It is incomprehensible that Australia’s leading business paper, which should understand the interaction of supply and demand, lacks the honesty to mention demand when evaluating the housing crisis:
The AFR View rightly claims that “housing affordability” policies like looser lending standards and shared equity are unhelpful to Australia’s housing affordability crisis.
It also argues that the government should avoid proposals such as scrapping negative gearing and capital gains tax breaks, which could have unwanted results.
In the end, The AFR View says “there is only one housing fix” and that is “to increase supply”.
Unbelievably, the 722-word article doesn’t even mention immigration levels.
Yet, the fundamental reason why Australia has had a housing shortage is because Australia has imported huge volumes of people over the past two decades, overrunning supply.
Nor will Australia build enough homes over the next 39 years as the population expands by a projected 13.1 million people, equivalent to adding another Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane worth of people to the current population.
The reality is that Australia’s housing shortage could be solved with the stroke of a pen by slashing immigration and lowering demand.
In other words, Australia’s housing crisis is mostly an excessive demand issue arising from extreme levels of immigration.
Sadly, you will never see paid shills like The AFR admit the obvious. They need to satisfy their financial sponsors, who benefit from mass immigration.
