by GRAHAM MATTHEWS
Gillard made sympathetic noises about western Sydney roads being more like Los Angeles traffic jams and the trains being a “sardine express to Central, Town Hall or Wynyard”. She said: “It’s time for government to ask this question: can we really ask western Sydney to absorb thousands and thousands more and guarantee the quality of our lives?”
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But is the problem caused by population growth?
The period of fastest population growth in Australia was in the post-World War II period, when increased fertility rates (the “baby boom”) combined with assisted migration.
Between 1945 and 1979, the population of Australia almost doubled, from 7.4 million to 14.4 million, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Unemployment remained below 3% throughout the years of strongest population growth, only beginning to rise after the worldwide recession of the early 1970s.
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