Quality of life more important than being biggest city, says Planning Minister Matthew Guy Liveability in Melbourne rather than population is more important to Planning Minister Matthew Guy. MELBOURNE'S liveability was more important than population growth and it shouldn't compete with Sydney to be the nation's biggest city, says a senior State Government minister. Planning Minister Matthew Guy said that while new figures showed Melbourne could overtake Sydney in population by 2030, this wasn't the Government's aim. "The days of having a competition to be the largest are well and truly over," he said. If it's a competition to be the largest in terms of population, Sydney can have it I'd rather have liveability over population. Melbourne could have up to 8.6 million people by 2061, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates. Mr Guy said while it seemed inevitable that Melbourne would be an enormous city in decades to come, the Government's policy was to take the pressure off by encouraging more growth in regional areas. "Simply growing one great big enormous metropolis in Melbourne at the expense of every other part of Victoria is not the recipe of a sustainable state," he said. Premier Denis Napthine said his Government proudly supported growth. "We would like to see increased population growth, especially in regional cities and rural Victoria, so we can maintain Melbourne as the most liveable city," he said. But federal Melbourne-based MP Kelvin Thomson said that migration-fuelled growth was disastrous for the city. "It will drive traffic congestion and gridlock, high rise and the loss of public open space, a widening gap between rich and poor and social inequality," he said. It will fuel housing unaffordability and job insecurity for our young people. Mr Thomson, the Labor MHR for Wills, is launching a new non-profit lobby group called Victoria First to agitate for much lower immigration and support more sustainable urban and environmental policies.