I think the OP actually has two parts to it. You’re addressing the one.
Should the government try to get immigrants to move to the less-populous areas of Australia, rather than the dense urban areas?
Should the government MANDATE that immigrants move to the bush?
I agree with you that (1) there’s nothing wrong with having immigrants move to the sticks (that’s how we settled the USA) and (2) incentives are the way to do it. I do NOT think that mandates are a good idea, or even possible. How would you restrict travel in this way? Barbed wire fences and armed guards? Presenting papers at checkpoints? Little emblems sewn onto their clothing?
What you need is for people to WANT to move to the bush. In the US, this was initially accomplished by the promise of free land. Even better was when perceived organic economic opportunity made it attractive (the gold rush in California, or oil drilling in Alaska) without government intervention. Absent that sort of organic incentive, the government will have to provide a reason why people would want to go out there. What could those be?
Land? Seems unlikely at this point in Australia’s history. I assume it’s all spoken for.
Tax breaks? This is still how cities and states in the US attract large businesses: they’ll give them tremendous tax breaks (no corporate income tax, no property tax, etc.) for a number of years, to entice them to move there and build factories/offices/etc. Further tax incentives could be given for employing people who it can be proved are new residents of the area. (Although I’m sure many of these outlying areas would want such jobs for themselves! Bound to engender some resentment.)
Other bonuses? Perhaps you could give payoff bonuses for immigrants who live full-time in the designated region for X number of years.
Universities? Colleges and universities can be the nucleus of new towns and new industries, and often draw students, professors, etc. from far away. The government could purchase land in the desired region and lease it (for free, and property tax free) to an established university that was willing to set up a new, full-fledged campus there. The government could also subsidize the college education of any residents/their children who live in the town for more than X number of years.
In Canada, there is some effort made to settle refugees outside the top few major metropolitan areas. For instance, my parents’ church in Saskatoon has helped refugees from El Salvador, Iraq, Ethiopia, Bosnia, etc. Some stay, some end up moving to Toronto (which tends to have larger ethnic communities).
You don’t consider a semi-permanent drought, no jobs, and a declining rural population (declining for very good reasons) as insurmountable? Do share your fix for all these.
Aside from public transport, fairly good. They all have piped water, sewerage, public schools, roads, shops.
True, I can’t make it rain.
But some of the cities with most tenuous water positions are capitals (Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth). So that’s a national, not regional issue.
If you have a drive through Orange you’ll see a regional centre growing strongly, because of the relocation of the NSW Department of Agriculture from Sydney and Cadia gold mine. Similar in Bendigo and Ballarat. Towns along the Murray from Albury to Swan Hill are growing almost as fast as the Gold Coast. So the population is there. What isn’t is the services i.e. health and education so that those communities are or are more self-sufficient.
Declining rural population isn’t quite the same as declining regional population.
A farmer on retiring doesn’t move to Sydney or Melbourne. They usually go to Wagga, or Albury or other main regional centres.
The magor area of decline is in teenagers leaving their home town for tertiary education in the capitals. And yes they tend to stay away because currently that’s where the opportunities are. The aim of these regionalisation programs is to increase those opportunities.
Do you have a viable plan of where to place another 5 million people in Sydney by 2050?
I’m only half joking… by 2050 I reckon Lithgow will be considered part of the Sydney metro area anyway. It is a problem Australia needs to address, though- it’s ironic how huge we are as a country but how little available land we have, despite the low population.
Sydney is a relatively low density city, 113th by this list. To fit twice as many people it would only have to become as dense as Naples (#55) or Warsaw (#53) for instance. It could then double again (ie to 20 million) to rank with St Petersburg at #26.
As I say above, Sydney could quadruple its population without expanding by a centimetre, and still not be anywhere near the most dense cities in the world. Lithgow’s safe (or Sydney is, depending on your PoV).
The thing is that Australians, culturally, are not especially keen on New York/Hong Kong style high-rise apartments.
Most people want a house, and whilst nearly everyone accepts that the days of a house on a quarter-acre which can be paid off on a single income in a reasonable period of time are long gone, there’s still resistance to the idea of spending lots of money for an apartment on the 32nd floor of a high rise, which has views of other high rises, and isn’t especially spacious, and doesn’t allow pets…
