NW touted for next big city

A prominent Australian demographer has put Karratha in the nation’s spotlight, by saying it should be the country’s next major city.
Writing in this month’s edition of Australian Geographic Magazine, Bernard Salt has proposed that Karratha become a city with 100,000 residents by 2050 to curb national population growth.
Mr Salt said it was more logical to decentralise the Australian population over the coming decades in regional cities and towns.
“We have 24 million people, going to 40 million people by the middle of the century,” he said.
“We can add those 16 million to Perth, Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane entirely or we can look to disperse the population across the continent, which would seem to be a more logical thing to do rather than build congestion in our capital cities.”
Mr Salt said Karratha already had some critical mass and was well placed to be Australia’s next major city.
“Karratha is the largest of the North West towns at the moment,” he said.
“It is just a little bit more advanced and a little bit more strategically placed.”
Former Regional Development Minister and Member for Pilbara Brendon Grylls said Karratha had the potential to become Australia’s next major city.
“Because the market has started to normalise here with rents, the service delivery is much higher, the liveability is much better, then I think we are continuing to head in the right direction,” he said. “Now our challenge is to keep the fundamentals heading in the right direction and we’ve got every chance of moving towards the scale that (Mr Salt) talked about,” he said.
The key to success, according to Mr Salt, is to have the local population on side.
“A project like this might take 30 years, in reality, to get some sort of sympathetic government position,” he said.
“You want it to seep into the DNA of the people who live there and people who work there, that it’s part of the long-term haul, everyone’s pointing in the right direction in the North West.
Mr Grylls said residents would embrace population growth in the region.
“I think everyone understands that more people means more services, better cafes and restaurants and better liveability,” he said.
“The challenge though is that most people are born and grow up in capital cities and that is what they get used to.”
Mr Salt suggested the long-term development of Karratha could prompt an independent territory of North West Australia, something Mr Grylls supports.
“Now I’m a resident in the Pilbara, I think it’s a fantastic idea,” he said.
“At the moment, the population of the Kimberley, Pilbara and Gascoyne is that small — that sort of idea is unviable.
“If you got a city of 150,000in Karratha, and 100,000 in Port Hedland and Broome, then you probably will have a stronger push for it.
“Probably not in my lifetime though.”