a day ago
It's time to slash net overseas migration, so spare us your growth and diversity lectures before we suffer the same fate as the UK
News this week that we are now importing people faster than we can house them is proof that, as tax-paying citizens, we are in fact the government's last priority.
Not only is the maths on this mind boggling but good luck trying to speak out against the ethos of our much-vaunted Big Australia super speed migration policy pioneered by former PM Kevin Rudd.
You'll be dismissed as a racist, a xenophobe and stuck wistfully in the 1960s when those of white Anglo-descent were the majority and everyone drove a Holden built at the Elizabeth plant in South for a minute consider the data.
In March 2024, our population hit 27.1 million and according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 83 per cent of the 615,300 increase came from net overseas migration.
Births and deaths, classed as 'natural increase' accounted for the other 17 per in regard to the numbers released this week, there's no wriggle room to argue that it's good news for young Aussies already resigned to never owning their own home.
In plain speaking, if your population grows faster than your ability to house it, rents explode and housing supply crashes.
Everyone suffers, ultimately.
PM Anthony Albanese's government had promised 1.2 million homes in five years.
According to this week's State of the Housing System 2025 report, that plan is now a fantasy because we'll miss the target by at least 260,000 homes.
Meanwhile, our net overseas migration exceeds 500,000 people a year.
To keep up with population growth driven by immigration, industry experts say Australia must build around 240,000 new homes each each migrant household averaging 2.5 people, the result here is catastrophic.
We're reportedly going backwards by more than 1000 homes every single week.
Meanwhile the PM chose his address at the National Press Club on Tuesday to finally admit what the rest of us have complained about for years.
Endless regulation has made it next to impossible to build or buy a home in this country.
Planning laws, heritage overlays, environmental assessments and zoning restrictions might make sense on their own but stacked together?
Australia needs to take a pickaxe to net overseas migration until our housing supply catches up to save us from the deepening housing crisis, rising homelessness and a strained health service that is pummelling the UK, writes Louise Roberts. Picture: John Grainger/News Corp
It's a bureaucratic quagmire that sinks housing before a single brick is slathered with concrete and laid.
In other words, getting a project off the ground is now so complicated and expensive, it's no wonder the country is in the middle of a housing crisis.
Sure, about time someone in Canberra said this out loud but why not go further and admit we need a housing-first migration policy too to help fix this crisis?
Australia's immigration program should serve the national interest and not those of universities or developers chasing cheap labour.
A flood of student or temporary visa holders puts immediate strain on the housing market long before they start making a real 'impact' on the economy.
Housing is a fundamental right not a high-end privilege.
But thanks to years of inaction from both sides of politics, owning a home has become a fugazi with first-home buyers locked out while governments tinker around the edges.
Also, criticising immigration policy is not racist.
The debate is about capacity and fairness, not culture or the two is dishonest because this isn't about 'closing the borders'.
It's about calibrating immigration to match infrastructure and housing capacity.
We don't have to look far for proof that mass migration without infrastructure planning leads to the financial year ending June 2023, the UK recorded record-high net migration of more than 670,000 people.
The result?
A deeper housing crisis, rising homelessness and an even more strained National Health Service.
The Office for Budget Responsibility said high immigration levels are not improving per capita living standards.
It's no surprise that they've started slashing visas and tightening rules for Canada, revered as a model of open immigration, is now dramatically reducing its student visa intake and migration after backlash from citizens.
Surely it is time to slash net overseas migration here until housing supply catches up.
We don't need a lecture about growth and diversity.
If we want a fair go especially for young Aussies, we must have the courage to say that our nation is full, for now.
Louise Roberts is a journalist and editor who has worked as a TV and radio commentator in Australia, the UK and the US. Louise is a winner of the Peter Ruehl Award for Outstanding Columnist in the NRMA Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism and has been shortlisted in other awards for her opinion work
