The cognitive dissonance of the Grattan Institute is a sight to behold.
This captured ‘think tank’, funded by taxpayers, corporate interests, and Melbourne University, continually produces propaganda on the immense benefits of running a mass immigration program while giving scant attention to the negative externalities on the housing market, infrastructure, productivity, living standards, and the natural environment.
Grattan’s immigration “research” and work program is funded by the pro-Big Australia Scanlon Foundation, which was founded by real estate entrepreneur and rich lister Peter Scanlon:
As John Masanauskas from the Herald-Sun explained in 2009 (link no longer active):
MAJOR investor and former Elders executive Peter Scanlon hardly blinks when asked if his conspicuous support for a bigger population is also good for business.
Mr Scanlon, whose family wealth is estimated to be more than $600 million, has set up a foundation with the aim to create a larger and socially cohesive Australia.
It also happens that Mr Scanlon has extensive property development interests, which clearly benefit from immigration-fuelled high population growth.
“My primary driver in (setting up the foundation) is if we don’t have growth we are going to lose all our youth because the world is looking to train people around the world,” he explains.
“Instead of having stagnant growth, we’re going to have a serious decline.”
Mr Scanlon believes that governments aren’t doing enough to sell the benefits of a bigger population so he has put his money where his mouth is…
As the Scanlon Foundation’s mouthpiece, the Grattan Institute continually accentuates the fantastical benefits of mass immigration while downplaying the negatives.
At the same time as the Grattan Institute pumps out Big Australia propaganda, it regularly hand-wrings about the housing crisis.
Grattan claims that Australia’s housing crisis is driven by a lack of supply, completely ignoring the explosive growth in Australia’s population caused by the mass immigration that Grattan advocates.
Take a look at the following chart. It shows that Australia experienced the advanced world’s fastest population increase between 2000 and 2023, growing by an insane 40%.
No wonder, then, that Australia has not built enough homes. It’s the immigration demand, stupid! Australia’s extra 8.5 million residents since 2000 needed to live somewhere.
Yet here we are. Another week, and another dose of the Grattan Institute complaining that Australia hasn’t built enough homes and just needs to bulldoze our suburbs into high-density housing:
Housing prices have soared faster than household incomes over the past two decades…
Figures from CoreLogic and ANU’s Centre for Social Policy Research show national median dwelling prices have risen from about four times median household incomes in 2001, to more than eight times in 2024…
The data formed part of the Grattan Institute report Renting in Retirement: Why Rent Assistance needs to rise.
Grattan Institute program director housing and economic security Brendan Coates said home ownership was still out of reach for many, even families with two incomes…
“It’s a very bleak picture even with the rise in dual incomes,” Coates said.
He attributed the price rises to the shortfall in homes being built, and the growing wealth of families which enabled some to pay more for property…
“The answer to the $11 trillion question [the value of Australia’s property market] is that we need to build more housing – that’s the most important thing to do,” Coates said. “Building housing where people want to live.
“Without it, housing will remain scarce and prices will remain high and even rise further,” he said…
“What’s driving this imbalance between wages and house prices – part of it is [housing] supply – it’s economics 101 to have a balance between supply and demand”, [CoreLogic executive research director Tim Lawless added].
The cognitive dissonance of Brendan Coates, who heads the migration and housing policy areas of the Grattan Institute, is unbelievable.
How can Coates simultaneously promote high levels of immigration and then complain that Australia cannot build enough homes? They are two contradictory positions.
As the Grattan Institute itself has pointed out, the share of migrants working in construction is substantially lower than for Australian-born workers:
As a result, Australia’s migration system directly worsens the housing crisis by pumping demand and not contributing to supply.
The 2024 Population Statement from Treasury’s Centre for Population projects that Australia’s population will balloon by 13.5 million people in only 40 years:
Source: Centre for Population (December 2024)
This 13.5 million projected population increase will be driven by permanently high net overseas migration of 235,000 annually, which is more than double the 90,000 average net migration in the 60 years following World War II.
This 13.5 million projected population increase is equivalent to adding another Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane to the nation’s current population in just 40 years!
All of the housing, infrastructure, water supplies, and energy encompassed in these three major cities would need to be replicated in just 40 years to maintain current living standards.
Does Brendan Coates seriously believe that it is possible to build enough housing and infrastructure to keep pace with the federal government’s official population projection? It isn’t possible.
Brendan Coates and the Grattan Institute should come clean and admit that their positions on immigration and housing are contradictory and both cannot be met.
So long as Australia continues to add to housing demand by the hundreds of thousands each year, it will never supply enough homes or solve the housing crisis.
