Why is this of interest? Because we are about to add another
million people to cities like Brisbane (by 2045), Sydney (by 2040) and
Melbourne (by 2038). So, just to tread water, we should have the equivalent of
around 7.5 new hospitals planned for each, otherwise we go backwards.
For some more context, an average new hospital bed in
Australia costs around $1.5 million to $2 million. So those 3,703 extra beds for
each major city are going to need something like $5.5 billion to $7.5 billion
in new capital invested. That’s at today’s dollars.
We could ask the same for schools: roughly how many do we
have for every 1 million people? The answer is somewhere between around 360 (250
of which are government schools and 110 non government). If we are to maintain
schooling with the same range of choice and sized schools, and to maintain
class sizes as they broadly are now, that’s a lot of schools.
At Suburban Futures, we recently modelled a number of
options for new school designs in urban infill locations (even including a
repurposed Bunnings style shed). The cost for a full p-12 school of 1,000
students was in all cases over $100 million. Not all schools are full P-12
formats with 1000 students, but even on conservative guesstimating, we are
looking at maybe $5+ billion for 50 x P-12 size schools, plus just as much
again for the remaining 300 schools of smaller size. Combined that’s another
$10 billion, per city region, by 2040. A lot of money, let alone the challenge
of finding the sites for them.
How will the extra 1 million people get around? If the
current ratio of private cars to people doesn’t change, each city region will
have another 600,000 cars on the roads. Plus, another 200,000 or so commercial
vehicles doing commercial things. Should we put them underground with more road
tunnels? A good idea, which costs roughly $1billion per kilometre (depending on
in-ground conditions and surface portals). OK, let’s build more commuter rail
track so that we won’t notice the traffic impacts of an additional million
people. That’s also now around $1 billion per kilometre but will likely move
fewer people than a road tunnel, so is arguably not going to have as much
impact.
Need something to drink, flush the toilet, wash the car or
do the laundry? There’s another 200 million litres per day for 1 million people,
or 73 gigalitres per year. For context, that’s roughly 30,000 Olympic swimming
pools worth of extra water, each year, for each city.
Been naughty? That will mean another 1,600 to 2,000 prison
cells per million people. A prison cell isn’t cheap either – around $700,000
per cell not including the operational costs. There’s at least another $1.2
billion to house the criminal element that another 1 million population will
generate.
We will also need another 4,000 police officers, 12,000
nurses, 1,000 firefighters and the workplace buildings to accommodate them.
Sadly, another 1 million people will also mean another 48
people will die on the roads. Promises to lower the road toll mean that, mathematically,
none of the extra 1 million will die on
our roads and the toll for the existing population will fall. A noble and
worthy ambition, but the maths is sadly challenging.
In amongst this are our housing targets. I’ve long maintained that housing should be the easiest types of structures to deliver. But we have made even that difficult. The plethora of codes and regulatory and planning approvals now needed are reflected in our worsening ability to match demand with supply.
