Ideas@TheCentre
Go West? 'Get out of Sydney’ grants an expensive distraction
Is the ghost of Bob Carr lurking in Macquarie Street?
When he was NSW Premier, Carr famously declared that Sydney was full. Successive Labor governments failed to adequately plan for population growth. Sydneysiders squashed like sardines on rattling CityRail trains or whiling away the hours on the M2 now pay the price.
Now, it seems, the new Liberal government has the same idea as Carr did all those years ago.
In a move expected to cost NSW taxpayers up to $280 million over four years, the O’Farrell government announced last week that it will pay families and individuals grants of $7,000 if they sell their Sydney, Wollongong or Newcastle home and relocate to regional NSW.
According to Treasurer Mike Baird, the policy will drive economic growth in NSW as well as relieve congestion in Sydney.
But while it has been enthusiastically welcomed by regional councils, the plan deserves to be panned.
Much of the money will be wasted. Grants will go to residents who would have moved anyway. The Illawarra Mercury notes that Wollongong residents will be eligible for the grants even if they move to neighbouring Shellharbour. In some cases, this could be just a few streets away.
It also seems unlikely that encouraging people to move away from the most productive parts of the state to the less productive regional towns will do much to spur economic growth.
Most importantly, it will do nothing to relieve congestion in Sydney. Capped at 40,000 households, the scheme will not come close to offsetting Sydney’s projected population growth of around 1 million people by 2026. And it’s clear that the majority of NSW residents want to live in cities, not in regional towns.
Relocation grants are just an expensive distraction from the real job of clearing Sydney’s infrastructure backlog.
Short-sighted, short-term plans of this type are beloved of governments beholden to four-yearly elections. But the O’Farrell government, with a historic majority and an imploded opposition, does not need to be so limited in its range.
By systematically failing to invest in Sydney’s infrastructure, Labor for 16 years reminded us how little faith it had in the city. The Coalition has a unique opportunity to set Sydney back on track.
Yet instead of a bold, long-term vision, we seem to be getting more of the same.
Like it or not, Sydney’s population is growing. Let’s hope the new government can learn from its predecessor’s mistakes.
Jessica Brown is a Research Fellow with the Social Foundations Program at The Centre for Independent Studies.
