On Wednesday, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews blamed a lack of housing supply for driving up rents.
“Anybody who is applying for a rental and finds that they’re one of 25 different applications or 50 even … they can tell you there’s not enough supply”, he said.
“That’s why we need to make better decisions and make them faster”.
This lack of supply will only get worse under the Albanese Government’s extreme immigration policy.
According to the population projections in this month’s federal budget, Victoria’s population will grow by an astonishing 694,000 over the five years to 2026-27:
Source: 2023 federal budget
Thus, in only five years, Victoria will add the equivalent of 1.5 Canberra’s worth of population, but obviously without the requisite infrastructure and housing to support the ballooning number of people.
The next chart plots the federal budget’s population projections for Victoria for historical context:
By Andrews’ own admission, Victoria failed to build enough homes and infrastructure to accommodate the record population growth experienced in the 15 years leading up to the pandemic.
Therefore, providing housing and infrastructure for the federal budget’s even more lofty population projections will be an insurmountable task.
This is especially so given the entire home building industry is on its knees suffering from widespread insolvencies amid soaring materials prices and financing (interest rate) costs.
With players like Porter Davis Homes no longer standing, there are now fewer builders to supply the state’s homes in the face of the unrelenting immigration demand.
It’s time for Daniel Andrews and others to stop scapegoating a ‘lack of supply’ and speak honestly and openly about the issue.
Victoria and Australia will never build enough homes so long as their populations continue to grow like a science experiment through extreme levels of immigration.
The housing crisis is really an excessive immigration problem.
Daniel Andrews should also get on the phone to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and demand that he cut immigration so that infrastructure and housing supply can keep pace with demand.
He should also demand that the federal government provide billions of dollars of funding to the state so that it can build the necessary infrastructure to support its swelling population.
