Recall that the Orwellian Centre for Population has projected that Australia’s population would balloon by 4.1 million residents over the next 10 years—most of whom will live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth.
This population expansion will see Sydney’s and Melbourne’s populations swell to around 6.5 million. Brisbane (3.3 million) and Perth (2.9 million) will also experience strong population growth.
Australia’s housing market is already chronically undersupplied after it has received nearly one million net overseas migrants over the past two financial years.
The Centre for Population’s projections, therefore, would result in worsening shortages of housing as demand continues to outstrip supply.
Indeed, a new Infrastructure Australia report warns that Australia’s construction sector will suffer persistent ‘skills shortages and cost escalations’ in the years ahead.
“Construction materials on average cost around 30% more than they did three years ago and with ongoing skills shortages we simply don’t have the people power we need to get the job done on time”, noted Infrastructure Australia Chief Executive Adam Copp.
Nowhere are these constraints worse than the homebuilding industry, which has seen residential construction costs surge by around 40% since the beginning of the pandemic.
Large volumes of builders have also collapsed, reducing capacity across the industry.
Builders are also competing for workers with state government infrastructure projects.
The upshot is that the supply curve for homebuilding has essentially shifted to the left, meaning that fewer homes are able to be built at a higher cost.
The rational policy response would be to shift the demand curve to the left to match supply by lowering net overseas migration to a level comparable with the capacity to build homes.
Instead, the knuckleheads at the Centre for Population have forecast a whopping 410,000 annual population growth for the next ten years—almost equivalent to the population of Canberra annually—thereby ensuring that population demand will forever overrun supply.
Our incompetent and corrupt federal government has literally guaranteed that Australia’s housing crisis will remain permanent.
The malfeasance of Australia’s policymakers has no bounds.
