The businessman spoke on the “unsustainability of perpetual population growth” at a Friends of Ku-ring-gai Environment annual general meeting held on Wednesday night, and spoke exclusively with the Advocate following the address.
“I was absolutely amazed that I didn’t get a response from Lucy Turnbull when I asked her what her plans for the future of Sydney were,” Dick Smith said.
“We now have 5 million (in Sydney), is it a plan for 50 million or 500 million?”
Mr Smith said his plan for the future would see an immediate reduction in immigration numbers from 200,000 to 70,000 per year, “which will see our population level off at about 26 million”.
“I am concerned about our grandchildren; they are not going to have jobs,” he said.
“At the end of this century we will have 100m at the present growth rate, which means that around 30m will be incredibly poor or unemployed.
“They won’t have jobs, they won’t have an income.
“Australian families have the number of children they can give a good life too, our politicians should be doing the same thing — but instead they want endless growth, which is endless greed.
“They are trying to cover up the fact that we are actually going backwards, we are running on a Ponzi scheme, because there is no doubt, in the future that these people won’t have jobs.”
Mr Smith said “people in the Hornsby Ku-ring-gai region are concerned about knocking down beautiful houses and putting up high-rise”.
“But what they don’t understand is that we will have to knock down the six storey high-rise in the future to put up 30 storey high-rise,” he said.
“It is a never ending system of expansion.
“Lucy Turnbull doesn’t know how to solve the problem, I thought she would come out and tell the people that ‘Dick Smith was mistaken’, but she didn’t do that.
“There has been no comment, which means there is no plan.”
Go Dick!