Opinion Piece – Migrant boom’s housing bust – The West Australian
Anthony Albanese is learning the hard way that it’s much easier to promise people the world than deliver practical outcomes. Despite pledging to reduce power bills by $275, Labor’s policies have caused them to increase by 30 per cent on the east coast since May 2022. Anthony Albanese swore to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart “in full” but his referendum was rejected by a sweeping majority in every Australian State after he refused to explain how it was going to work, what it would do, and how much it would cost. These hollow promises, to which we could add cheaper mortgages and more affordable homes, go a long way to explaining the recent nosedive in support for Labor in WA. But what Anthony Albanese didn’t say before the last election is starting to discredit him in the eyes of voters just as much as what he did. Namely, overseeing the biggest influx of immigrants this country has seen since the end of World War II. Last week’s Australian Bureau of Statistics data confirmed that is exactly what has happened on Labor’s watch. And its impact is totally unmodeled. For WA, which has now recorded the fastest-growing population in the country for four consecutive quarters, the ramifications of this are being more widely felt than any of Anthony Albanese’s policies. According to the ABS, net overseas immigration to Australia soared to 548,000 arrivals in the 12 months to September last year, the most recent reporting period. WA’s population grew to more than 2.9 million people and on current projections will exceed 3 million people by Christmas of next year — quite possibly sooner — with our annual growth rate of 3.3 per cent outstripping east coast capitals significantly. The ABS data sets, released every three months, show that WA’s population has now grown at a faster rate than any other capital city since December 2022, beginning at a 2.3 per cent growth rate. These record immigration levels have been a godsend for Jim Chalmers and Labor, as they remain the only thing keeping the national economy from entering a technical recession. For the rest of the country, however, it’s a very different story. Take housing, for example. The median price to rent a home in Perth is now a record $640 a week, up from $520 a week in December 2022. It’s a result of Perth having the most restricted rental vacancy market in the country at a crippling 0.4 per cent. The problem of finding a home has been so severe that we have seen press reports in recent weeks of Perth real estate agents leasing out rooms in empty homes for as much as $450 per week, and people paying $120 a night to sleep in someone’s backyard through Airbnb. And while WA might be copping the brunt of it, the housing crisis is well and truly a national problem. Despite the 900,000 permanent and long-term overseas arrivals who entered the country between July 2022 and December 2023, only around 265,000 new homes were built, meaning immigration is outstripping the supply of new dwellings by almost four-to-one. Thanks to an economy saddled with planning bottlenecks and Labor’s pipeline of green infrastructure projects, approvals for new homes across the country are at their lowest level in 12 years. Median house prices are at record levels in three of Australia’s capital cities, including Perth at $660,000. Anthony Albanese’s solution to this urgently pressing concern, Labor’s Help to Buy Scheme, has been treated like an afterthought. Nearly two years since Labor was elected, the legislation is still being debated in Parliament. And, unlike the Coalition’s policy of allowing first home buyers to access their super to get a foot on the property ladder, Labor’s policy will at best apply to no more than 10,000 people each year. The Help to Buy Scheme’s restrictions, such as cutting off eligibility to people with an income of more than $90,000, and capping eligible homes to roughly half the average house price in cities such as Sydney, means the policy is shuffling deck chairs as the Titanic sinks. On Labor’s own projections, it will only help 40,000 people at most over four years — that’s if it ever gets legislated. As a proud WA Senator, and long term supporter of planned immigration, I begrudge none of the nearly 100,000 people who have decided to call WA home in the past 12 months. Our country, and our State, one of the best places in the world. But unplanned, unmodeled and, most importantly, unasked-for immigration policy on this scale will only bring a loss of support for immigration, a phenomenon we are witnessing in many parts of the world. For the most successful multicultural country on earth, such an outcome would be a tragedy. And Anthony Albanese needs to remember that his first priority is to Australians, who he will have failed if he risks — as he is currently — preventing an entire generation of working Australians from owning their own home.