Sharri Markson:
Well, while Labour says it wants more Australians in homes, new IPA data reveals that migration is now running at almost triple new housing supply. To tell us about this research, joining me now is IPA Chief Economist Adam Creighton. Adam, so tell us what your figures have shown.
Adam Creighton:
Yes. Well, this is just based on the ABS figures. And in the 12 months, the most recent 12-month period, permanent net long-term arrivals to Australia hit 489,000 people and the housing supply figures were just 174,000 new bills over that same period. So that is roughly three times.
Now, of course, these are not the net overseas migration figures that the government likes to talk about. That’s running at about 303,000, I think the latest figures new people per year. Still very high, of course. It’s just a slight definitional difference between the two, but nevertheless, still huge figures actually on both counts. So the government is saying that it’s going to reduce immigration, but clearly it’s not.
The interesting thing here is that they’ve probably already triggered a housing downturn, house prices, apartment prices already falling in most of the major capitals because of the budget. And they’ll be less likely now, I think, to slow immigration. Because if they do that, then there could well be a housing market crash over the next six months.
Sharri Markson:
Yeah. A lot of people are really worried about that, that’s for sure. Now, your research, Adam, looks at how housing supply is actually falling behind Labor’s own targets. Is that right?
Adam Creighton:
Yes, certainly that’s true. Look, in the 22 months of, I think it’s called the National Housing Accord, this is a promise to build 1.2 million new homes by 2029. Not in a single month has the target been achieved. It’s cumulatively about 85,000 homes behind schedule and actually even more incredibly, there were more new homes built in the 12 months to March 2016 than the most recent 12-month period. So that’s extraordinary really. That just goes to show you that the building capacity of this country is far worse and that’s largely due to regulations, all the new green regulations. It’s much harder to get approvals. And of course, the state governments have sucked up all the workers in these enormous infrastructure projects, many of which are quite dubious.
Sharri Markson:
I want to just look at another topic, because there’s new research into media reporting on climate science. This is fascinating. What has this found?
Adam Creighton:
Yes, look, certainly that’s right. I wrote about this last week in my column. Look, basically, there’s been a study of the 10 biggest media organisations in the world, five left wing, five broadly right wing. And the interesting thing is that nine of them have been fearmongering, I would say, in their reporting with climate change.
This study, I think from Oxford University used AI to troll through something like 116,000 newspaper articles over 10 years. And it showed that most of the articles, they tended to fearmonger, to scare people. And so that’s why I think we see all this public support for these crazy measures when they’re not warranted from a scientific point of view or certainly not an economic point of view either.
Sharri Markson:
Adam, you’re in Victoria. There’s a lot of speculation, political speculation about Victoria, Allan’s leadership, whether she is going to be overthrown by Ben Carroll. We’ve got the rise of One Nation. We had James Ashby on the show tonight. I’ve just checked the latest tracker. $1.3 million. 1.3.
Adam Creighton:
Yes.
Sharri Markson:
I mean, that’s gone up about … I can’t do the maths very well, but it was $1.1 million when we started on air tonight. Now, it’s $1.3 million, so nearly $200,000 in half an hour.
Adam Creighton:
It’s just extraordinary. Yeah, it’s just extraordinary. And actually, I don’t know what the Labour Party figure is. Maybe you’ve heard that, but I’m sure it’s not 1.3 million, because I think they’re trying to raise money as well.
But look, certainly, if I had to make a prediction, I think that Labour won’t win a majority in the parliament in November. It’s extremely unpopular government down here. There’s the $15 billion corruption allegations, which of course are just extraordinary. I noticed in The Australian just a few hours ago, there’s an exclusive saying that they don’t even talk about the big build anymore in their press releases. And that’s because of all of the corruption because it stinks.
And look, just on Jacinta Allan, apparently people don’t even want the job. I mean, even Ben Carroll does not want the job, which actually surprises me because it’s still $450,000, $500,000 a year. I think it’s the highest paid premier in the country. So even if you had that six months, that wouldn’t be a bad gig.
Sharri Markson:
Interesting thing to look at. All right, Adam Creighton, great to see you.
