Coalition to tie migration to housing, hopes no one does the maths
Opposition leader Angus Taylor will announce a policy capping Net Overseas Migration to the number of new homes completed, a formula that is neither a number nor, observers note, a plan.
POLITICS · BUDGET REPLY
Opposition leader Angus Taylor will announce a policy capping Net Overseas Migration to the number of new homes completed, a formula that is neither a number nor, observers note, a plan.
Liberal opposition leader Angus Taylor has confirmed to parliament that a Coalition government would peg Australia's annual migrant intake to housing completions, a policy framework that is expected to satisfy no one and clarify very little.
The opposition's latest instalment on migration, to be unveiled in Thursday's budget reply, proposes that each year the federal housing minister would report to parliament on how many new homes were completed, with that figure automatically setting the ceiling for Net Overseas Migration the following year.
Taylor told journalists that under Labor "migration has run miles ahead of housing and that puts pressure on rents, house prices and on every young Australian trying to get ahead". The opposition's modelling claims that since the Albanese government came to power, the population has grown by 1.8 million—including about 1.4 million migrants—but only enough homes had been built to accommodate 1.4 million people, "leaving Australia around 400,000 people short of the homes needed".
The policy, which observers have noted is likely to face criticism from both those demanding a precise migrant number and those arguing the housing-linkage is too mechanistic, will sit alongside a suite of further announcements: a $5 billion Housing Infrastructure Fund (opposition claims: "unlock up to 400,000 homes"), a slash to the National Construction Code (projected savings: "up to $70,000 per dwelling"), and the abolition of Labor housing programs including the Housing Australia Future Fund, Help to Buy, and the New Homes Bonus.
Taylor will also pledge to tighten the intake of temporary migrants, including international students, and commit to making skilled migration "focused more on quality"—a phrase that, when pressed by journalists at a Canberra hotel bar on Tuesday arvo, his office declined to define numerically.
At press time, the Coalition's parliamentary library had reportedly been asked to model what happens in years when no new homes are completed at all, and whether the answer was "zero migrants" or "the policy is functionally broken". That query remained outstanding.
Migration has run miles ahead of housing, and that puts pressure on rents, house prices and on every young Australian trying to get ahead.— Angus Taylor, Liberal leader
Filed by Clancy Overell — The Brainrot Desk