Massive migration expected - but is Western Sydney 'full'?

Recent government forecasts have shown that the nation's population is set to grow by 900,000 by the end of June 2025, with 650,000 migrants expected to arrive in Australia during that time.

In the midst of a housing shortage and an increasingly problematic cost-of-living crisis, it's been suggested that Western Sydney - which has a long track record of regularly taking a large percentage of migrant arrivals - isn't ready for such an influx.

This anticipated growth is likely to be the biggest we've seen as a country since 2008 - also a time of great economic uncertainty - with 106,000 migrants already arriving in the first quarter of the 2022-23 financial year, per Newscorp.

"March 2008 was the biggest population intake on a quarterly basis we had ever seen until we passed it last September," said Director of Research at the Demographics Group, Simon Kuestenmacher.

Both the findings and the current economic context have combined to create an air of concern about the projected numbers, both among residents and local government officials.

According to Fairfield Mayor Frank Carbone, any large-scale intake will only exacerbate the current problems, with more and more challenges arising to impede basic service provision to many of the 1.7 million people who already reside in Sydney's outer west and greater western regions, from the Blue Mountains to Parramatta.

"We can't have 900,000 people coming in over two years when we can't even build enough housing to accommodate that many people," Mayor Carbone told 2GB.

"All this is going to do is cause people's pay packets to go down because of competition - but prices of housing, rentals and prices for all the goods we buy everyday will go up.

"We would accept it if the government said 'we have a plan to improve infrastructure, rail corridors, metros, housing and in the next five years we're going to increase migration to help our economy. But that hasn't happened.

"You can't build houses that quick.

"We're happy for migration, (Western Sydney) is always taking migrants. People need to understand that before Covid, there were 150,000 people coming every year - many of them to Western Sydney - and we were very happy to accommodate them.

"What we don't want to see - and what we have seen over the past - is granny flats popping up everywhere."

As well as a negative economic impact, Mayor Carbone suggested that such a large number of arrivals would also contribute to the traffic congestion and overcrowding that already plagues the region. With our population increasing by 1 person per minute and projections saying Australia's population will double to 50m by 2050, it's clear that a united, humane approach needs to be taken to thinking about migration.

We might have time, but it's running out fast.

‍