Heads in the Sand as Immigration Fuels the Housing Crisis

I asked Senator Tim Ayres, Assistant Minister for Trade, why the Albanese Labor government has allowed one million people to arrive in this country in just one year. Those one million arrivals is made up of around half migration and half student visas. Every single person need a bed and a roof over their head. There’s also an additional 200,000 arrivals with other visas. That’s a total of 1.2 million people, making a population flood the size of Adelaide in just 12 months.

The housing and rental crisis is completely government made. If your rent has gone up, you can’t afford a house, you can’t even find a place to live like those in regional Queensland towns living in caravans, tents, in parks, in cars and under bridges, remember this Labor government brought in over 1,000,000 people into this country in just one year.

With this bill, the Albanese government is claiming that it will build a few thousand houses to ‘fix the problem’. Supply chains for materials are still damaged from the government’s COVID response. Those shattered supply chains are further hobbled under Australia following the United Nations’ 2050 policy driving up energy costs.

The Greens want more houses built, but they won’t let us use timber. In fact, they have a bill on notice to end logging of sustainable forestry. Timber is a renewable resource yet we can’t harvest the wood for the frames. What about steel frames then? The two main ingredients for steel are coal and iron ore,which are Australia’s two major mining commodities, yet the Greens want to end all mining in Australia.

The Greens SAY they want to build more houses, yet if Australia implemented all their policies we’d have no wood, no steel and only expensive and unreliable sources of energy to build these houses.

A cut to immigration would allow our housing and essential services time to catch up.

As you will hear, Senator Ayres completely failed to address my concerns.

Transcripts

Minister, I’m a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia. In that capacity, I note that this bill is completely unnecessary. It’s not needed. Here’s why: if the government cut Australia’s immigration intake by just 10 per cent of the current one million arrivals, it would save the building of many more houses than Labor claims this fund will build. The housing crisis will lessen. Instead, we are here dealing with dirty deals done dirt cheap. The deals are cheap for the Greens, yet taxpayers will be paying billions. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that the people of Australia are disgusted to look at this parliament and see the rotten horse-trading and deal-making going on. The Greens hold themselves up on their moral high horse and virtue-signal to the world that they are the pure ones while telling everyone what to do. In reality, they’re down in the mud doing dirty deals like the rest of them.

What deal do we have to look at today? The government is going to build and own houses—not the people of Australia but the government. This is full-blown communism delivered express to your door. As the infamous Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum has repeatedly told the world already, ‘You will own nothing, and you will be happy.’ The goal of the Greens and Labor is to come into this chamber to preach to the world that they’re helping Australians—helping you. The Greens’ rent caps have already led directly to faster rent increases, because landlords understandably want to get ahead of the rent caps. The Greens are already hurting renters. The housing crisis is a problem that government created entirely.

The government is now claiming to have the solution. That’s a fraud, Minister. The Albanese Labor government has allowed one million people to arrive in this country in just one year. That’s 460,000 in net migration and 540,000 students visas. Every one of those needs a bed and a roof over their head. That’s not to mention the additional 200,000 other visas. That’s 1.2 million. A population flood the size of Adelaide has hit this country in 12 months. That’s the cause of the housing and rental crisis. It’s completely government made. If your rent has gone up, you can’t afford a house or you can’t even find a place to live, like the people in regional Queensland towns living in caravans, tents, parks and cars and under bridges. Just remember this: the Albanese Labor government brought one million people into this country in one year.

With this bill, the Albanese government is claiming that it will build a few thousand houses and fix the problem. Who will build them? Supply chains for materials are still damaged due to the government’s COVID reaction and mismanagement, which shattered supply chains. The energy crisis has been inflicted due to the government adopting the UN 2050 net zero policy and driving up energy costs. Australia’s tradies already build houses at the fourth-fastest rate in the OECD. There’s a question that has to be answered: can we more quickly build even more houses? Trying to flood this industry that is already at capacity with huge amounts of taxpayer money is only going to make the funnel spill over. That will mean millions and potentially billions of your taxes wasted. Let’s not forget the government’s figures. They think they can build a house in Australia for $83,000. What kind of house is that? They must be smoking some powerful stuff over in the ministry for housing. It doesn’t matter how many billions this government wants to spend; we will never be able to build enough houses to catch up with the current rate of immigration. That is a clear fact. It’s basic arithmetic. It’s practical.

Next: what do the Greens want us to use to build these houses? They won’t let us use timber. There is a bill on the Notice Paper right now that the Greens introduced to end sustainable forest logging. Timber is the only resource that’s truly renewable, yet the Greens have a bill saying we can’t harvest the wood used in house frames while claiming with this bill that they want to build more houses. I guess that is okay. We can just build houses with steel frames, right? Not according to the Greens. Too many ingredients in making steel are coal and iron ore, Australia’s two major mining commodities. The Greens want to end mining in Australia, so we would have nothing with which to make the steel. So the Greens say they want to build more houses—virtue signalling—yet if Australia implemented their policies we would have no steel, no wood with which to build houses. And if our coal, iron ore and timber industries survived the Greens blight, prices of house timber and steel will be far higher thanks to the Greens restrictions. The hypocrisy is so damn thick we could cut it with a knife.

The Greens policies are antihuman. One Nation’s policy includes many solutions to the government-created housing crisis, taken together holistically because the problem is many factored. Among these immediate solutions to the housing crisis is that we must cut immigration immediately, reduce our arrivals to zero net immigration, meaning only allow the same number of people into the country as the number that leave so departures cancel out arrivals. As Australians know, this country is already bursting at the seams. A cut to immigration would allow our housing stock, our essential services—hospitals, our schools—and other services time to catch up. If we don’t stop immigration or cut immigration, life is going to get far, far worse for Australians, and it is already getting bad with the cost of living being the No. 1 problem on people’s minds. To continue this unprecedented immigration intake in the face of the housing and cost-of-living crisis is an act of criminal negligence against the Australian people.

Minister, why is the government allowing one million students and permanent migrants into the country in just 12 months? How many houses does the government expect the million student and permanent migrant arrivals will need? How many houses does the government expect to build in 12 months? How many houses will the government’s allocation of taxpayer funds build?

Senator Ayres (Assistant Minister for Trade and Assistant Minister for Manufacturing): There was, in fact, a question at the end there. The government does not support the policy prescription that you’ve offered on migration. While you can hear echoes of the proposition that you’ve just put in relation to migration in some of what is best described as circular comments of the Leader of the Opposition on migration and
housing, in fact, migration will be an important part and has been an important part of the housing industry in Australia since World War II. In fact, if you spend time on any building site in Australia, what you will find are migrants, permanent and temporary—mostly permanent—who in fact make up a very large part of the labour force building homes, building apartment blocks, building shopping centres all over Australia.

The government’s migration settings will be made over time and will be made in the national interest. I hear your argument with your colleagues down here in the Greens’ political party. The government has always made it very clear: where there are constructive suggestions from anyone on the crossbench we will work with people—senators and members—across the parliament in the national interest where there are sensible amendments proposed to reach agreement on legislation in its passage through this parliament.

There is nothing like the disappointment of a crossbench senator who doesn’t feel like they’ve got their way in the process, but I’ve heard the complaints from crossbench senators over the short time I have been here. I’ll just assure you, and all of the crossbench senators, that the government’s approach has been consistent in terms of this legislation and will be consistent in the future. Where there are opportunities for constructive discussion about government legislation then we will engage in that.