workers can't afford to work let alone live there. 95% of manual work is being done by fly in fly out contractors.

Ludwig
Section 92 of the Australian Constitution says '... trade, commerce and intercourse among the states ... shall be absolutely free'.

This means that the Qld government could only charge Queenslanders for moving into SEQ, but not people moving there from other states. The political and pragmatic difficulties that such discriminatory charges would involve, are probably why they don't do it.

Thanks Peter.

But as I read it, there is nothing to prevent the implementation of monetary incentives to move into certain areas and disincentives to do likewise across state borders.

Afterall, differences in tax and general costs of living between the states amount to financial incentives or disincentives. So strictly, if what you are saying is true, then all states should have exactly the same taxes and levees, and for directly comparable properties, the same rates, rentals and real estate prices.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s92.html

I'd like to explore it further though. Do you know a constitutional expert of anyone else who could advise us on this?

Monetary incentives are THE single most cause of our dysfunctional society. Rather than moving somewhere because a place is appealing, people go to places they don't give a hoot about as long as they can rake in the $. Enough communities have already been brought to their knees this unsustainable speculation exploitation.
If you're really sincere about a more cohesive & functional society then do so at the Ballot Box & let pragmatic conservative government do it's job without perpetual distraction from the antics of irresponsible leftists.

Queensland is a basket case to start with, it is still suffering from the Joe years. Any thing would be hard to get off the ground in QLD.
When you travel through QLD you see thing that are years behind other states. There's a big lack on safety along QLD roads.
In Victoria the bush incentive is 4000 and works well, then again Victoria has infastructure, and roads worthy of driving on.