Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told parliament’s Question Time on Thursday that a lack of supply and rigid council planning rules was behind Australia’s housing affordability crisis:
“We know the Big Challenge in this country is housing Supply and that’s why as part of the reforms that we’ve put forward that we went to the election on and have a mandate for is the housing affordability and Supply Council to work with not just the Commonwealth government but state government”.
“I’ll be speaking at the Australian Council of local government tonight and again tomorrow about the role that local government has to play in approving supply of medium density housing where it’s appropriate of making sure that land release along with state governments occurs where it’s appropriate in dealing with the issue of supply”.
“That’s why we had in the budget the initiative to encourage investment in the private rental market through the build to rent program that the Property Council estimates will create somewhere between 150,000 and 250 000 new homes”.
“That’s why one of the first things we did in coming to government was to unlock $575 million in funding from our national housing infrastructure facility to be invested immediately in new social and affordable homes and these funds are now flowing to projects around the country that’s why we put $2 billion additional in the community housing in the budget”.
“That’s why we had the housing Australia future fund before the Senate which will create 30 000 new social and affordable homes”.
Typical Albowaffle: blame a ‘lack of housing supply’ and then bamboozle the audience with a grab back of minor policies to pretend that you are fixing the problem.
Meanwhile, the actual housing crisis worsens by the day as con artist Albo floods the nation with record numbers of people via immigration.
Just last year alone, Australia’s population grew by an unprecedented 497,000 in calendar year 2022, off record NOM of 387,000:
The federal budget projected immigration would remain at record levels for years to come, with an unprecedented 1.5 million net overseas migrants projected to land in Australia over the five years to 2026-27:
Source: 2023 Federal Budget
In turn, Australia’s population is projected to grow by an unprecedented 2.18 million people by 2026-27 – equivalent to adding five Canberra’s or one Brisbane’s worth of people in just five years:
Source: 2023 federal budget
Providing enough housing for such a large increase in population is an impossible task under the best housing conditions.
It is even more delusional when the entire housing construction industry is suffering from widespread insolvencies amid soaring materials prices and financing (interest rate) costs.
There are now fewer builders available to supply the nation’s homes in the face of con artist Albo’s unprecedented immigration demand.
This means Australia’s housing crisis will continue to worsen deepen, which will manifest in rising rents and increasing homelessness.
The extent of the housing crisis facing Australia is illustrated in the next chart showing dwelling completions against actual and projected population growth:
Despite a ramp-up in housing construction last decade – proving that it isn’t a ‘supply issue’ – Australia did not build enough homes because it dramatically ramped up immigration to record levels.
Now immigration has soared even higher at the same time as the housing supply situation is deteriorating.
Actual housing construction levels are falling and projected to get even worse.
Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy told this month’s Senate Estimates committee that the downturn in dwelling approvals will continue until 2025, with investment in new dwellings forecast to contract by 2.5% this year and a further 3.5% in 2023‑24 and 1.5% in 2024‑25.
Clearly, growing Australia’s population by between 400,000 and 500,000 people a year when housing construction is falling is a recipe for disaster.
Australia’s housing crisis will inevitably worsen under con artist Albo’s Giant Australia, resulting in higher rents and increasing homelessness.
Who knew?
