By Peter Strachan
Australia must set migration levels that are environmentally, economically and socially responsible.
Targeting migrants by values, ethnicity or faith is divisive and unnecessary.
Australia’s environmental, housing and infrastructure pressures are about numbers. They are not about where people come from.
In the year to June 30, 2025, Australia’s population grew by roughly 420,000 people, including 306,000 from net overseas migration, equivalent to the entire city of Wollongong.
To maintain the same quality of life (and assuming average sizes are maintained) Australia should have built a net of 105 schools, 168,000 houses and eight hospitals in the past year.
Instead, the most recent figures indicate that Australia has built a net of 24 schools, 147,000 houses and ambulance ramping rates at hospitals around the national are a clear indication of the hospital bed situation.
The historically unprecedented intake levels require unprecedented levels of infrastructure development.
This is simply not happening.
The consequences are visible in housing shortages, infrastructure strain and environmental degradation.
Immigration has often been presented as a solution to skills shortages and fiscal pressures.
However, when intake consistently outpaces infrastructure and housing capacity, it compounds the very problems it claims to solve.
Between 35 and 50 percent of older Australians were born overseas, reflecting Australia’s long history as a successful multicultural nation.
Our position is not anti-immigrant. It is pro-sustainability.
Peter Strachan is the National President of Sustainable Population Australia. SPA is an independent not-for-profit organisation seeking to protect the environment and our quality of life by ending population growth in Australia and globally, while rejecting racism and involuntary population control.
