Let’s recall former Labor leader, Mark Latham’s, remarks last month calling for immigration levels to be cut in order to take the pressure off housing:
“[Housing affordability] is all about supply and demand. It’s not rocket science…
[But] you’ve got to do something about demand. And whether we like it or not – and the two parties have got consensus about a Big Australia – the driver of housing demand in Sydney is immigration. The 200,000 a year plus immigration program – add to that the refugee program – that’s the driver of demand. And unless you address that, you can have all of the housing bonds, press conferences and forums that you like – and sort of puffy stuff in the media – and you won’t get a solution. So, break the consensus about Big Australia, slash the immigration program, drive down demand, and finally you will have a sensible solution to housing affordability”.
“You won’t have to spend as much on infrastructure funding because the place is not sprawling as much. And the other benefit you get is environmental sustainability. It’s something The Greens used to talk about, but now they talk about 50,000 to 100,000 refugees – they are Big Australia as well”.
“So, there is real room here for a sensible solution based on cuts to immigration”.
Now Dick Smith has entered the fray, also arguing that the main solution to making housing more affordable rests with winding-back Australia’s mass immigration program:
“The main point that’s driving our unaffordable housing is about 200,000 immigrants come in a year. That’s five jumbo loads a week that go out empty,” he told Sky News.
“All of our problems are from this unbelievable population increase. You can’t drive in Sydney at the moment. The housing prices are enormous.
“The most fundamental right is to get a house with a backyard. Young couples can’t do that anymore, purely driven in 95 per cent of cases by the enormous population increase, mainly driven by ridiculous immigration”…
This site has never argued that excessive immigration is the sole cause of Australia’s unaffordable housing. But it is hard to deny that it is a significant factor.
Since John Howard initially opened the immigration floodgates in 2003, Australia’s population has grown at nearly 2.5 times the OECD average (see next chart).
Most of these migrants have flooded into Melbourne and Sydney, where house price growth has also been the strongest and homes are most expensive:
And because of mass immigration, Sydney’s population is projected to grow by 87,000 people per year (1,650 people each week) to 6.4 million over the next 20-years – effectively adding another Perth to the city’s population:
Whereas Melbourne’s population is projected to balloon by 97,000 people per year (1,850 people each week) over the next 35 years to more than 8 million people:
The Turnbull Government can bang on about boosting supply all it wants (without actually doing anything). But something needs to be done to stem demand, including the deluge of new migrants inundating Sydney and Melbourne each and every year.
None of this is rocket science. So why won’t our major political parties – the Coalition, Labor and the Greens – address the problem at its source and slash immigration to sensible and sustainable levels?
