As he so often does, Crispin Hull – former editor of the Canberra Times – has hit the nail on the head regarding National Cabinet’s announcement that it will magically build 1.2 million homes over five years, beginning 1 July 2024.
Hull argues “this housing policy will require massive and unnecessary shifts in resources that are completely against the public interest. The resources will go from the public sector to individual property developers and builders in the private sector – wasted on sterile unproductive investment”.
It will chew up more prime agricultural land, turn suburbs into high-rise slums, and generate copious amounts of greenhouse gases to build the 1.2 million dwellings.
“Labor, the Greens, and all the economic commentators cry that increasing housing supply is the only answer to the housing and rental crisis”.
“Everyone in the business, economics and politics spheres says we must tear away planning rules to cram in more people and to tear away zoning laws to build houses willy-nilly everywhere. Supply, supply, supply, is the only solution, they say. They are utterly wrong”.
But the answer to the housing crisis rests on the demand-side, namely the federal government’s mass immigration policy.
“The 300,000 elephants in the room each year are never mentioned. This is the demand side which is caused by upwards of 300,000 people being allowed each year to come to live in Australia”.
“The housing and rental crisis in Australia is directly caused by too much demand, generated by ramped up immigration”.
“The housing and rental crisis is created only by too much demand. If you turn off the demand the crisis ends. The very costly so-called supply crisis disappears”.
Crispin Hull also takes a shot at The Greens and Labor for promoting this ‘grow at all costs’ madness that is both environmentally destructive and punishes the working class.
“As far as the Greens are concerned, stuff the environment, let’s crowd the inner cities so we can get more votes”.
“Similarly with Labor: stuff the environment and the living conditions of the working class, let’s crowd the cities where we get more votes”.
“In short, Labor and the Greens like high immigration because in the medium term they are bringing in more Labor and Green voters”.
“They have turned their back on the 60% to 80% of voters (depending on which poll you read) who say Australia already has enough people or too many people and want immigration dialled down”.
“They are sick of the congestion. They are sick of the mad supply-side solutions to the housing crisis. They are sick of governments pandering to the short-term profiteering by property developers and retailers. They are sick of koala habitat being chain-sawed for housing to satisfy the growth mania”.
“But in the present political climate are helpless in the fight against it”.
Crispin Hull concludes by saying that “Australians will bitterly regret it in a decade’s time when they see the environmental and economic damage that ensues and the general decline in living standards of the many to serve the opulent living standards of the very few”.
Crispin Hull is the only journalist in the mainstream media that calls it as it is.
Sadly, the situation facing Australians will only get worse, with the 2023 Intergenerational Report projecting that Australia’s population will swell to 40.5 million by 2062-63, driven by net overseas migration (NOM) of 235,000 a year:
Therefore, Australia’s population is projected to grow by 14.5 million people (56%) in only 40 years, with most of this population increase to land in the major capital cities.
That population increase is the equivalent in adding another a combined Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide to Australia’s current population, but obviously without the required housing and infrastructure.
Sydney and Melbourne will grow to around 9 million people each from just over 5 million currently.
At the 2001 Census, Sydney’s population was 3.6 million whereas Melbourne’s was 3.3 million.
How will they cope? Living standards will obviously collapse further under the population deluge.
Australians never voted for 40 million people. And the overwhelming majority of Australians do not support it.
Sadly, our three major political parties and institutions don’t care and have kowtowed to the growth lobby of Big Business, Big Property and universities.
