Gary Hardgrave:
Look, the bloke who’s pulled it all apart is the director of research at the IPA, Morgan Begg and he joins me now. Okay, Morgan. So let’s go through this. Too high immigration or too few houses. Which is the bigger problem?
Morgan Begg:
Oh, well, that’s a very good question. I put blame on both sides of the equation really, because at the end of the day, a housing market is really a function of demand and supply. And the reality is, over the last three years in this post COVID period, migration has been running at an unprecedented rate.
You’ve mentioned that 1.5 … the addition to the population overall was 1.5 million, and we know that about 80% of total population growth in recent years has been overseas migration. And the reality is, is that the housing market just isn’t getting enough supply on the board in order to meet that demand. We’ve seen that the completions of housing units has been declining, if not stagnant, since 2016, and is at the same levels that it was at in the mid 1990s. It’s just not working.
Gary Hardgrave:
And the sad part is, as I said, you used to be able to build a house here in Queensland in 13 weeks. That was the thing. Three months, get it done, move on, do the next thing. Now, houses have become more complicated. I get it. But it’s actually the availability of tradies, the availability of material, and indeed the availability of land. All of these things have combined. And then when you throw in big population increases, these things is the toxic cocktail that’s causing all this housing shortage.
Morgan Begg:
Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I mean, it’s a total failure of government policy at a state and federal level. The federal government level, they’re the ones controlling the levers of the population. And frankly, there’s been too much added in too short amount of time.
And at the state and local level, as you mentioned, it’s just too hard to build a house nowadays. There’s too many rules, there’s too much red tape, there’s not enough land released. And frankly, and this is a big problem in Queensland just as it is in my home state of Victoria, is too much of the housing construction sector, the materials and the labour, is absorbed by big government projects.
We know up your way, ahead of the 2024 election, the previous government had racked up a commitment to some $107 billion in its own big build infrastructure projects. And it’s going to get much, much worse because you’ve got the Olympics on the horizon. So this is a big, big challenge for the state, and it’s clear that not enough is being done to meet it.
Gary Hardgrave:
Look, I don’t always bag unions, but bad unions get a bagging from me. I believe in supporting workers. I really want to back the people that are on the tools. But I go past, as I did in the last week, housing is one thing, but big projects like hospitals, you mentioned the big build. There’s a lot of work being done at Cairns Hospital. It’s as far from Brisbane as Hobart, Cairns. And indeed at Logan Hospital, there’s huge amounts of works there. But the CFMEU flags are hanging off there.
That is a reminder to the government that they’re in charge. The CFMEU’s in charge. And 18 months in on this new state government, we haven’t seen much change on any of that stuff. That is not a good look.
Morgan Begg:
I mean, it sends a signal that the actual beneficiaries of these programmes is not communities or the people, but actually union affiliated workforces or companies who are really raking in big taxpayer money handouts, essentially, on these projects. And they’re allowing it. It’s a big problem in Victoria. I’m sure it’s not any less of a problem in Queensland, but you have the cost blowouts and you have the budget overruns and you have the timeline blowouts and the costs just keep compounding and compounding over time and it’s completely unsustainable.
Gary Hardgrave:
Morgan, I think we’ve got less opportunity for a variety of responses to this than we have in some other countries. In Australia, there’s really only three, four, maybe five places that people want to go and compete to get housing in. I’m talking about Southeast Queensland, the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Brisbane. I’m talking about Melbourne and the greater Melbourne’s a big area and it’s going to have a big population growing despite how bad the state government there is. And of course, Sydney’s always huge. Adelaide, Perth, we’ll throw all them in as well.
But do we need more cities? Do we need more places where we can actually have suburbia and enterprise growing around new places? Sending some of our regional centres into the cities of tomorrow? Because I don’t know how we’re going to keep competing in what are our established cities now when it comes to the cost of housing, availability, housing, and this massive population increase.
Morgan Begg:
It’s such a good point. And as the latest data tells us, over half of overseas arrivals, they will land and settle in Melbourne and Sydney in particular, and quite a few more in the other capital cities. But actually, and this is relevant to your listeners, is internal migration. Domestic migration from places like Melbourne and Sydney will go to Southeast Queensland.
Southeast Queensland, you’re dealing with the overseas migration issue, but you’re also dealing with the castaways from the southern states who are coming up seeking that better quality, that better standard of living that Queensland offers. But that’s under threat because it’s such a terrible strain on the social and the housing and the civic and the public infrastructure and the public resources, that you’re right. There’s going to have to be a new way. There’s going to have to be a charting a new path of population. It’s a new kind of population policy.
At the IPA, we talk about, well, do we need to build new areas of the country, a special economic zone in areas of the country where you could do away with a lot of the tax and regulations to attract the sort of investment that could build places, that could build businesses and build entire cities. Where is that vision? Where is that kind of optimism about the future of the country amongst the political class?
Well, frankly, the political class is far too lazy on this question and it’s always about just packing in people into the cities and rather than build houses, maybe we’ll build high density apartments and units and frame them into smaller dwellings and we’ll just keep going down that road forever. And it’s no wonder there’s a housing crisis and there’s no wonder there’s so much dissatisfaction in the status quo because it’s just not working for the regular person.
Gary Hardgrave:
No, it’s not, but we will maintain our housing values in Southeast Queensland while they may be in decline in Sydney and Melbourne I’m reading, because of the Olympics, because of all the things you’ve just outlined. But all these people coming in, nowhere to house them, doesn’t strike me as a very good plan. We need a new plan, Morgan, so let’s stay in touch on that. Morgan Begg, Director of Research Institute of Public Affairs. Frankly, about a third, 40% of the membership of the IPA is actually in Queensland. I will declare I’m a member of the IPA. They do a lot of good work, a lot of good research. And that’s a really good question. What do you think?
This transcript of Morgan Begg on Drive with Gary Hardgrave 4BC from 16 April 2026 has been edited for clarity.
