On Tuesday, I appeared on The Bolt Report where I discussed the record population numbers in the latest ABS national accounts, which estimated that Australia’s population surged by a record 626,000 in 2022-23 – around 100,000 more than projected in the May federal budget:
Source: Cameron Kusher (PropTrack)
Below is the edited extract of the interview followed by the full video.
Andrew Bolt:
Leith, how have we come close to adding that many people in a single year”
Leith van Onselen:
You’re right, it’s absolutely bonkers. We’ve never seen population growth like this. It was only in the May budget that it tipped Australia’s population last financial year would rise by about 520,000. And according to the national accounts, we’ve already beaten that by 100,000.
That was already going to be a record. And now we’re just growing that even more now”.
“The way we’ve got here is basically we’ve had a massive explosion in foreign students. So according to Home Affairs data, foreign student numbers and graduate visas increased by 310,000 last financial year. We’ve also had a 250,000 explosion in work visas.
This massive immigration surge has been deliberately run by the Albanese government. Now, Jim Chalmers has tried to claim that it’s all demand driven. It’s not government policy, etc. That is complete baloney because the federal government has deliberately taken policy actions to actually increase student numbers.
[These have] basically made Australia a bigger carrot to come over here to work and live. So this has been deliberate. It’s unprecedented. And it’s basically driving this unprecedented rental shortage that we’re experiencing right now, which is pushing people into group housing and effectively driving others to become homeless.
It’s an inequality disaster in the making.
Andrew Bolt:
It’s just astonishing to me. I wonder what the government’s got in it’s mind? Why is it doing this? What is going on here?
Leith van Onselen:
There are some powerful forces that push the government in this direction. I’ve always called them the “growth Lobby”. Effectively, it’s all the the powerful players: big business, big property, the universities”.
They all love big immigration. So, they’re the ones basically pushing for this. And they like it effectively for two reasons.
First of all, it gives them a bigger consumer base to sell to. So, obviously more migrants means more demand for housing, so it’s easier for a property developer.
If you’re a multinational firm, you know like a Coles or a Woolies, you got more customers to sell to.
At the same time, if you pump in a whole bunch of extra people, that puts downward pressure on wages because there’s more competition in the labour market. It gives employers a bigger pool of people to choose from.
And if you’re a university, obviously they’re raking it in with the foreign student rort. So for them it’s a win-win.
But unfortunately, for the rest of us we’re all shoehorned into smaller and more expensive housing. We spend more time stuck in traffic.
It was only four years ago that we were suffering from an extreme drought and Sydney’s water supply was down to about 20%. What’s going to happen next time we have a drought and we’ve got millions more people to feed and also to provide water to?
And you can forget about “net zero”. The Intergenerational Report says we’re going to grow by 14 million people – a Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide – in just 40 years.
How are we going to possibly achieve this net zero dream if we have basically grown the population by over 50% over 40 years, which means 50% more people consuming electricity and all this other stuff.
It’s a complete farce.
We also discuss the federal government’s housing targets and why they have zero hope of being achieved when the population is growing so rapidly.
Watch the full interview below:
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