On Thursday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported that Australia’s population grew by an unprecedented 563,200 in the year to March 2023, driven by record 454,300 net overseas migration (NOM):
Thus, Australia’s population and NOM has already blown past the May federal budget’s projection of 400,000 NOM and 524,000 population growth in 2022-23:
Source: 2023 federal budget
The SMH’s Shane Wright summed up the madness noting that Australia’s population is “growing by a record 2000 people a day, fuelled by the largest surge in migrants in history”.
In turn, “property prices and rents would continue to climb and the nation’s social infrastructure such as schools would struggle to cope because of the government’s “unplanned” surge in migration”.
Never fear, Prime Minister has everything under control, taking to Twitter on Thursday to spuik the federal government’s wet lettuce Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), which is targeting 30,000 new social and affordable homes over five years “to make it easier for Australians to build, rent or buy a home”:
So, the nation’s population grew by 563,000 in just 12 months and Albo is patting himself on the back for passing legislation that has the potential to build 30,000 new homes over the five years to 2028-29.
It’s like urinating into a bushfire.
But wait, there’s more. Housing minister, Julie Collins, played down concerns over the population numbers, telling Shane Wright that the HAFF, on top of the government’s other policies to boost the housing stock and overhaul the migration system, would help meet the target of building 1.2 million homes by the end of the decade:
“We have policies right across the housing spectrum to address all of those, working with states and territories, to meet that target”, Collins said.
Yet, developers and industry participants at this week’s AFR Housing Summit all scoffed at the mythical 1.2 million housing target:
Heck, developer Nigel Satterley told the Summit that only half of those homes would be finished – between 600,000 and 650,000, “if we’re lucky”.
The Albanese Government is literally gaslighting us on the housing crisis while it makes the situation worse every day by running the largest and most extreme immigration policy in history.
