Too full and fractured already, but our door is opened wider The infrastructure of our cities is already struggling to cope with population increases, and community solidarity is shredding. So how is this in our national interest? Almost 10 million migrants over the next 50 years will swell Australia's population to more than 40 million by 2060 and more than 50 million by 2100, under dramatically higher new projections by the Bureau of Statistics. The projections, the first for five years, envisage tens of millions more people crowding into Australia's capital cities over the next 50 years, overwhelmingly due to migration. By 2060, the bureau estimates, Melbourne will have 8.5 million people, twice as many as now. By then Sydney would have 8.4 million, an increase of 80 per cent from now. Perth would more than double to 5.5 million people, and Brisbane to 4.8 million. Both cities would be bigger than Sydney is now. Immigration brings profound and irreversible changes. It astonishes me that it's assumed by the political class to be a phenomenon whose benefits cannot be questioned, whose risks cannot be acknowledged.