Last week, the Australian housing circus rolled into Brisbane via the three-day National Housing Conference.
This conference was chaired by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and was attended by more than 1300 delegates from across the spectrum of policy makers, housing groups, academia, and industry.
In the lead-up to the Conference, respected veteran analyst, Louis Christopher, lamented that it would be a farce because it would not discuss Australia’s turbo-charged immigration program:
The Conference wrapped up on Friday, and to nobody’s surprise, delivered exactly what we expected: nothing but hot air:
The big housing solutions arising from the three-day gabfest was:
- Fast-tracking prefabricated home schemes
- Getting super funds to build ‘rent-to-buy’ high rises
- Taxing Airbnb-style short-term rentals
- Helping low-income earners get into the market via shared equity schemes
Louis Christopher correctly labelled the outcomes “utter tripe” for failing to recommend the first best solution: cutting the flow if net overseas migration:
Make no mistake, the primary driver of Australia’s housing crisis is obvious to anybody that doesn’t have a vested interest:
Over the past 20 years, the federal government ramped net overseas migration to unprecedented levels, which meant that demand via population growth has run ahead of supply.
Current immigration numbers are off the charts with around 500,000 net overseas migrants expected to have landed in the 2002-23 financial year.
Net migration into Australia is officially forecast to remain turbo-charged for years, which will overwhelm the nation’s ability to supply homes and infrastructure:
I will take policymakers and housing groups seriously once they acknowledge that the federal government’s mass immigration program is the fundamental cause of the housing crisis.
Prove to us that you are not a bunch of lying clowns who pretend to care as thousands of Australians are pushed out of secure housing by extreme immigration levels that few residents actually support.
The solution to Australia’s housing problem is straight forward: keep net overseas migration at a level that is lower than the nation’s capacity to supply dwellings and infrastructure.
A lower immigration policy could also be enacted quickly with the stroke of a pen, providing immediate relief to the housing market at lower cost than the wishy-washy decades-long supply-side solutions thrown about.
