1 week Ago By Ellen Ransley
The Greens say migration should not be blamed for the crisis gripping the country, despite the Reserve Bank governor saying it was putting pressure on the housing market. Michele Bullock on Tuesday said new migrants had “added to demand” and “pressure” in the housing market, but at the same time migration had contributed to labour supply. It followed the government’s own expert housing supply and affordability council last week citing the “resumption of migration at pace” as one of the key factors that made the housing shortfall “more acute”.
But Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather, who on Thursday reiterated his calls for a nationally co-ordinated rent freeze and ongoing caps, said he did not believe migration was the “primary cause of the housing crisis”. Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion. He pointed instead to the “tens of billions of dollars” the government doled out to property investors, a lack of rent caps and chronic underinvestment in public housing.
“I suppose I get frustrated with this because to be perfectly frank, even if Australia’s migration was brought down to net-zero as it was during Covid, that did not solve the housing crisis,” Mr Chandler-Mather said. In the year to September, Australia’s net overseas migration reached an estimated 518,000. Building approvals, a leading indicator of Australia’s residential construction pipeline, meanwhile fell to just under 163.
