The boss of the ACT’s largest developer, Geocon founder and Managing Director Nick Georgalis, has attacked Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s proposal to modestly cut Australia’s migrant intake.
Georgalis claims that the building industry is beset with labour shortages, which will only be made worse via migration cuts.
“We’ve probably found the new norm today where the labour shortages that we have aren’t going to get resolved, particularly when you see the Federal Government talking about cutting migration”, he said.
“That’s not the solution to the housing crisis”.
Georgalis’ circular argument effectively boils down to “we need migrants to build homes for migrants”.
The property developer’s housing equation
Obviously, when Australia imports hundreds of thousands of migrants every year, these people require homes to live in.
Australia has not been able to build enough homes for these new entrants, thus creating a housing shortage that has helped drive up house prices and rents. It is basic supply-and-demand economics.
Additionally, the pro-Big Australia Grattan Institute categorically refuted the idea that migration eases labour shortages in the construction industry:
“Migrants are less likely to work in construction than in most other industries. About 32% of Australian workers were foreign born, but only about 24% of workers in building and construction were born overseas”.
“And very few recent migrants work in construction. Migrants who arrived in Australia less than five years ago account for just 2.8% of the construction workforce, but account for 4.4% of all workers in Australia”.
“Among those migrant groups where we’re now seeing the biggest rebound in numbers – international students, international graduates and working holiday makers – relatively few work in construction. And just 0.5% of all construction workers are on a temporary skilled visa”.
Therefore, Australia’s faux skilled migration system is directly driving Australia’s housing shortages by massively boosting demand without adding to labour supply in the construction industry.
The obvious solution to this mess is to run an immigration program that is smaller than the nation’s capacity to build housing and infrastructure.
Sadly, a vested-interest property developer will never advocate the simplest, fastest, and cheapest solutions when it threatens their profits.
Maintaining an artificial housing shortage via mass immigration is good for business.
