What is it with the hard left? Why can’t they admit that running the nation’s largest-ever immigration program has had a detrimental impact on Australian renters?
In the past month, we have witnessed The Greens’ housing spokesperson, Max Chandler-Mather twice claim (here and here) that Australia’s extreme immigration program has had minimal impact on Australian renters.
Chandler-Mather also supported even higher levels of immigration, which would obviously make the housing situation even worse.
Now we have Renfrey Clarke from Green Left completely butchering statistics in an article entitled: “Don’t blame migrants for the housing crisis”.
“Migrants, unfortunately, are the easy-to-blame scapegoats”.
“Following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions net migration underwent a temporary surge, over the 2022-2023 financial year, to a total of 518,000 people”…
“But a thoughtful reading of the statistics, plus a dash of historical perspective, yields a very different picture”.
“First, what counts for housing purposes is not the immigration totals but the rate of population increase. This has slowed markedly in recent times, higher immigration notwithstanding”.
“According to the Macrotrends site, Australia’s population growth in the three years to the end of 2023 was around 1% annually, with a predicted figure for this year of 0.98%”.
“These are some of the lowest figures since the 1930s Great Depression”.
“Intriguingly, recent population growth has been only a fraction of the rates in the 1950s and 1960s”…
“Without large numbers of migrants, it is clear, Australians would die out”.
“Saving us from extinction is just the start of the favours that migrants do for us. The favours include bringing with them much-needed skills in categories that include experienced, job-ready building trades people”…
“On housing issues, nevertheless, migrants are the targets of a campaign of distraction —insidious, at times vicious, and bearing a distinct tinge of racism”.
First, nobody is blaming migrants for the housing crisis. We are blaming excessive levels of immigration – a direct federal government choice – for ramping housing demand way beyond supply.
Second, why has Clarke cited the Macrotrends site on population numbers instead of official Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data?
The ABS shows that Australia’s population grew by around 680,000 or 2.6% in 2023, which is easily the highest growth in history in numbers terms and similar in growth rate terms to the post-war population boom in the 1950s and 1960:
The notion that Australia’s population growth will magically slow to 0.98% this year from 2.6% in 2023 is delusional at best.
Moreover, it is moronic to compare the current situation with the 1950s and 1960s when Australia’s population was 8 million and 10 million, respectively, at the start of the decades, our cities were small, and there was lots of cheap and abundant land to build out.
“The population growth in the 1950s and 1960s built cities that could sprawl on land that was cheap. Now land is expensive, and the extended sprawl is creating major negative externalities”, noted economist Gerard Minack noted in his seminal November 2023 report on Australia’s failing immigration economy.
Now examine the next chart on quarterly asking rents. It shows that rents turned negative at the start of the pandemic when immigration collapsed, only to then rocket when borders reopened and record numbers of migrants poured in:
Accordingly, Australia has witnessed an unprecedented surge in rents following the record explosion in immigration:
The Victorian Government’s latest quarterly rental market update shows exactly the same.
Melbourne rents turned sharply negative when net overseas migration did likewise only to rocket when net overseas migration shot the lights out:
Source: Homes Victoria
Finally, the notion that “without large numbers of migrants, it is clear, Australians would die out” and “saving us from extinction is just the start of the favours that migrants do for us” is the ultimate idiocy.
Nobody is calling for zero net overseas migration, just that it be pared back to historical norms:
Second, growing the population by 14 million in only 39 years, as projected in the latest Intergenerational report, increases the risk of Australia’s natural environment dying out:
The hard-left Greens have to be some of the biggest hypocrites in Australia.
They say that we need to reduce environmental degradation and our carbon footprint. Then, in the same breath, we need to increase our population footprint with immigration.
These are not serious people. They are useful idiots for property developers, big business, and environmental decline.
