Your Views: On Calls for Population Growth and More

Commenting on the op-ed: Ignore population growth advocates who can’t answer this obvious question

David Washington is absolutely correct in pointing out the need to significantly improve Adelaide’s public transport system to accommodate our growth. But I suggest there is a more fundamental problem.

If Adelaide is to continue to bear the bulk of any population growth – let alone the totally unfounded 2 million proposed by the Committee for Adelaide – we must challenge the current mantra of gradually expanding north and south and in the hills.

Greater Adelaide is nearly 100km north to south and still centered on the CBD. It is impossible to ask people to travel up to 50 km to get to CBD facilities. We need to establish new CBDs north and south and the current CBD needs to accept that its days of providing a hub for all Adelaide business are long gone, accelerated by post-pandemic conditions.

We need to decentralize to new town centers, each based on a strong tertiary institution, important medical facilities and a range of cultural activities such as museums, art galleries, sports stadiums and theatres. These should be supported by a wide range of housing, including affordable and social housing options and local major job creation centres.

Suitable locations would be Elizabeth and Noarlunga, and while we are at it, we need to create three regional local government areas to support and give legitimacy to these new centers. –David Plumridge

David Washington denounces the intellectual laziness of the business lobby. The lobby always encourages population growth – it creates larger markets and supplied labor at no cost to themselves. This is another version of the endless plea for lower taxes, lower wages and higher corporate subsidies.

Unfortunately, this kind of nonsense receives tacit support from the government. In transport, for example, see the vastly over-engineered North-South Corridor. This can only be based on strong population growth and the lack of improved public transport. It will dig a trench through the west side of the city without, as Washington points out, any connection to the main freight route. Again.

Either way, it’s okay to spend $10 billion on a project without an overall transportation plan, or a business case for that matter. If there was a real transport plan for Adelaide, public transport would be a central part of it. Instead, we get bigger and bigger intersections and trenches. – Gregg Ryan

Population growth is not just about transportation. The fact is that there is no correlation between population growth and GDP per capita growth. Sure, population growth increases GDP, but if it doesn’t increase GDP per capita, most people don’t benefit (except developers, Bunnings, and white goods vendors).

And there are huge infrastructure costs that are not paid for by the extra people – i.e. more hospital beds, more school places, increased water supply , sewage treatment, electricity supply, etc. etc These things need to be in place before the extra people arrive, lest everyone suffer from crowding and degraded service. And so the unfortunate existing residents have to pay them up front, which never happens. – Michel Lardelli

David Washington equates public transportation with SA’s growing population. Compared to other major cities, our transport system is adequate, but it has no impact on people’s desire to move to South Africa and Adelaide.

The availability of work is the only real problem to which no political party has an answer. If there is work, people will come. Otherwise, they won’t. Artificial job creation by the federal government through defense contracts and the space initiative creates these opportunities, but their scope and size are limited.

There are virtually no head offices or major corporations based in South Africa. Their owners and managers live around Sydney Harbor and in Toorak, etc. in Melbourne, where their children go to school, their relatives and friends live and where the main markets for their products and the workforce for their businesses are on their doorstep. Getting them to move to South Africa is next to impossible.

Giving interstate companies large contracts thinking they will set up more than a project office has proven to be flawed thinking. Remember EDS and Motorola? And the benefits flow state to state anyway.

Encouraging foreign immigrants to move to South Africa has been a cornerstone of South African government planning. However, there is evidence that the majority of new migrants end up leaving South Africa for better/more interstate employment opportunities. Until someone finds a way to encourage them to move their businesses to South Africa, all those idyllic dreams of building the people of South Africa are just that, dreams and electoral propaganda.

Supporting SA start-ups (until they are taken over by interstate companies) and awarding contracts to SA-based companies are better strategies for kick-starting population growth. -Peter Macdonald

Commenting on the story: Greens favor Duluk over Libs as Pallaras profiles himself as kingmaker

We supposedly use the Westminster system, which is first past the post. Why do we use the expensive system of preferences?

If a candidate is not your first preference, why should anyone else get your vote if your choice is not the top candidate? –Bill Hecker