After Coalition MPs this morning called for negative gearing to be placed on the reform table, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has moved fast to do-nothing. From The Australian:
Malcolm Turnbull has dismissed calls from backbenchers within the Coalition for the government to revisit its opposition to negative gearing reform…
“There is a tendency for people, particularly on the left, to overlook the fundamental reality which is that the reason housing affordability has deteriorated, is simply because demand has been consistently exceeding supply…”
“We have not been building enough dwellings…”
“…Demand has been consistently exceeding supply”, hey Malcolm? Fair enough. But why then is your government persisting with a mass immigration program when it is shutting younger Australians out of home ownership?
Since John Howard initially opened the immigration floodgates in 2003, Australia’s population has grown at nearly 2.5 times the OECD average:
Under this mass immigration agenda, Sydney’s population is projected to rise by 87,000 people per year (1,650 people each week) to 6.4 million over the next 20-years – effectively adding another Perth to the city’s population:
Melbourne’s population is projected to balloon by 97,000 people per year (1,850 people each week) over the next 35 years to more than 8 million people:
Clearly, having a flood of new migrants inundating Sydney and Melbourne will make housing affordability much more difficult to solve.
None of this is rocket science, Malcolm. So why won’t you address the problem at its source and slash immigration?
