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I think what Bill Heffernan is saying is if you need steak and chips then move to where cows and spuds are easy to grow. That's maybe the Kimberley coast or the southwest tip of Tasmania. I regard water as the greater limitation since you can always make soil from a rocky base; some barren islands off the Irish coast were built up with seaweed I believe.
The cities now experiencing chronic disamenity were originally chosen as campsites by British explorers. They had no inkling millions of people would be living there 200 years later. But they do since the kids go to school, the RSL has Friday night meat raffles and their not so great job at the council is semi-secure. These people are not going to move to the Kimberley coast. Quite the reverse, environmental refugees from Tuvalu etc are going to flock to those cities.
But hasn't a flood of people from the south to the (Queensland) tropics already begun ?
(admittedly the effect has been overwhelmed by the large level of immigration more than replacing them in Sydney and Melbourne)
If "growth" (industries, jobs, property prices etc) occurs in the far north, because that is where the viable opportunities are, won't the northward migration accelerate ?
Is a council job in Darwin really that much worse than a council job on the Central Coast ?
Anyway - Bill is just talking about farmers heading north, not the population as a whole - so the RSL folk might not notice either way, so long as the steak and spuds continues to arrive at Woolies or BiLo every week.