This week, I was interviewed by Andrew Bolt from Sky News on the latest housing forecasts from the federal government’s advisory body, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC).
Edited transcript
Andrew Bolt:
The government’s National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC) has put out its annual report, the State of the Housing System, and it spills the beans in the following graphic of future demand for houses showing that if immigration were 15% lower than is predicted, then we would have an extra 40,000 or so homes over the next four years available to Australians.
That graphic reveals an extraordinary revelation. And the government never comes out and says, “Oh yes there is a link between immigration and the housing crisis”. In your mind what does this graphic prove?
Leith van Onselen:
This is absolutely scandalous. Australia’s cumulative housing shortage is already estimated by AMP chief economist Shane Oliver to be around 200,000 to 300,000 homes.
Now, the government’s own housing affordability advisor, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC), has warned that Australia’s housing shortage and rental crisis are going to continue to worsen over the next five years as immigration demand continues to exceed housing supply.
What NHSAC forecasts is that Australia is going to miss Labor’s target of building 1.2 million homes over five years by about 262,000 dwellings, or about 22%.
NHSAC forecasts that new housing supply is going to remain below population demand, i.e., immigration, for the entire five-year period. And we are going to be 79,000 short over the next five years. That’s 79,000 on top of the undersupply of about 200,000-plus homes currently.
As a result. NHSAC warned that we are going to have more homelessness, more overcrowding, etc.
But NHSAC’s own sensitivity analysis shows that if we simply cut population growth by 15%, instead of having a 79,000 shortage of homes, we would have a surplus over the next five years of about 40,000.
What this modelling tells you is that the primary solution to Australia’s housing crisis is to cut immigration. The housing situation will improve in Australia if we cut immigration. It’s that straightforward.
