Twenty years ago, and for all my sins, I found myself at university studying urban planning and learning to lament the poor planning associated with post-war suburbia, the big houses, the double garages, vast lawns, and the cul-de-sacs. They really hated the cul-de-sacs…

However, I was always troubled. I grew up in a cul-de-sac and loved it. I intended to live in one again once I was able, or at least in a similar suburban environment. Of course, I completely understood suburbia’s inefficiency; again, I lived it – car dependency, segregated land uses, empty spaces – all the consequence of creating a residential environment specifically designed to allow people to disconnect from the common, to live smaller, and quieter.

When it finally was time to purchase my dwelling, I spent three months on the hunt, rejecting any dwelling that was within blaring TV distance of another, too heavily overlooked, or anything next to a unit complex or an active main road. Eventually my partner, bless her, stopped going with me saying that my standards could only be met by my living on the moon.

However, one day, there it was – everything I was looking for… A modest three-bedroom workers cottage on 600 square meters, positioned on a quiet street and surrounded by similarly designed dwellings. Was it worth every cent I had and more than 40 per cent of my monthly income for God knows how long? Absolutely! Out with the stomping of an upstairs neighbour, the yelling, and the unpleasant echo of apartment hallways and in with backyard chickens, gardens and peace.

But in the time I have enjoyed the great Australian dream a nasty little trend has emerged, driven largely by those of the ‘big population’ camp, to try and shame people like me into ‘YIMBYism’. That is, demanding that ordinary people sacrifice the amenities we worked so hard to secure, and the delight that our little properties offer us. Apparently, we are selfish, rich, and unwilling to make sacrifices – beyond being taxed out the ass – to help anyone else.

From what I can make of their argument, it is that hundreds of thousands of migrants are entering the country every year – boosted to an insane net 450,000 last year under the Albanese Labor government. Housing availability is going down and prices are going up, particularly in the desirable urban areas, and I am the problem for not willingly offering up my quality of life.

YIMBY proponents tell me to think of the young people. However, when I speak to younger people – regardless of whether they are Australian-born or born overseas – it becomes pretty clear that they also desire a standalone detached dwelling on a decent chunk of land. The ‘solutions’ that are pushed by YIMBY types are not what real people actually want. Sure, people will take a YIMBY-facilitated apartment as a stopgap, but they ultimately want a slice of the traditional suburban pie with all its amenities – the very thing being demolished by YIMBY thinking.

To those on the conservative side of politics preaching about the need to win the younger vote let me say that I completely agree, but housing can’t be thought of as anything with a roof and a sink. Telling younger people that we are willing to irreversibly sacrifice the quality of suburban life in their name is completely missing the point.

I’ll reiterate – they do not see their entire lives in a two-bedroom apartment, or a house shunted into someone else’s backyard. Like me in my university days, they want an old-fashioned house, like the one you probably own.

The political answer therefore isn’t the destruction of suburbia. It is not forcing everyone to live louder, busier, and uglier in the name of affordability, but by being the side of politics that is willing to protect the suburbs that most people, including the young, still aspire to live in – to keep the Australian dream alive.

We need to be the only side brave enough to say that while immigration is great, a higher population affects housing prices, reduces space and affects amenities – it is a simple numbers game as bigoted, hateful or intolerant as Pi equalling 3.14. If the current immigration regime is already driving desperate calls for regular homeowners to stand aside as their suburbs and amenities are demolished, what exactly do young people think their urban environment will look like in the decades ahead when they are seeking to have a family and live in peace? Moreover, what do they think the urban environment will look like when their children seek to do the same?

By elevating the protection of our suburbs – and the great Australian dream, to the importance of our gross domestic product we can work to better balance our apparent need for more consumers and cheap workers with the retention of our national urban character.

This should be the differentiator between the conservative movement and the left wing. So let us end the never-ending bidding war about the extent of suburbia to be obliterated this year or next to accommodate endless population growth, and let’s get into the business of, shock, conserving by actively championing population sustainability.

In the meantime, those of us hoping to live our quiet lives in suburbia will continue to roll our eyes at self-aggrandising YIMBY proponents and declare without shame or guilt, no. Never in my backyard.

Matthew Malone is a former Coalition staffer and Urban Planner