NSW Planning Minister Rob Stokes is calling for a national approach to population growth.

Under the current system, the federal government controls how many people can immigrate to Australia, leaving state governments with little insight into how much infrastructure is needed for the growing population.

Planning Minister Rob Stokes tells John Stanley it’s time we developed a “national settlement strategy” to give state governments more insight into the process.

“One of the real challenges that we have in planning for the growth of this city and this state is we actually don’t have any idea how many people we’re planning for.

“It’s long been a problem… immigration policy is really a proxy for a population policy

“The states don’t know where it’s going which means it’s frankly impossible for us to plan with any degree of accuracy.

“Let’s be open with the numbers we’re dealing with so that we can plan effectively.”

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