Will cutting migration really help the housing crisis? | 7.30

Australia

will

experience the largest two-year population increase in our history. Who

will

be honest enough to say that there is nowhere for these people to live? The

housing

crisis

in Australia has transformed over the last 12 months from a

crisis

that was only focused on the unaffordability of buying a home or renting one to the larger underlying problem that we simply do not have enough homes for our population. There has been quite a bit of disruption as a result of the pandemic, firstly in terms of

migration

numbers,

migration

stopped and we actually had an exodus of a large part of the

housing

construction workforce returning abroad to countries of origin beyond that, then there were supply chain issues that arose as a result of limitations during the pandemic lockdown period that are still impacting systems internationally now, so feasibility studies on sites made before the pandemic are now largely useless, those are some of the supply shocks that the market faces and then there is demand.

I think what the pandemic taught us is how we use our homes. has changed and increasingly, as many people are able to work from home and choose to work flexibly from home, a proportion of the time their needs have changed. Michael Fotheringham says migration has a marginal impact compared to the changes in the way we use housing we are talking about. over a relatively small number of people, the majority of immigrants are actually temporary immigrants, um, and the largest group of them are international students who tend to live in student accommodation built specifically for that, the increase in households from a single person and two people, instead of having three or four people in each home, we have many homes with only one person or only two people, which has a greater impact than migration in your response to the federal budget last week, Peter Dutton linked the hot topic of from a housing crisis to high levels of migration Australians are struggling to find homes to rent and buy and it is not always due to a lack of money in the midst of this housing crisis the workforce is By attracting 1.67 million migrants in 5 years, more than the population of Adelaide, we believe that by rebalancing the migration program and taking decisive action on the housing crisis, the Coalition can release almost 40,000 additional homes in the first year .

He has not been the only political leader who has jumped on the housing migration train at the level of migration we are currently experiencing. The experience in Queensland is putting too much pressure on our housing system, so I welcome Peter Dutton who echoes my comments. Permanent visa holders. The traditional basis of our migration plan now represents only a very small proportion of the total migration. The total number of people arriving in Australia each year. it is now dominated by temporary visa holders, including international students. The total net number of people arriving and leaving each year is known as the net number of overseas migration or Nom.

In his budget response, Peter Dutton spoke of only reducing the flow of permanent migration by 25%, from 185,000. to 140,000 during the first 2 years, but that baffled those who follow the migration debate closely. Peter Dutton's proposal to cut the permanent migration program from 185,000 to 140,000 people won't

really

make much difference to the number of people living in Australia, around 60%. Of the people who become permanent residents are already here, so reducing the permanent number does not prevent more people such as students, workers, tourists, skilled workers, etc. from coming this afternoon at the national Press Club. SS Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor confirmed that the Duton Government did indeed plan to reduce net overseas migration by 25% in its first term, there has been a massive escalation in those figures in recent years and we believe that we can get a nomination that is net migration in Australia that is consistent with a level of Housing Supply that is realistic, you can't move housing supply overnight, so you have to put those two numbers under from the bottom line, sorry, just to confirm that you're saying a 25% cut in net overseas migration, okay, that's correct if we wanted to.

To reduce temporary migration that will require detailed policy work to determine how to do this, the government is proposing limits on student numbers but their bill is quite complicated and we can expect a lot of pushback from universities and other training providers and even if that were implemented now, it would take some time for it to come into effect, so to cut to the chase, there is no easy way to simply reduce net overseas migration by 100,000 per year and promising to do so is actually quite misleading I think, Peter. Dutton said last week that the government was predicting 528,000 net arrivals this year.

That is incorrect, it is the figure reported in the budget documents from June of last year. The expected figure for the financial year ending next month is 395,000 and is expected to fall to 260,000 next. year, but what should come under special scrutiny is opposition leaders' suggestion that overall migration has soared to unprecedented levels in the labor sector. How big has been the change in net overseas migration in the last two and indeed six years that the Albesia government has created? a big policy in Australia they didn't tell anyone before the election they just threw it at the people the budget documents predict that for the 5 years ending in 2026 27 net overseas migration will be 1.67 3 million people, But budget documents from Friedenberg's last budget in 2019, before the pandemic broke out, forecast that for the five years ending in 2022, net overseas migration would be 1.334 million; in other words, only about 340,000 more in the five years than the previous government had overall expected during that time.

The numbers are not higher than we anticipated, it's just that we've gone from a sort of famine party or defeat of famine, we've gone from a sudden drop in immigration and a lot of people leaving to a sudden increase in immigration and that is much more difficult. so that we can all manage The Surge was particularly due to the international students returning to the country and why that was the case, students will not have time restrictions to be able to be available to work in Australia if they are already here a week later. Additionally, we will refund the visa application fees of all those arriving today and in the future, and that is a thank you to them for returning and continuing to choose Australia;

In essence, the student visa became a low-skilled work visa and was promised that way by then marketed that way by educational agents by universities and by migration agents the system just prospered they doubled the amount of time international students can work raising it from 20 to 40 hours a week the government has been gradually introducing measures to make Australia a less attractive option for those looking to come here to work on student visas, even as it tries to clean up underperforming education providers reliable, is increasing quite significantly, increasing the amount that students have to demonstrate in savings before they can come to Australia, the current government has also taken other measures in recent months to curb temporary migration, including increasing of the English language proficiency threshold for students, lifting visa fees and also tightening the rules around post-study work visas, but is it

really

possible to reduce net overseas migration so more radical?

What would Abel Rizy be advising? Peter Dutton, if he were still a senior immigration bureaucrat, I would recommend that he deal with a broad cross-section of visas rather than just focusing on overseas students as to date they need to adjust visas in the working holiday sector . area at warm entry rated on visitors extending their stay, all those areas must be addressed if you want to reduce numbers in a balanced way, the problem will be that several of those visas disproportionately benefit Regional Australia, a key reason why it is possible that Peter Dutton was Cy in mentioning cuts to net overseas migration rather than just permanent migration.

They are the Nationals on which the rural party depends. International students at regional universities, as well as workers in both agriculture and to fill huge gaps in the healthcare workforce. I don't want to see the region suffer because of an exacerbated problem in the capital cities in the national press club today. Angus Taylor criticized the current government for relying on immigration to keep the economy afloat, among the issues that will have to be debated in the run-up to next. The choice of the year is whether reducing migration as the Coalition suggests could appease those seeking a quick fix on housing, but at the cost of sinking the economy.