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Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Immigration explodes in Australia - despite Anthony Albanese promising that it would drop before the election
Immigration levels are continuing to soar despite Anthony Albanese promising before the last election that population growth levels would moderate. In the year to April, 440,330 migrants moved to Australia on a permanent and long-term basis, new data released on Friday showed. This net figure, covering skilled migrants and international students, is almost a third higher than the 335,000 level forecast for the 2024-25 financial year in Treasury's pre-election March Budget. Senator Andrew Bragg, the Opposition's housing and homelessness spokesman, said high immigration levels were worsening Australia's housing crisis. 'The government has done no modelling on the impact and the nexus between bringing in hundreds of thousands of people a year and building virtually no houses, relative to the overall requirement,' he told ABC Radio in Brisbane. 'Whilst we are nowhere near Labor's housing target, I think it makes a lot of sense to look at the nexus between migration and housing completions.' The 77,720 arrival figure for April alone was the highest monthly intake ever for that time of year, following the start of the new university year. Morgan Begg, the director of research at the Institute of Public Affairs think tank, said the government could no longer be trusted to accurately predict immigration levels. 'After a succession of failed migration estimates, the federal government no longer has any credibility in projecting future migration levels,' he said. 'The forecasts used in federal budgets are continuously undermined by the government's weakness in controlling excessive migration intakes.' The Albanese Government and the states are vowing to build 1.2million homes over the five years to June 2029. That would mean 240,000 homes a year but in 2024, just 177,313 new residential properties were built, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council is also concerned, last month predicting just 938,000 new dwellings would be built in the five years to June 2029. That's 21.8 per cent below Labor's 1.2million target. Seek senior economist Blair Chapman said high immigration was keeping a cap on wages growth, with pay levels growing by just 3.4 per cent in the year to March. 'In some sectors, it's going to help alleviate some of that labour market tightness we're seeing with skilled workers coming in,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'Often, those occupations most in demand are able to get workers from overseas on approved visas so that does keep a cap on some of the biggest salary increases.' Wages growth has moderated despite unemployment remaining low at 4.1 per cent. But Mr Chapmann said high immigration would do little to address labour shortages in construction, because of strict trade licensing rules. 'There are licensing requirements that prevent people coming straight into those roles,' he said. High population growth has stopped Australia sinking into a recession but even so, the economy grew by just 1.3 per cent in the year to March - a level well below the long-term average of 3 per cent. Gross domestic product per capita shrunk by 0.2 per cent in the March quarter. Australia is in danger of sinking into a per capita recession again, that had persisted from the March quarter of 2023 to the September quarter of 2024. Average output for every Australian went backwards when GDP was adjusted for population growth.
Daily Mail
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Tucker Carlson's warning to Australia about high immigration: 'You're not encouraged to say anything about this'
US political commentator Tucker Carlson has accused Australians of 'stealing the future' of young Aussies by failing to clamp down on immigration. In the recently resurfaced clip, the former Fox News host and right-wing pundit said the country's high migrant intake was pricing young Australians out of the housing market. 'No country can sustain that level of immigration without falling apart. Period. Especially not a country of 26 million,' he said. 'You're not encouraged to say anything about this or you're a bad person because you're offering a better life to people and how dare you not do that. 'What's never noted is that you are stealing the future of your children when you do that in a bunch of different ways. For one, the most obvious, your kids can't afford houses.' Labor promised to ease immigration before the last election but in the year to March, 437,440 migrants came to Australia on a permanent and long-term basis. This was significantly higher than Treasury's March Budget forecast of 335,000 for 2024-25, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics data casting doubt on Labor's promise to reduce it to 260,000 during the upcoming financial year. Deputy director of the Institute of Public Affairs Daniel Wild said Australia had been inundated with unplanned mass migration which he sees as the 'number one driver' of short term housing unaffordability. 'We know about 80 per cent of Australia's population growth has come from migration as opposed to local net population growth so, clearly, it's the number one demand driver of housing,' he said. 'The best thing the government can do is dramatically reduce the intake of migration. It's a lever the government has available to it that it can change right now.' Mr Wild said the government failed to approve sufficient housing for the net overseas arrivals he calculated reached 1.1million people over the previous term of government. He said Australia has the highest share of non-native born people of any comparable nation - a situation he said had taken an obvious economic and cultural strain. 'I think most migrants come here and want to assimilate to Australian culture but there's also a sizeable minority who do not. 'I think we're much more divided than we ever have been, certainly since World War Two, as a nation and we have much less common cultural values.' Economist Leith Van Onselen said high immigration, including a large number of students on bridging visas hoping to stay longer in Australia, had created longer-term political advantages for one side of politics. Australian house prices have increased from roughly three to four times the average income to eight or nine times the amount in the past 25 years The largest source of permanent migrants to Australia in 2023-24 was India, followed by China, the Philippines and Nepal. He argued that the growing Indian community in Australia is a boost for Anthony Albanese. 'There was a post-2022 election survey done by Carnegie and Dowman, and that showed that 58 per cent of the Indian community voted for Labor versus 34 per cent for the Coalition,' Mr van Onselen said. 'And the Indian community is now our largest immigration source. 'It seems that that community votes overwhelmingly for Labor.' After this month's election, social media was flooded with videos of Indian students and migration agents 'celebrating wildly Labor's election victory, because they know that the Albanese government's a bit of a soft touch on immigration'. 'And obviously with Labor being re-elected, it lessens the chance of immigration cuts, it means more international students. So that community was obviously celebrating,' Mr van Onselen said. 'Labor is incentivised to maintain a high immigration policy because it's effectively importing future voters.' But deputy chief economist at AMP Diana Mousina said while migration levels are high by historic standards, the longer view would suggest the country was making up for border closures during the Covid-19 lockdown period. 'After the pandemic, part of that [increase] was catch up. So we had very low numbers of negative immigration during two years. 'We have been running quite elevated levels of migration since then. They are expected to slow, but they are elevated.'
