HOW ESTIMATES OF POPULATION GROWTH WERE DOCTORED TO JUSTIFY THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SPLURJ MAHAL

Early days

Until very recently, I thought that the story of York’s Great White Elephant, otherwise known as the Splurj Mahal or York Recreation and Convention Centre, began sometime in the mid- to late-noughties—say, around 2007.   I was wrong.

One of York’s elders, who would rather not be named, has kindly put me wise.  She told me that members of council and of various sporting clubs first mooted the idea as long ago as 1997.   

That was seven years before one of its most assiduous champions, Ray Hooper, sought asylum in York as a refugee from strife-torn Chittering and commenced his illustrious career as our shire’s CEO.

The idea surfaced again during the reign of Gavan Troy as the Shire’s commissioner—that is, between December 2004 and May 2006.  Apparently Mr. Troy gave it short shrift.  He pointed out that the Shire of York did not have the financial capacity to undertake and maintain a project of the kind envisaged by its proponents. 

As we now know only too well, Mr. Troy was right.  He is still right, whatever the Shire Council and administration might want to tell us to the contrary when they’ve finished gathering data from neighbouring shires.

 York’s population—an unbalanced view

Nothing daunted, after Mr. Troy had departed the idea’s movers and shakers got to work again.  In May 2008, Council adopted a ‘public open space strategy’, at the core of which was a proposal to redevelop the Forrest Oval precinct as a sport and recreation facility (at this stage, there was no mention of a convention centre). 

Council hired a ‘leisure consultancy’, A Balanced View (ABV), to prepare a ‘master plan’ for that redevelopment.   

In some respects, most notably with regard to the projected growth of York’s population over the ten years to 2018, the view presented by ABV fell somewhat short of being balanced.  

The consultancy made the mistake—if it was a mistake and not a deliberate ploy—of basing its projections on the Shire’s wildly optimistic expectation of a major increase in population following uptake of residential lots resulting from amendments to the local town planning scheme. 

Setting aside the WA Planning Commission’s ‘more modest’ population forecast of 4400 by 2021, ABV plumped for a figure of 6000 by 2018.   It’s now 2017, and it seems extremely unlikely to say the least that our current population of possibly less than 3500 will increase so dramatically over the next 12 months as to reach the ABV projection.

In 2006, the Census counted 3116 people living in York.   By 2011, the year of the following Census, the population had grown by 280 to 3396, representing an average yearly increase of 56 souls.  On that basis, it seems fair to suppose that York’s population in 2008 stood at around 3228 (3116 plus 112).

Simple arithmetic tells us that the difference between 6000 and 3228 is 2772.  So to arrive at a population of 6000 during the ten years from 2008 to 2018 would require an average annual population increase of 277 souls.

Pending the release of data from the 2016 Census, let’s assume that York’s current population has increased annually by 56 souls since 2008 and that my estimate for 2008 is correct.  That would yield a notional present population figure (calculated to the end of last year) of 3228 plus 448 (8 times 56), i.e. 3676.

(My guess is that that last figure overstates the situation by about 200, but never mind.)

If I’m right, we shall have to increase our population by 2484 or more over the next 12 months or so to reach the 6000 target.   Somehow I can't see that happening, not even if we prohibit the sale of condoms and local doctors stop prescribing the contraceptive pill.

So far as I know, there has been nothing in York’s history over the last half century to justify the degree of demographic optimism displayed by the Shire and ABV in 2008.   Yet I can find no indication that the master plan’s population projection was ever challenged in any of the planning documents that followed.

Short of a gold rush, the discovery of diamonds, or a government sponsored influx of Middle Eastern and African refugees (now there’s a thought, come on, Mr. Dutton, be a sport, give us those 'huddled masses yearning to be free'), there seems very little likelihood that York’s population will increase significantly in coming years.   God forbid, it may even decline, as the populations of country towns in WA have tended to do since the 1960s—perhaps even further back.

A grey invasion

Most of any increase in York’s population will probably—I dare say certainly— be made up of retired people aged 65 and over fleeing from the metro area in search of cheaper housing, bucolic tranquillity and a way of life defined by the absence of pushy millennials.  

Young families tend to migrate in search of employment opportunities, of which there are few in York at any given time.   Young people born and bred here will be tempted by education as well as employment opportunities to relocate in Perth, elsewhere in WA and interstate.

I think an increase in the proportion of elderly residents, resulting both from tree-changer migration and aging of settled inhabitants, will have serious implications for the economic fortunes of the Shire of York.  

Elderly people are usually less well off than younger residents of working age (younger residents with jobs, that is).   While often asset rich, many older folk are income poor.  They are likely to have difficulty paying their rates on time, and to have less money to spend in local shops.

They will also be less likely to make use of YRCC facilities and to be happy with having to pay the excessive rates that the Shire of York continues to inflict on us year after year when it should be seeking ways to reduce them.  It seems unconscionable, for example, that the same amount is charged on my property in York as on the much more valuable property of my wealthy barrister friend who lives in North Perth.

Incidentally, on page 84 of the master plan ABV notes that members of the York Bowling Club ‘may not wish to give up having [their] own clubroom facility to be part of a shared facility’.   On page 86, it makes a more emphatic comment regarding the Tennis Club:  ‘[The] Club is very happy with their current location and facilities’. 

So I wonder, what dark rhetorical arts did the Shire of York employ to persuade those good people that they would be better off in a sporting hub?  And what was in it for the Shire?