Population Statistics Thread

[hayds]

Growth pains for a city on the edge
PAIGE TAYLOR | The Australian | November 05, 2012





PERTH residents have not yet reached broad agreement about what they want their city to be when it grows up.

This became clear to Committee for Perth chief executive Marion Fulker when she oversaw a four-year research project about how the city would and could look in 2050, the year in which it is predicted to have doubled its population to 3.5 million.

Launched last month, Towards a Bright Future looks at Perth's people, its economy, planning, environment, education, decision-making as well as its property market and who can afford it.

The topic of Perth property is vexed.

The report found the gap between rich and poor is widening in Perth. A house is something well out of reach of many Perth workers and there are about 22,000 people on the state's public housing list.

Despite a big slump last year followed by a plateau in Perth's real estate market, Perth property remains attractive to investors, particularly investors from Asia.

This week China's 21st Century Business Herald sent a reporter to Perth to examine the city's property opportunities, why there is so much interest in buying in the west and whether such investments are promising.

September was a bumper month for the independent West Australian property buyer specialising in finding investments for Asian clients, Momentum Wealth.

The company's Perth managing director Damian Collins said results were 23 per cent up on the last record month.

Perth's strengths as a property investment option are formidable and well understood. It is perfectly positioned as a gateway to Asia and its resource wealth makes it the engine room of the nation's economy.

It is ranked by The Economist Intelligence Unit as one of the top 10 cities in the globe to live in and it is Australia's fastest growing capital.

Though governments are shy of the "B" word, the Committee for Perth claims its research shows Western Australia's economy has been booming for the past 10 years.

This has been the result of the expansion of major economies in Asia and the Indian Ocean rim. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Western Australia's economy doubled in size between 1990 to 2006.

The report, Towards a Bright Future, states that the economic influence of the state and the Perth region is expected to continue to grow despite well-publicised redundancies and project delays announced across the resource sector in the past few months.

"Of the existing $231.8 billion in committed capital investment in Australia's resource industry, 64 per cent is earmarked for investment in Western Australia," the report states.

"This unprecedented economic expansion has driven and will continue to drive population growth.

"From 1991 to 2010, the population of the Perth region grew by nearly 50 per cent from 1,143,249 million to 1,696,062 million.

"Perth's population is projected to reach 3.5 million people or more by about 2050."

This means that Perth will have more than doubled its current population in about 40 years and will be a region of comparable size to Melbourne or Sydney today."

At Momentum Wealth, a large percentage of Asian clients looking to invest in Perth are businessmen and women who already have a connection to the city.

Mr Collins says those clients are Malaysian or Singaporean couples who had been to university in Perth, often buying something for their children to live in while studying.

Mr Collins said residential and commercial property in Perth was appealing to Asian investors because of low interest rates and an understanding that, despite a recent slowdown in the resource sector, the West Australian economy would continue to grow.

"Long term, they see it as a safe place to put their money and they still see it as a very strong place for growth," he says. "There is a lot more investor confidence back in the market and rents are up."

Residential properties in Perth yield 5.5 per cent. In commercial property, prime office space yields 7 per cent to 7.5 per cent and the yields are slightly higher in secondary locations and in industrial areas of Perth.

Mr Collins said there was no doubt this was having a driver effect. Some apartment developments in and near the centre of Perth were not just aimed at overseas investors, they were built because of them.

Perth's changing skyline, and the increasing number of people moving into the city to live, is of great interest to the Committee for Perth and its chief executive Ms Fulker, who was raised in Sydney and made her move west in 1986.

"There is something about Perth and its lifestyle that gets under your skin," Ms Fulker said at a lunch of her peers at the launch of Towards a Bright Future.

"There's an attachment to Perth that is often maligned by those on the east coast. Perth citizens are very loyal.

"There's also a degree of protectiveness about it too.

"As a fast-growing region we wanted to understand Perth's strengths and opportunities and its weakness and challenges.

"At the same time we also wanted to find out what the aspirations of Perth people were because with growth brings challenges and we are all starting to regularly experience some growing pains, things like traffic congestion, overcrowded public transport, housing and rental affordability and urban sprawl.

"Now is the time to take positive action to define and deliver a bright future for the Perth region."

Ms Fulker says her organisation's research found a "bright future" scenario is a realistic aspiration for Perth. But a "business as usual" scenario was the most likely outcome if Perth did not seize the opportunities and rise to the challenges before it.

"We simply can't have the same Perth with more people in it no matter how much we might want to," she says.

Ms Fulker is sure Perth can be the city so many residents want it to be; positive, tolerant, easy to get around, thriving economically but with housing at every price point.

She points to Melbourne's transformation after it lost its manufacturing base in the 1980s. It made itself into a sporting and cultural capital. People wanted to live downtown and Melbourne was later recognised as the world's most liveable city.

Ms Fulker believes changes need to come in four ways - vision, innovation, collaboration and adaptation.

She believes this is critical because, while Perth's growth creates chances to improve the region and quality of people's lives, it creates challenges for those West Australians concerned with balancing social, cultural, economic and environmental objectives.

www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/in-the-zone-2012

[jarden]

Originally Posted by RocStar

^Professor Geoffrey Blainey hails from Melbourne.

And this is what Perth will look like.

I like the couple sitting on the bench they must be thinking : "Yesterday we had one skyline now today we got 3"

[OneirosNate]

"And no one thought to build on this side of the river??"

[natfat madd fucker]

Originally Posted by OneirosNate

"And no one thought to build on this side of the river??"

Greenies must have protested hard

[Eastern37]

The two people sitting on the bench are actually protesting.....there are bulldozers parked right behind them waiting for them to move so they can finally develope that part of the waterfront.........

[Bullswool]

Originally Posted by OneirosNate

"And no one thought to build on this side of the river??"

It's the University of Western Australia

[OneirosNate]

Someone always has to go and be too literal!

[gettingthere]

He could as easily have been facetious.

[jarden]

CAIRNS is one of the fastest-growing cities in Australia and the nation's 14th largest but business leaders say government funding and infrastructure are not keeping pace.

The Federal Government's State of Australian Cities 2012 report says in the decade to 2011, Cairns grew at a rate of 2.6 per cent, above the national average of 1.5 per cent, just behind national leader Gold Coast-Tweed (2.8 per cent).
The level of growth, from 112,932 people in 2001 to 146,477 last year, was ahead of cities enjoying the wealth of the resources sector, including Perth, Brisbane, Townsville and Darwin.
"It should be noted, however, the growth rates of Cairns and the Gold Coast have begun to moderate in recent years," the report said. Cairns is the 14th largest city in Australia, behind Townsville (13) and ahead of Darwin, Toowoomba and Launceston and is home to 3.3 per cent of Queenslanders.
Economic development group Advance Cairns and researcher Rick Carr said the report provided facts but no plans or money to meet the growth of the city.
Cairns Chamber of Commerce said it would provide the leverage to negotiate increased government funding.

The report noted that Cairns had one of the lowest rates of home ownership, less than 40 per cent and that more than 10 per cent of the city's 57,241 houses were empty, the fourth highest level among the 18 major cities and well above the major city average of 9.16 per cent.
Government and other social housing grew between 2006 and 2011 with the biggest increase in government housing of any major city.
The report said domestic tourism had grown but international numbers were down,.
Advance Cairns chief executive officer Stewart Christie said the figures need to be "translated and implemented" by local, state and federal governments into projects to handle the population growth.
But he feared the findings would get bogged down in a stalemate between the Queensland and federal governments.
Mr Christie said the report proved Cairns was one of the quickest growing in Australia.
"On that basis how do we get a fair share of infrastructure spending?" he said.
Mr Christie said studies by Cairns economist Bill Cummings had shown that over the past 30 years all levels of government had underestimated their growth predictions and the subsequent level of funds to the region.
Herron Todd White research director Rick Carr said there was nothing "earth shattering" in the report.
"It doesn't offer anything for the future, it's backward looking," he said.
Chamber chief executive officer Deb Hancock said the report did not reflect the upswing in more recent statistics.
"While our economy has struggled in recent times, we have still managed to increase our population at a steady rate, so we are clearly an ideal destination with strong liveability aspects. This also places Cairns in a great position to negotiate for government funding and infrastructure," she said.
Mr Cummings said despite the troubles since the global financial crisis in late 2008, Cairns had recorded good growth.
"While this is down a bit on the long term average since 1976 of about 3 per cent per annum, it is a continuation of the pattern that has seen Cairns pass seven other regional cities in population since 1996 (Rockhampton, Toowoomba, Orange/Bathurst, Albury/Wodonga, Bendigo, Ballarat and Launceston) to move up to 14th position and just behind Townsville," he said.

New Cairns resident Debbie Painter moved to the Far North with her family from the Gold Coast in January for a lifestyle change, and hasn't looked backed since.
``I love nature, so the mountains and the beaches, it's a slower pace of life,'' Mrs Painter said.
The Esplanade is awesome...When we first moved up, we were down nearly every night having a barbecue.''
Mrs Painter said her two children Isabel, 12, and Christian, 14, had also "settled in really well'' and made some great friends.
http://www.cairns.com.au/article/201...ocal-news.html

[hayds]

Out of curiosity, how far down the coast do crocs go in QLD?

just interested since i grew up on the Pilbara coast south of Broome, a couple of hundred km from the kinda edge of croc territory, youd never see one but they started putting the odd croc signs up as precaution in popular swimming places.

[asdfg]

Originally Posted by hayds

Out of curiosity, how far down the coast do crocs go in QLD?

The Fraser Coast / Fraser Island is about as far south as they go I think, and even then it's pretty rare around those parts. The normal common limit is around Gladstone.

[natfat madd fucker]

Originally Posted by asdfg

The Fraser Coast / Fraser Island is about as far south as they go I think, and even then it's pretty rare around those parts. The normal common limit is around Gladstone.

They actually have been seen as far down as Brisbane, but that was after the Qld floods which explains some of it, but still its a fair way down for them.

[tayser]

bada bing bada bang - for all the stats nerds:

http://abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/...1?Opendocument

get google earth and then the google earth format download: http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@....2?OpenDocument

and install that in google earth.

only VIC at this stage, eventually will be rolled out nation-wide

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/gu...214-2bfbj.html

Guess who's sitting on a fortune, at $4000 a square metre?
December 15, 2012
Marc Moncrief

WHERE is the most expensive land in Victoria? Is it under Government House? Some Toorak mansion? Or is it a beneath a string of apartments tucked in behind Crown Casino?
If you picked the last, you are right, according to the first publicly released account of Victoria's land values by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The bureau's release of the Victorian Land Account put the total ''rateable'' value of land in the state at $1.05 trillion. Rateable value is similar to the unimproved value of land listed on council rates notices.
This values the state's unadorned land comparable with the total of Australia's superannuation savings ($1.3 trillion), or about twice the value of all the shares in the computing giant Apple.
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The bureau said that 83 per cent of the state's value ($878 billion) was to be found on just 5 per cent of the state's land - the portion classified as residential.
Analysis of the figures by The Age found the most expensive properties in the state were those directly behind the Crown Casino complex, on either side of City Road, Southbank.
Parts of it are priced in the data at nearly $4000 a square metre - and that's without accounting for buildings or other improvements. The bureau named the Victorian Valuer General as the source of the figures.
Take the buildings into account, and the Eureka Tower stands tall. Including the building on top of it, it is easily the most valuable site in the state, at $42,735 a square metre. It is the first time the bureau has conducted an audit of this kind for any state. It shows not only how much Victorian land is worth, but how it is used, how many people live there, and the types of vegetation in each parcel.
Tom Walter, assistant director in the bureau's environmental group, said the work would help integrate environmental reporting with the economical reports in the national accounts.
His colleague Steve May said Victoria was chosen because ''they were the most co-operative'', and that other states would follow. For years, the bureau has been working to develop a gauge of wellbeing to complement gross domestic product, which many statisticians feel is an imperfect measure.
Since at least 2003, when it published an article titled Beyond GDP, the bureau has considered better integration of economic and environmental measures as vital to that effort.
Mr Walter said the Land Account was not explicitly commissioned for that process, but was ''obviously'' influenced by it.

________

rare example of taxpayer clams being put to good use.

[asdfg]

[natfat madd fucker]

Originally Posted by asdfg

Thats quite interesting. according to the ABS, we had growth numbers of up to 450,000 a year quite a few times, but now its kinda slowed. i wonder why?

[Orfeo]

the government cut the skilled migrants quota

[natfat madd fucker]

Originally Posted by Orfeo

the government cut the skilled migrants quota

But thats the thing though, we need more skilled migrants! we feed off them!

[eco186]

Yeah but they're migrants!! Hence the cutting back.

[Mornnb]

But we need lots more migrants if we are to counter the ageing population... Plus this country just has a whole lot of empty space, frontier land that's made no progress.

[Onijin]

Originally Posted by natfat madd fucker

But thats the thing though, we need more skilled migrants! we feed off them!

Why not retrain and skill up our current population instead?