Labor must reverse track on immigration urgently

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The latest quarterly population data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows that the nation’s population grew by a record high 482,000 people in 2022 off record net overseas migration of around 400,000:

Australia's population increase

This immigration deluge has been deliberately engineered by the Albanese Government, which made a range of policy changes after last year’s election to turbo-charge the numbers of international arrivals. These changes include:

  • Increasing the permanent (non-humanitarian) migrant intake to a record high 195,000 people a year (up 35,000).
  • Increasing the number of hours international students can work and how long they can stay after they finish their studies.
  • Committing 500 new staff and $42 million of funding to clear ‘visa backlogs’.
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In turn, Labor’s ‘Big Australia’ immigration agenda will make many of the nation’s challenges much harder to overcome.

For example, importing hundreds of thousands of extra people into Australia every single year will:

  • Exacerbate the nation’s rental crisis, which is adding to cost-of-living pressures and crushing the working class.
  • Stymie wage growth, which is the flipside to the ‘cost of living’ issue.
  • Decimate Australia’s emissions reduction targets and degrade the natural environment.
  • Exacerbate Australia’s energy shortages.
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On the issue of housing, the National Housing Finance & Investment Corporation’s (NHFIC) State of the Nation’s Housing report, released this week, forecast that housing demand will exceed supply by 124,100 dwellings over the five years to 2028:

Housing shortages

Commenting on its forecasts, NHFIC noted dire impacts for the rental market.

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“Returning migration at a time of low vacancy rates is likely to result in upward pressure on rents”, NHFIC notes.

In particular, “rents are picking up strongly in the cities that receive the bulk of overseas workers and international students, such as Sydney and Melbourne”.

In another brilliant article, Crispin Hull, former editor of The Canberra Times, has called on the Albanese Government to take on the vested interest lobbies and grant Australians respite from the endless overcrowding of their cities via mass immigration.

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Hull points out that Labor’s “Mickey Mouse” Housing Australia Future Fund, which aims to “underwrite 30,000 social-housing dwellings through a stock-market arrangement”, will be dwarfed by expected net overseas migration of 650,000 in 2023 and 2024.

“Our Federal Government knows there is a housing and rental crisis and a congestion and environmental crisis, on one hand, yet it firmly believes that high immigration is a “good thing”. Whereas rational people know that high immigration is the major cause of the housing and rental crisis and the congestion and environmental crises”.

“It is insane at best or duplicitous at worst”.

“Where on earth in the Australian land mass are the 650,000 people to be housed over the two years? And another 650,000 in the next two years? And another and another?”

…”The housing and rental crisis could be turned around at a stroke, by reducing immigration to the pre-Howard years of around 70,000 – or less. Yes, immigration has done wonderful things for Australia in the past, but that was when it was moderate not rampant and when the economy needed the skills. Australia can now train people to do almost anything. We have a training shortage, not a people shortage”.

Truer words have never been written.

The latest polling shows that the overwhelming majority of Australians do not support a return to pre-COVID levels of immigration, nor higher:

Desired level of immigration
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Nor do they want Australia’s population to continue growing:

Does Australia need more people

Where was Labor’s announcement during last year’s election campaign that it would increase immigration to previously unheard-of levels?

Who knew that a vote for Anthony Albanese’s Labor would result in Giant Australia, and a permanent shortage of homes and infrastructure?

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It is appalling how far Anthony Albanese has deviated from his modest upbringing in public housing.

He would risk being thrown onto the streets if he were raised under current conditions.

About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.