The Albanese government has engaged in a full-court press of housing disinformation.
Last week, Labor’s new Productivity Minister Andrew Leigh wrote the following spin in The AFR:
“The federal government is doing our part. Through the National Housing Accord, we’re working with the states and territories to build 1.2 million homes over five years. We’ve linked funding to reform”.
Housing Minister Clare O’Neil told the ABC that Labor would “turbocharge housing” by using the Commonwealth’s leverage to push for the overhaul of regulation.
“It’s just too hard to build a house in this country”, O’Neil claimed.
“And it’s become uneconomic to build the kind of housing that our country needs most: affordable housing, especially for first home buyers”.
“Builders face a ridiculous thicket of red tape that is preventing them building the homes we need. And if we’re going to tackle the fundamental problem — that Australia needs to build more homes, more quickly — we need to make a change”, she said.
Both Andrew Leigh and Clare O’Neil appear to have missed the memo from the federal government’s own advisory body, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC).
NHSAC forecast that only 938,000 dwellings will be built nationwide by mid-2029, 262,000 dwellings short of Labor’s National Housing Accord target of 1.2 million homes.
Australia’s housing shortage is also projected to worsen by 79,000 dwellings over five years as population demand via high net overseas migration continues to outrun supply.
NHSAC’s calculation of demand is based primarily on expected population growth, which is forecast to remain strong over the forecast horizon courtesy of strong net overseas migration.
NHSAC’s sensitivity analysis showed that if Australia’s population grew by just 15% less than forecast over the next five years, then Australia’s projected 79,000 shortage would turn into a 40,000 surplus:
While the Albanese government continues to blame Australia’s housing crisis on a lack of supply, NHSAC’s report proves that the primary solution to Australia’s housing shortage is to cut net overseas migration.
Australia has experienced the fastest population growth in the advanced world this century.
According to the ABS Population Clock, Australia’s population has grown by 8.7 million (46%) this century thanks to persistently high net overseas migration.
In other words, Australia has added the equivalent of a current Sydney, Brisbane, and Canberra in less than 25 years. No wonder we haven’t built enough homes or infrastructure.
Australia’s population is officially projected to grow by 14.5 million people over the next 40 years—equivalent to adding another Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane to the current population level.
Source: Centre for Population (December 2024)
In just 40 years, all the homes and infrastructure in these three cities will need to be replicated. Otherwise, the housing crisis will worsen.
Labor should stop gaslighting Australians and admit that the primary solution to the housing crisis is to reduce net overseas migration to a level below the nation’s capacity to build housing and infrastructure.
The modelling by its own housing advisor, NHSAC, is proof.
