The gaslighting over Australia’s housing crisis hit a new level with David Hayward, Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at RMIT University, claiming “your beach house is lovely, but it’s killing Australia”.
“We have been building vastly more dwellings than are needed to match population growth for decades, yet real prices and rents keep growing, affordability keeps falling, and ever-increasing government subsidies can’t keep up”, Hayward claims.
“We currently have 1 million more houses than households”.
“And all this because of the MMOOYBYs [Make Money Out of Your Back Yards], who just don’t know how to stop”.
“It doesn’t matter that holiday homes sit vacant for much of the year. It doesn’t matter that new holiday homes mean building on our precious coast in otherwise rare and distinctive landscapes, destroying what should have been left for future generations – not just of people, but also native animals”.
“That property addiction works well for those with multiple properties — Baby Boomers and those on high incomes prominently among them”.
“It’s a different story for those without property – primarily the young and those on average and lower incomes”, Hayward argues.
To be fair to Hayward, he does make some sensible suggestions: capping negative gearing, lifting land taxes on non-first homes, and building more social housing.
But his claim that Australia has been “building vastly more dwellings than are needed to match population growth for decades” is patently false, as illustrated in the next chart plotting population growth against actual dwelling completions:
Australia’s population growth ramped-up massively from the mid-2000s when the federal government more than doubled immigration.
However, Australia’s rate of dwelling construction only lifted for a brief period last decade.
This also meant “building on our precious coast in otherwise rare and distinctive landscapes, destroying what should have been left for future generations – not just of people, but also native animals”.
Now the federal budget projects that Australia’s population will surge by a record 2.18 million people in the five years to 2026-27 – equivalent to five Canberra’s or one Perth’s worth of people.
This population explosion will occur at the same time as the rate of dwelling construction is crashing amid rising builder insolvencies, soaring interest rates and higher materials costs.
It will also run roughshod over Australia’s native habitat, which Hayward pretends to care about.
And here is my key criticism of Hayward’s analysis: he has made zero mention of the federal government’s extreme immigration policy, which is the primary cause of Australia’s housing shortage let alone our natural habitat destruction.
Australia didn’t build enough homes during the 15 years of ‘Big Australia’ immigration prior to the pandemic.
And there is no way it will build enough homes over the five years to 2026-27 as a projected 1.5 million net overseas migrants land in Australia.
Until commentators like Hayward acknowledge that mass immigration is driving the housing shortage, their analysis isn’t worth the paper it is written on.
