In an interview with Sky News’ Sharri Markson on Tuesday night, I spoke about the rental crisis, immigration, and the cost of living crisis.
Below are key highlights.
Sharri Markson:
The latest AFR fresh freshwater strategy poll says that 72% of Australians say they want the Labor government to make it their most important issue this year.
And when they were asked what the crisis looked like for them, 27% said groceries, 22% rent, and 10% the cost of energy bills.
Leith, Australians still don’t get the sense that the government is doing enough to help them on cost of living.
Leith van Onselen:
Australian households are hurting. All the data shows it.
They just experienced one of the largest falls in their disposable income in the world.
For employee households, the cost of living continues to run well ahead of wage growth.
And the cost of necessities, whether it’s groceries, housing, electricity, or gas, have all soared in recent years and that’s plunged many household into financial stress.
We want our politicians to focus on these nuts and bolts core issues, not fringe stuff like The Voice, which quite frankly is a distraction.
Sharri Markson:
Housing is also one of the main areas where a lot of people are struggling at the moment. You’ve argued for a long time that high immigration levels has directly driven the collapse in the rental vacancy rate. It’s also contributed to hyperinflation in the rental market.
Leith van Onselen:
Last week we received the fourth quarter national accounts from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and what it showed is Australia’s population increased by an incredible 680,000 people last calendar year.
That’s the equivalent of about one and a half Canberra’s. And at the same time, data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that we added only 166,000 homes last calendar year to the housing stock.
So, what that means is that we only added one home for every 4.5 new residents. And because of that, data released last week by domain showed that the national rental vacancy rate collapsed to an all-time low of just 0.7%.
PropTrack also showed over the weekend that Australia’s rents have increased by a whopping 38% since the start of the pandemic.
Unfortunately, the situation is not going to change so long as the federal government continues to ram migrants into a constrained housing sector.
And I think every Australian needs to ask the Albanese government why it is importing record numbers of people without a plan to house them and also to provide them with infrastructure.
Because right now, their immigration policies are creating or worsening the rental crisis.
