Ever since the Penrith by-election, we’ve been hearing endlessly about Western Sydney as the epicentre of the Australian political nation. The population “debate” proclaims that we need to “pause” as outer suburban areas groan under population pressure and failing infrastructure. Immigration, and asylum seekers, are part of the picture, we’re told.
But how “full” is Western Sydney?
Over at Troppo, Don Arthur has taken an invaluable look at stats on population growth, and decline, across Sydney.
His conclusion? Contrary to the established narrative, trumpeted for years by Bob Carr, Sydney is not “full”. Things are a lot more complex than the political predicates for the policy debate would have us believe.
And it’s not surprising there’s plenty of room in Campbelltown. Between 2001 and 2006 , the population of the Campbelltown LGA fell by 2.1% — a net loss of 3,019 people.As the map below shows, many areas of Sydney experienced population decline between 2001 and 2006 (pdf). Some of the booming new suburbs of the 60s and 70s are slowly emptying out. While the children have grown up and moved on many of their parents have stayed behind. And when these empty nesters own their own home, there is little incentive to move. To pick just one example, between 2001 and 2006, Sutherland Shire added 2,494 new dwellings but failed to arrest the decline in population. With fewer people in each home, the number of residents fell by 1,015 (pdf).
You can see the same pattern in Brisbane. Suburbs once on the city’s fringes, with large houses built in the 60s and 70s, when the average number of kids was still above 2, are now inhabited largely by elderly residents. At the same time, houses are packed, by unscrupulous landlords, with international students and recent immigrants crammed into over-priced properties. Local shops have closed, and activity has retreated to huge shopping centres further out from or closer in to the city. Public transport is minimal, with a few shoppers’ buses wending their way through deserted streets a few times a day.
It’s these areas where the fear of crime, inspired by a populist and irresponsible media, really takes root.
Arthur observes:
In time, the new suburbs on the fringe will go into decline. But if travel to work times rise and petrol becomes more expensive, some may never undergo renewal. In the Atlantic Christopher Leinberger warned that America’s outer suburbs may become the new slums. There’s a risk that some of our new suburbs will too.
In truth, we’re reaping the rewards of decades of poor urban planning, exacerbated recently by the craven obeisance of state governments to the property development lobby.
There are no quick fixes, but we actually need to think about how we live in cities, and that may well entail giving up on the “wide open spaces” Julia Gillard invoked in the leaders’ debate last night.
Nothing in this campaign so far convinces me that a path to resolving problems of growth and decline in our urban footprint are really on the agenda.
The link to Don’s post isn’t working, it’s here.
Also to your sentence:
I’d add
I think you’re right to identify housing and tenancy as the major site of people’s experience of Sydney’s ‘fullness’, ie. an experience of very high demand and low vacancy. There’s a conflation of absolute population and availablity of housing to newcomers: in terms of affordable quality housing near major industrial/commercial centres, Sydney’s very full indeed.
@1 – Thanks, Liam, I’ve fixed the link.
I think you’re spot on on perceptions. There are some interesting parallels here with perceptions on crime too, as the post notes.
Ps – excellent work by both Don and Kim, imo.
Watching the ABC series Great Cities of the World one of the comments made was that Sydney was a remarkebly crime free city especially considering it’s history as a penal colony.
As for overcrowding…this cannot be fixed because anything that will fix the housing crisis will cause property prices to fall. Good for tenants like me but bad for pretty much the rest of society.
I’m in a situation where I pretty much have to vote against my interests in this area because older people have their money tied up in property investment.
Tssk, it’s not at all a public good for older people to have their assets tied up in property—it’s the most illiquid form of capital around, and the peculiar aspects of the Sydney market (domination by small investment landlords) mean that private housing for tenants is dependent on cowboy finance. It’s a recipe for housing insecurity: anything that bursts the investment property cult is in and of itself good public policy, if you ask me.
I’m over being kicked out of rented houses and flats because the landlords have to sell to meet their mortgage repayments—can’t be much fun for the landlord either.
Hear hear. May I especially note with appreciation the use of “wend” as a verb.
“May I especially note with appreciation the use of “wend” as a verb.”
Agreed, although I would like to point out that we do that every time we say ‘went’. What functions as a past tense conjugation of ‘to go’ is nothing of the sort – seomone just smuggled it in when ‘goed’ wasn’t paying attention and missed its shot at the Big Time.
Oops I forgot not to change monikers.
Stamp duty is I think a major cause of this problem. Households where the children have left home have an incentive to hold onto houses larger than they really need because of the money you lose to stamp duty. And couples starting out end up buying houses larger than they need because they want to have room for kids later on even if they don’t really need the space now.
Much better would be a land tax which would encourage people to have a house appropriate for their current needs, not past or future.
It may entail that – or it may not. That is the choice we can choose to make. This is in fact the nub of the debate.
Some will choose an NYC style future – some will choose the 1960s style Australia. Population size is the determinant of which way you go.
Others who worry more about climate and environment might conceivably adopt the position of both choosing greater urban concentration AND less population growth in order to maximise climate and environmental gains.
“There are no quick fixes, but we actually need to think about how we live in cities, and that may well entail giving up on the “wide open spaces” Julia Gillard invoked in the leaders’ debate last night. ”
Who the hell is “we”? I never get it when lefties says we, we, we this and we, we, we that.
But more to the point, we have an unholy alliance between inner and middle suburban lefties, luvvies and doctors’ wives constantly thwarting attempts to renew our cities by tearing down old buildings and putting up new more compact dwellings. For example in Melbourne we’ve had the execrable spectacle of Barry Humphries, Geoofrey Rush and assorted wealthy upper-middle class matrons trying to thwart the development of high density housing at Camberwell Station, the Greens trying to thwart high density housing developments in Northcote because it would mean a one-hundredth of one per cent reduction in the view from the top of the old tip and your very own Helen bray with indignation about the redevelopment of an old city hotel.
There is no point blaming “teh developers”.
Its a shame this didn’t get more consideration in Don’s analysis.
As a former resident of the Sutherland Shire, I have to say I am truly surprised to learn that is has had a declining population. With its train line, it has seen its share of urban consolidation, and seems to be a lot more crowded now than it was when I was young and it was more suburban and sleepy.
They key issue here is occupancy rates. Average occupancy has been dropping, and this explains how the Sutherland Shire and other places can seem more crowded despite a decrease in population – it is moving from detached housing with 4+ people per dwelling, to townhouses and units with 1-3 people per dwelling. Add to that, a probable increase in the number of cars per capita, and it is understandable that it seems more crowded to me, despite a decrease in population.
There are multiple ways this data could be argued:
* Sydney is full, or
* People need to consume less, especially less car ownership, or
* Infrastructure needs to be improved, or
* People need to get used to living with more people in the one house, or
* some or all of the above
Personally, I think the apparent declining population rates (at least in places like the Sutherland Shire) are deceptive. I think they say more about occupancy and attitudes to family life than they do about how “full” the area is.
People are getting married later, having kids later, spending a lot of time occupying a house without any kids in it, and, when they have kids, they are having 1 or 2 instead of 3 or 4.
Despite your common sense telling you this should be more sustainable, it means that average occupancy rates must fall, and that the same level of population requires more space and more dwellings, so the common sense isn’t evident in the story told by some of the data.
I think supermarkets have a big role to play here. They chuck in car parks and move further from the areas they serve, and suddenly everyone is cramming into their cars and driving to the same place, and feel like they’re best on all sides by the ravening hordes. The same is true in areas where everyone feels they need to drive their kids to school – the infrastructure would be sufficient if people used it wisely, i.e. walked.
It’s funny to see the ALP inherit this problem federally in the guise of concerns about immigration and population growth when the problem is being caused by poor infrastructure development at a state level – by the ALP!
Liam@5 “…the peculiar aspects of the Sydney market (domination by small investment landlords)”
Liam, what’s your source for this kind of information on the ‘demographics’ of rental property owners? I’ve heard people around the traps talk about a similar thing in Brisbane, that rental property ownership is concentrated in large investment portfolios and a large part of the rental crunch is ‘holiday homes’ that sit vacant for most of the year. I’d like to see some data myself.
d
I don’t have a source, Darryl, only, as you say, talk around the traps, especially the common experience in Sydney of the landlord’s dodgy cousin coming around to do major repairs. “Hallo, I am dodgy cousin Vlad, I fix your plumbing, see, duct tape!”
The only actual data to do with anything of the sort I know about is from 1997.
Also as a resident of Sydney I would have to say that any depopulation of the Sutherland Shire would be an overall public good.
Full is all about perception. Most Sydney voters, for example, have no faith in governments’ ability to get infrastructure settings right. It makes sense for them to resist higher population growth on those grounds alone. Of course, infrastructure is just one of the factors at play.
I need to hear more from the Big Australia faction in order to be able to make sense of this issue. What are the top four or five big reasons in favour of population growth? (Forget infrastructure and climate (let’s just assume the ideal world for argument’s sake.)
SCPritch’s comments push the debate along (#12).
Population numbers aren’t only thing that matters. An area with a large proportion of couple families with children will occupy fewer dwellings and have fewer car trips than an area where a higher proportion of the residents are adults living as singles or couples.
While a 12 year will make do with a bedroom in a family home, a single 65 year old will want their own home, car and perhaps a garden.
So it is possible to build more and more houses, have more cars looking for parking and still see the population fall.
Chris @9, you’ve clearly read the Henry Review report – that’s precisely what it says.
Of course, the pollies have all already run an absolute mile from a land tax. It amazes me how people blithely accept really badly designed taxes because they’re used to them, and won’t hear of then being replaced by better ones. As the old saw goes, the only politically possible tax is an old one.
How does one ever define full? Really depends on your philosophy of life, pace of life, attitude to work etc. What we need to be asking is not so much is it full but does it need to be any fuller. The real questions are:
1. Why do we need more immigrants? Why?
2. Is immigration to Australia just another way of fuelling the growth obsession and defending the capitalist economy? 3. Why do some on the left act to serve the big business agenda but thinking immigration in a progressive policy when it is more about capitalist workforces?
3. Is it really right that we poach the skilled middle class from countries like India to be our doctors and nurses because we refuse to train enough of our own?
I am pro refugee. I say double or triple the intake but stop poaching the skilled middle class from countries which need them. Immigration to Australia is a form of Western selfishness. The west took the resources. Now they are taking the people who would help lift these countries out of poverty.
I lived for a while in a block of units. With a house and yard you get more real estate for your money, more privacy and independence (no body corporate).
I’ve done lawns and gardening for heaps of oldies living alone. Usually they would rather die than go to an old folks home. It’s the memories, the independence, familiarity, ability to entertain the family with dignity and probably more.
I understand that the Henry review recommends eliminating stamp duty to make it easier to sell and move. He also recommends that land tax would apply to all homes, as an incentive to go, I guess.
Probably most politicians would squib such changes these days.
wbb @ 17, I don’t know about a Big Australia, but here are eight reasons for immigration. According to Peter McDonald five categories make up 88% of temporary migrants. These are overseas students, New Zealanders, 457 business visa-holders, working holiday-makers and tourists.
Temporary residents now make up 10% of Australian workers. If you don’t let them in stuff doesn’t get done.
Only the working holiday-makers are capped.
Other reasons would be humanitarian (refugees etc), skilled migration and family reunion. There may be some I’ve missed.
McDonald says that in the last 10 years employment grew by 2.1% while the population grew by 1.5%
The basic driver is demand in the labour market, so it is said.
Baby boomers come from larger families and are now retiring.
Tell Tones that if we go down his track there will be no-one to help him to the loo or bring his bed pan when he is old and frail.
Brian: “if you dont let them in, you don’t get stuff done”.
Meanwhile there are hundreds of thousands of Australians warehoused on various forms of welfare who never get a chance at even the shittier jobs, because employers, as ever, wont give locals a fair go.
Nuts to it.
And Spana’s comment is not unreasonable- we plunder the third world’s best, in such short supply in these desperate places, as surely as we misappropriate their material resources and because we are too ignorant and stingy to maintain adequate education and train up specialists, when it is just so easy to pull skilled migrants in, regardless of any harm done “back home”.
We’re not poaching them. They *want* to come here. If people are so worried about those countries skilled immigrants are coming from perhaps they’d be willing head over there as replacements.
I think “old folks homes” have changed quite a bit over the past few years. I’ve been through a few recently and at the retirement village level they’re very similar to small houses – more like a townhouse with private outdoor entertaining areas as well as enough room for grandkids to stay and to entertain relatives. But at the same time providing maintenance (indoor/outdoor) services, meals if you don’t want to cook etc.
Paul @ 23, I’m not a labour market specialist. I’m just conveying stuff from people who should know a thing or two.
I’ve heard the rejoinder you make heaps of times and it doesn’t seem to fly. I think the main answer is that people don’t usually move far to get employment. Labour shortages for fruit and vegetable harvesting are chronic in most places.
That said, there were employers that were using 457 to access cheaper labour, but the Govt reckons they’ve stopped the scams.
dd @ 19, apologies, I didn’t see you post when I did mine @ 21.
Chris, am appalled that you support recruitment of skilled workers from third world countries. People in the millions in these places, coping with the sorts of illnesses we could only imagine, and you want them brought here to do botoxes for the pampered middle classes of the west?
Yes, but why do house/ land prices increase? Why is real estate an investment? An investment, which btw at the right time of the business cycle, returns more than bonds and shares?
Joe, further to that, why hasn’t any pollie I’ve heard (correct me if I’m wrong) dared to suggest scrapping “negative gearing”?
The State Governmentis largely to blame for my city’s problems. It is true that our major problems are related to poor infrastructure, particularly the dominance of car enthusiasts in our transport department, where “integration” is apparently a swear-word.
We are about to extend our 1946 house to improve its solar orientation, as well as give us a little more space. One expects that the way we use houses has changed in 60 years. However, if you look at house design, only three things have changed in our house plans since 1946: the introduction of the open-plan living area; the jump in absolute size of houses; and the diminution of laundries since coppers went out of use. While BASIX (sustainability criteria for houses, introduced c. 2005) has improved energy efficiency somewhat, the typical house plan doesn’t refer to sustainability at all, and house orientation is still poor.
I live close to two large housing developments. At Newington (the former Olympic Village), houses are not too large and have great thermal comfort and good plans. At Botanica (formerly LIdcombe Hospital), houses look superficially similar to the Newington ones but the careful design is absent: I toured a house where the room with the best solar orientation upstairs was the bathroom! IOW if you are looking for an innovative industry, you won’t find it in construction here. That goes for everyone: I’m having very interesting conversations with builders atm about minimising PVC!
Brian #26: Please explain how employing people on a 457 visa was a way to “access cheap labour”.
Much has been written (including some on this site, in past threads) but most of it is written by persons who have little to no idea what is a 457 visa, or any other visa subclass.
Chris @9: Add real estate agents charges and the general stress of moving as reasons why older people stay in larger houses – also th desire to have somewhere big enough to have visitors.
Paul @ 28 – I’ll repeat – we’re not recruiting. We don’t need to advertise. They *want* to come here (among other places). Should we *make* people born in the regional areas who become doctors stay in the regional areas?
JohnD @ 33 – yes there are other barriers, but I’ll repeat it is possible if using you have a reasonable amount of capital from owning a house move into a retirement village that does have enough room for visitors. My mum is probably going to move into one that has enough room for her grandchildren to stay overnight. It also has a big enough kitchen to have the extended family around for dinner/parties. Others I’ve seen have “common areas” that you can reserve for big parties. The big win for her is that most the house & garden maintenance is looked after. I’ve really been quite surprised by the quality of accommodation available when helping her look around.
When you start to need higher levels of care is different matter of course, but I think you’re more likely to be able to stay longer in your own home (even if its a retirement village one) with the help of government services if it has been more appropriately designed – eg these places are all fully wheelchair accessible, grab bars in bathrooms etc.
Chookie @ 31 – at least some of the states are moving up to 6* minimum housing.
SATP, perchance you didn’t hear about Chinese workers being brought in by a Chinese firm recently and being paid a pittance. Or stories about people being put up in rental home cheek by jowl and being charged rents that suck out their wages.
But I’m not an expert on these things and am only repeating what I regard as reputable sources.
Chris @ 33, glad that things are looking up. I’m only interacting with the ones that don’t want to go and have resisted family pressures in some cases to put them there. In fact in some cases the help I gave them in the garden was a factor that enabled them to stay put, which gave me some satisfaction. I still have two in that situation.
When I looked around for my Mum in the 1970s there were some reasonable options, none as good as you describe, but most a lot worse.
Joe @ 29, you are right, sometimes real estate performs better than other classes of investment. My brother invests savings into real estate, I have preferred shares. The GFC was particularly unkind to me in terms of both capital value and the income stream. His real estate kept rising in value and so did the rental income.
But beware. Real estate is drastically overpriced in comparison with the rest of the world and the income yield in pathetically low. Sooner or later the capital value has to come down. But it’s supply and demand at the moment, isn’t it? And BTW the building industry says they won’t have enough workers in 5 years time.
Henry apparently wants to reduce negative gearing, but in line with other investments. Also according to him, from the AFR article I have in front of me, Henry says that “improved planning, approvals and building regulations would help housing most.”
Did you know, the demographer Peter McDonald says that no official body in Australia does any labour market forecasting? He says we are always reacting, picking up the pieces later and scape-goating migrants for our own incompetence.
I would have thought that the sustainable population initiatives of Labor were about redressing this deficiency, so we don’t go “hurtling into the future” looking into the rear vision mirror.
“hurtling into the future: is so much more energising than ‘moving forward’.
One of the reasons my ancient mother wants to stay in her big house on the her big block is that she’s lived there a long time, can’t drive, but can still walk to her GP of twenty years, her dentist, hairdresser, the shops where she’s known, and where she sees people in the street she knows.
That suggests that we need a diversity of housing types almost in every street, because that being known and feeling comfortable in your own micro-environment is really important to old people’s feelings of identity and connectedness with their community.
Russell @ 39 – definitely! Not necessarily in each street, but each suburb.
Brian @ 36 – I was surprised by how good the places have been – and impressed by the thought that had gone into the design re: accessibility.
About the only thing I thought missing was a community garden to give a larger area for those who like that sort of thing. Residents have their own front garden area which they are allowed to maintain if they want to, or its done for them if they dont.
Wierdly enough its the sort of environment I would have liked when I was single and travelling a lot
Its not for everyone though – my grandparents will probably never go into a nursing home environment as culturally they just wouldn’t survive. Instead, I think family will end up paying for as much in-home care as they need.
Chris the best one I came across here was in the 1990s when I was working on a 60 perch river front property in East Brisbane which was being prepared for sale. It had a large house that incorporated a sizable dance floor on the lower level. It had been occupied one old lady for years.
Next door near the river bank there were cabins attached to a similar property that had been turned into an old folks home, where you could get progressively more care as you aged.
Out popped the cheery face of a woman I’d worked with who’d booked herself in at the earliest they’d take her, 65 I think, where she had a garden setting, a river view, privacy and time to spend on what interested her most, which wasn’t gardening.
Brian @37, Supply and demand of course, but the real estate market is also skewed by speculation. I think your allusion to the US and UK real estate markets and their instability is a warning to people. (The stock market is similarly skewed– the stock market is about trading shares and not trading value.) But it doesn’t really answer my question– I think that the answer has something to do with the fact that when we import products from places like China, we’re also importing deflation, but I’m not an economist.
The problem with trying to push a European city onto Australians is that it’s not what people want. It’s an unfortunate fact, but even Europeans want a house with a yard (even if they like to call it garden.) The European city is probably a response to historical forces related to security and technology/ infrastructure.
What I noticed about living in Sydney is how incredibly expensive it is to rent there as a student. The student renting market was changed by foreign students coming here to study. My Honky friends paid $300+/wk for their digs and I was trying to get by on $110-120. I going around to look at an ad in Randwick and the landlord was offering the room under the stairs, where traditionally you might have kept the lawnmower and other gardening equipment for $90/wk! Sydney needs a serious social housing program including student accommodation, but of course with so many other infrastructure related problems and in a culture of individualism/ privatisation the city will continue to decline, until one day it looks like any of the major cities in the UK. A few nice areas where the landmarks and the corporate HQs are and the rest rapidly turning into shanty towns and ghettos.
btw, I’m talkin’ end of the 90s/ early millennium!
Chris, of course they are “recruiting”- where do you think Dr Jayant Patel came from and why.
Its a funny thing.
Refugees come frompoor countries and one of the reasons there is a refugee and general population global flow in our era, is because there are too many failed states, often because of lack of expertise, post colonialism.
If the suffering of the thirdworld poor and refugees bothers you, why do you want to exacerbate the problem?
Brian @ 41 – centres where you can progressively get more care without having to really move very far are important.
Paul @ 44 – well Patel although he had some training originally in India had further training in the US and was recruited from there. The US may have problems, but its not really fair calling it a 3rd world country
Yes there are problems in other countries and as Bob Brown mentioned the other night we should be spending a lot more on overseas aid and education which will directly help with the refugee problem. But I simply don’t agree that its moral to attempt to trap people in their home countries for their own good. Let them make that decision.
Its not a matter of “trapping”. These people are educated by their parents and their communities and we reap the rewards, while they duck their obligations; personal and humanitarian.
No, if you expect Australians to make adjustments for global poverty through a fairer intake of refugees, perhaps these people should also make adjustments- the humanitarian aspect is of too great a magnitude to allow for middle class sensibilities and privileges, this time; the poor can’t afford it.
The global poor have their freedoms and futures to be protected also, even if these are only negative freedoms such as access to the basics, against what I’d suggest are secondary lifestyle choices for middle class people.
If these cop out,it will exacerbate australians copping out on their obligations also, following that example.
Sorry, should have mentioned above comment refers to comment45, from Chris.
Patel went to the USA for further education after his initial medical studies in India and stayed there, he wasn’t actively recruited.
He came to Australia when the US caught on to his dodgy surgeries and pulled his surgery license.
Further to Chris’ point, many of the temporary workers on s457 visas end up going back to their home country at the expiration of their visa, presumably with enhanced skills and experience. They don’t all get, or want permanent residence.
Am sorry Tigtog, as I understand it people like Patel are recruited at various levels or tiers of government as well aprivate enterprise, at the lower end on sweat labor wages to do locals out of a job rather than pay them a fair quid. (my memory returns to an ABC report on Patel’s trial, but the details are now hazy).
And, of course your comment in a way obscures the fact that recruitment particularly of skilled, labor from third world countries is for our comfort, not out of necessity and at the expense of prospective failed states with millions of poor and sick people who aren’t even allowed the basics.
You and your confrateres may be right, but there is something about this whole thing that utterly stinks to me.
More failed states of course would keep population flows up, but lets not considered that aspect of it.
Funny how people who profess such concern for example, refugees, are so unheeding when it comes to other forms of imposed globalised suffering.
A final thought.
Those of you I have disagreed with should understand I have no sympathy for the western macmansion empty headed and actually arguably unjust lifestyle when compared to places like Bangladesh, that wastes so much of our best resources, compounding messes and expenses already inherited from previous generations.
I understand many of you feel that immigrants would get a fresh start of immigration was upped and that’s beaut.
But as an answer to the underlying injustices that create global poverty on its current scale, for Petes sake, it is no answer and as much a sop to our own consciences as a realistic and robust effort to face the real underlying problems from a humanitarian viewpoint, of globalised poverty, war etc.
@paul walter, I have a lot of sympathy for your general argument, it’s just that Jayant Patel is a really poor example to choose to illustrate it.
paul walter said:
It certainly would be trapping if first world countries refused skilled migration from non first world countries.
I think its a bit much to claim they are ducking personal or humanitarian responsibilities. Many skilled migrants move to countries like Australia because they are thinking of future opportunities for future children, and their parents and family do understand, and often endorse their decision to move.
In addition to what adrian mentioned with temporary migrants returning with additional skills, temporary and permanent migrants are able to send back money to their families and communities in their country of origin which can greatly help in improving their quality of life.
So, Paul, what you’re saying is that there exists a global market for labour as well as a refugee problem. Can’t imagine that surprises anyone?
So here’s a peripheral question trying to keep on top: Why is Australia one of the most urban societies in the world, when we have so much land? Back of the envelope calculation says cities of Canberra size and above = 19.5Mill ppl.
Why is the construction industry so big in Australia?
Paul, I also sympathise with your concept. The problem is that many of these countries simply don’t have access to the international capital flows which would allow even educated members of their societies to improve the worlds in which they live.
Everyone who has a mortgage, and who perhaps has a second mortgage to buy an investment property is increasing the debt of their lending institution. Where are these institutions investing all their debt? How are the big financial institutions of the “West” even making money?
Time for a link, perhaps:
Tig tog, thanks again for the benefit of the doubt, I realised almost simultaneously to sending in that post that I had employed the worst example possible.
Dr Patel’s CV would indicate that his best contribution to India’s population problems would probably be limited to participation in a culling process, if saying this is not too much in bad taste.
I am glad some understand what I’m saying, its far more important to me that I understand and be understood, than just obtaining agreement when there is no personal agreement or lack of a firm understanding derived of cognitive effort behind it.
Joe and Chris, am going to further mull over your responses, for the moment. My stomach thinks my throat’s cut and is demanding decisive action at the “oven face”.
Chris, you are quite right to offer an alternative view, not least because framed in the way you have framed it, it is the other side of the coin to the downside.
Yep, many people benefit from even the current system, who apply themselves and their wits in the search for a better life.
Joe, bear in mind that a huge slab of Australia is desert.
Yes?
And when we use land for housing, do we make sure we dont use the best arable land and destroy the best water sources in doing so?
Brian #35. I have heard of those cases & plenty of others. Far from being a facet of the 457 visa subclass, they were breaches of law.
Such acts were illegal. They were detected and the offenders dealt with.
Since the current government made changes(and changes and changes) to sponsored skilled migration visa subclasses, there are far more serious scams (legal, but unethical) being run.
The 457 visa subclass has not been, and is not, a way to access cheap labour. The average entrant under the programme is likely to cost the employer circa $75,000 annually.
Whilst claiming no particular expertise, I have some familiarity with the reality of sponsored migration, having sponsored several skilled migrants and/or employed under subclasses 457, 857, 485, 119, 417, and 573 (amongst others)