[typewithrhythm]

Melbourne specifically is cooked by the rate of growth, and declining tax revenue per capita.

When we funded the majority of the big infrastructure pushes our rate of growth was lower, and gdppc (and revenue/PC) was exploding. This generally ended with the start of big multicultural Australia policy in the late 60's.

So in comparison, the amount of infrastructure we need to build is greater per capita, as it has to try to cover the future population predictions, it needs to be done over less years as well.

Then we can get into the migration policy that's causing a decline in gdppc.

[jimnotgym]

Since the beginning of Australia as a colony it has been: more people=more labour=more production capacity=more wealth.

So did we just run out of useful things to do with people? Or did we concentrate the wealth away from the masses and blame the same immigration that created Australia in the first place?

[typewithrhythm]

No, we really did not have a history like that remotely. It's a bit alarming to see a historical fact states so completely incorrectly.

We had a hugely restrictive immigration policy, (have a look at the rate of growth over time) followed by multiple wars that meaningfully reduced the population... We were winning the Malthusian game, just by having lots of resources per person available.

The policies you have probably heard called "white Australia" were more accurately understood as immigration restriction policy. If you read anything published at the time, there was only slightly less animosity for white english migration as the rest of the world. This was the era of communism and workers rights, and the workers absolutely understood that their labour was being devalued.