"The lucky country?" You have to be kidding!

I think it's obscene that we have a "housing crisis" in this country and that people are throwing up their hands in horror about the fact that Australia is now among the countries with the least affordable housing in the world.

All this while the the government keeps on importing over 130,000 people per annum to meet what it calls a "skills shortage "

Why is this obscene?

Because no one in the media (or at least not many in the media) have either picked up on the conundrum or actually brought it to the attention of someone in power.

It stands to reason that anyone arriving in Australia whether as an assisted migrant, part of a family reunion scheme or a refugee or indeed just a person with a temporary resident permit with a work permit is NOT going to come equipped with a home!

Thus we need at least as many NEW homes each year as it will take to house all those people we are welcoming into our country.

Add to this, all those new homes that are required to meet the needs of those families who took the last government's Treasurer seriously and as far as childbearing was concerned, had "one for mum, one for dad and one for the country."

Hello, all of these people will need different homes too.

Then there are those who are being thrown out of their homes, because they can no longer afford the rent or the mortgage and those who require different homes because of medical situations and . . . .

All in all you have a situation in which the forward planning of state, Federal and local governments is brought into sharp focus.

What they have NOT been doing is obscene!

They have not been planning to accommodate those they have invited into the country much less those who are already here who have been encouraged to increase the size of their families or whose circumstances are changing for a variety of reasons.

Did some dim wit in the Minister's office actually think that the total number of people who would die would somehow balance the total number being born or coming into the country for a mad ZPG type of scenario?

I cannot imagine this for an instant. However if someone did - for goodness' sake get them a new job carting cow manure - its more likely to appeal to their level of common sense!

Did anyone actually think of planning for the needs of all these incoming people and new born children, I mean planning for all of their needs and not just homes?

Infrastructure of all kinds is required to meet these growing demands.

Unless the required pieces of infrastructure are created in a "just in time" project management sense there will be always be one or more crises in housing, health care, roads, transport, traffic, power, water, sewerage and so on.

A lack of adequate holistic planning is slowly driving this country from one meaning of the "lucky country" to another, a darker meaning, where we are lucky to still be here and no thanks to good management!