Message to Dr Jim: You don’t put downward pressure on house prices by turbocharging demand through mass migration while giving up the ghost on housing supply.
The maths is simple. High demand and low supply means housing prices will stay high.
Sure, the government claims in its budget that clamping down on negative gearing and capital gains tax will improve housing affordability for families. But any theoretical benefits of these policies in terms of dampening housing demand will be dwarfed by the continued surge in migrant numbers.
The budget forecasts net overseas migration of 1.22 million by 2030 – even higher than previously expected. That is an average of 243,000 net new migrants every year, or 665 migrants every single day.
This is not a modest migration program. It is not a sustainable migration program. It is mass migration on a historic scale.
In fact, the average intake will be nearly three times Australia’s long-term historical migration average. And Australians are already now living with the consequences every single day. You cannot run the largest migration program in modern Australian history while claiming to care about affordability.
It is economic nonsense, and an act of social vandalism against the youngest Australians who incur the costs of mass migration more than anyone else in our nation.
The truth is that migration has become a crutch for weak governments unwilling to pursue genuine productivity reform. Rather than growing the economy by making Australians more productive, governments are now simply growing the population and point to bigger headline GDP numbers.
Numbers from the budget papers themselves reveal the game. An analysis of the budget suggests that approximately 60 per cent of total inflation-adjusted economic growth to 2030 will come from population growth. But Australians do not live in “headline GDP”. They live in the real economy.
The supply side of housing doesn’t get any prettier. As recently as 2022, the federal government committed to building 1.2 million new “well-located” homes from mid-2024 to 2029. This means that 20,000 new homes need to be built each month to meet the target.
So far, the government is off to a flyer, meeting precisely zero out of the 21 monthly targets by even the most generous standard.
What this shows is that Australia’s political class continues to gaslight Australians about the reality of what is being done to our nation.
There is nothing meaningful in the budget that will allay the valid concerns of Australians about the destructive economic and social effects of mass migration. Far from it, the government has decided to slam the accelerator down and pray that no one notices.
