Australia attracting migrants to regions to avoid “megacities”

Australia has announced an updated Population Plan which will help manage the country’s population growth better. The announcement was made by Alan Tudge, Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure on Monday. 

He unveiled plans on preventing Sydney and Melbourne from becoming “megacities” due to excessive congestion. Sydney and Melbourne are the biggest cities in Australia. 

The Australian Govt. has already slashed the permanent migration intake from 190,000 to 160,000 per year.  

Mr Tudge further revealed that the Govt. would adopt measures to encourage migrants to move to smaller cities and regional areas. These decentralization measures will help bigger cities from getting overly congested. 

The new measures will also include better rail and infrastructure connectivity between the regional areas and major cities. The Govt. also plans to introduce incentives for migrants to move to the regional areas, as per Xinhua Net. 

Mr Tudge said that Australia plans to follow the footsteps of Canada. Canada has done a great job in distributing new immigrants to its regional areas by supporting population growth in these regions through migration. Canada has hence been able to increase the percentage of people who settle outside the major cities from 10% in the 1990s to 34% in 2017. 

Australia plans to take stronger measures on using the immigration policies to change the settlement patterns. If not, Australia could end up with two or three megacities in 30 to 40 years with little growth elsewhere. 

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