On Tuesday, CFMEU boss Zach Smith told the National Press Club that Australia’s immigration consensus would collapse if housing supply continues to fall behind population growth.
“If we do not build the homes to keep up with our growing population then the social licence for immigration will collapse and it will collapse fast”, he said.
“You can already see parts of the Coalition, rudderless and desperate, poking at this nasty political stink bomb. What I’m proposing is the only way to defuse it”.
“Skilled, permanent migration is the backbone of a lot of economic activity that occurs in this country”.
“So turning off the tap of migration, apart from it being deeply exclusionary and also economically harmful … also wouldn’t address our underlying issue, which is that we haven’t built enough houses”, Smith claimed.
Zach Smith wants the federal government to impose a super profits tax of 40% of excess profits, and then for the government to invest the proceeds into social housing to support his union mates.
While a super profits tax is a good idea, it should not be spent on some half-arsed housing quango to support CFMEU graft.
Rather, the federal government should cut immigration to a level commensurate with the nation’s ability to supply housing and infrastructure. Otherwise, we will forever fall further behind.
The “social license for immigration” collapsed long ago. Australians have never supported immigration at such extreme levels.
This is why the Albanese Government did not tell the Australian people during last year’s federal election campaign that Labor would lift immigration to record levels if elected.
Because Labor understood that if they told voters they intended to ramp immigration, they would have lost the election.
Earlier this year, the Australian Population Research Institute (APRI) released polling showing that 70% of Australians want lower levels of immigration (of which 42% want significantly lower or zero immigration):
Source: The Australian Population Research Institute (TAPRI)
Resolve Political Monitoring last week released polling showing that 59% of Australians believe that immigration numbers are “too high”, while only 25% believe immigration numbers are “about right” and only 3% think they are “too low”:
“Many people are now concerned at the higher immigration numbers, with the comments we collect from respondents pinpointing the effects on quality of life and prices”, Resolve director Jim Reed said.
“When you throw hundreds of thousands of people into cities without increasing housing supply and infrastructure, they figure it’s got to have an effect”.
Zach Smith’s claim that reducing immigration “wouldn’t address our underlying issue, which is that we haven’t built enough houses”, is also demonstrably false and highlights the ‘tail wagging the dog’ logic prevalent in the housing debate:
Australia has had one of the highest rates of housing construction in the developed world:
Source: OECD Affordable Housing Database
We also have one of the highest numbers of construction workers per capita in the OECD:
Australia also ramped-up housing construction to record levels last decade.
However, this surge in construction was swamped by the unprecedented jump in net overseas migration from 2005, which is projected to run even higher over the next five years:
Australia’s housing shortage has clearly been caused first and foremost by the excessive levels of immigration, not a lack of supply.
The primary solution, therefore, is to reduce net overseas migration to levels consistent with the country’s ability to deliver new housing, infrastructure, and services.
Net overseas migration should be reduced to historic levels of roughly 100,000 people per year.
Sadly, greedy union hacks like Zach Smith prefer to talk with a forked tongue and gaslight the public into believing Australia’s housing shortage is caused by a ‘lack of supply’, while funnelling taxpayer dollars to his construction worker mates.
