Recall that the NSW Government – which last year demanded an “explosive” surge of 2 million migrants over five years to boost the economy – has joined the business lobby in ramping up pressure on the Albanese Government to open the immigration floodgates:
NSW Skills Minister Alister Henskens has called on the Albanese government to implement a “significant acceleration” of the nation’s skilled migration program, warning that without remedy, the acute labour shortage will continue to act as a “handbrake” on the state’s economy…
“Businesses are screaming out for workers and only a significant acceleration of skilled migration will ease pressure in industries like hospitality, healthcare and traditional trades. When it comes to the labour shortage, we need the commonwealth’s help to unlock skilled migration and allow businesses to drive our economic recovery from the pandemic”…
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“This labour shortage is not unique to NSW but it is apparent this can only be fixed by an increase in targeted skilled migration and the commonwealth government holds the policy levers to make that happen,” he said.
This came as the Property Council last week warned that Greater Sydney is facing “an underlying deficit of housing supply” amid the city’s growing population:
The Greater Sydney Commission’s Greater Sydney Region Plan 2036 (GSRP), identified a need for 725,000 new homes across the region to house Greater Sydney’s population from 2016 to 2036. The Plan identified delivery of a minimum 36,250 dwellings every year in Greater Sydney to achieve this goal In 2019 DPIE released revised population projections, which provided updated implied dwelling requirements for all Greater Sydney LGAs to 2041. The revisions mean one million dwellings are needed in Greater Sydney by 2041 an increase of over 250,000 dwellings.
The revised demand to 2041 has increased the number of dwellings required to be delivered by the region each year, rising from 36,250 dwellings per annum to 40,000 dwellings per annum. As a result, housing delivery in Greater Sydney will need to increase to maintain sufficient delivery to meet the revised demand…
Since the GSRP was published, Sydney has meet or exceeded the annual requirement 2 times, 2017-18 and 2018-19.
Following 2018-19 the number of homes completed in Sydney has dropped. In 2020-21 the number of new homes completed in Sydney (29,785) dropped below 30,000 for the first time since 2014-15…
If Greater Sydney continues to deliver under the annual targets there is a risk of a significant undersupply by 2036. As an example, if completions remain at around 29,000 dwellings per year (as was completed in 2020-21), there could be an undersupply of 80,000 dwellings by 2036…
“In order to keep pace with future demand, Western Sydney requires the delivery of 25,530 dwellings per year – and we are presently 6,000 homes short of this number,” [Property Council’s NSW Executive Director Luke Achterstraat said]…
The reality of the population ponzi on Sydney living standards was highlighted on Monday by The SMH, which reported that residents in Western Sydney are being shoehorned into expensive high-rise dog boxes without access to open space or sporting fields:
The de Paula family lived in Newington for a decade but relocated three years ago to nearby Wentworth Point, where residents are urging the NSW government to abandon plans to build two residential towers on the last remaining parcel of publicly owned land in the high-density suburb.
There were 12,703 people living in Wentworth Point as of the 2021 census, all of them in apartments, but no public park space catering for some 800 school-aged children.
De Paula said the state government urgently needed to address the lack of green space for families in the area.
“Not having somewhere to play sport is inherently un-Australian to me,” she said.
“We’re supposed to be a sporting nation and yet we’re creating communities that have no facilities where you can play sport”…
Parramatta City councillor and Wentworth Point resident Paul Noack, who describes the high-rise community as “like Manhattan without Central Park”…
He said that building residential towers on the site would “absolutely suffocate the community”.
These sorts of outcomes will continue if the federal government opens the immigration floodgates and returns to its destructive ‘Big Australia’ policy.
Shoveling many tens-of-thousands of migrants into Sydney will necessarily lead to the construction of more high-rise towers, will eat up more open space, and will drive up traffic congestion. For what? So that billionaire property moguls like Highrise Harry Triguboff and toll road operator Transurban can get even richer, feasting on the never-ending flood of warm bodies?
Let’s get back to basics here. Sydney’s, and indeed Australia’s, ‘housing shortage’ and infrastructure woes could be permanently solved with the stroke of a pen by the federal government. All it needs to do is reduce immigration back to historical pre-2005 levels. This would also negate the need to bulldoze our suburbs into high density.
Mass immigration will deliver a never-ending housing shortage.
Any housing and infrastructure shortage problem is really an excessive immigration problem. Not that you will ever hear the property lobby nor our captured politicians, economists and media admit it.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also Chief Economist and co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
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