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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.

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No BS with Birchy | Australia’s Path Forward

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I joined Nathan Birch, the Host of No BS with Birchy, to discuss with him the reasons the government are increasing immigration to Australia and what are the proposed strategies to rebuild Australia on a national level.

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The Recession That Shall Not Be Named

Australia has entered a per capita recession although total GDP is still going up thanks to the government’s favourite Ponzi scheme — immigration. How is Australia going to provide homes and basic services for the one million new arrivals this year? Homes don’t get built that fast and we are already in a deficit of one million homes before these new arrivals.

I know from listening to constituents that life is getting harder with food, household bills including electricity and gas, housing and health care the biggest issues.

This government doesn’t care about everyday Australians – they only care about their globalist population and energy agenda, no matter how many Australians it hurts.

Immigration artificially inflates the economy as the money these people bring with them is spent, then the taxpayers are left with a massive bill for the housing, transport, schools, hospitals, police, fire stations and all the other government-funded infrastructure that is required for so many new arrivals.

Bringing in so many people in such a short period of time puts pressure on the price of food and housing in particular.

The solution is simple; it just takes honesty and guts. (1) abandon unaffordable United Nations 2050 Net Zero pipedreams that are driving up energy costs and with that, the price of everything else. (2) cut immigration to net zero (one person in for each person that leaves, equal to about 150,000 per annum) until our essential services and housing ability catches up with the existing Australian population.

Look after those already here before adding more. It’s common sense.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia who listens to constituents, I know life is getting worse for you and that this government doesn’t care. Australia has entered a per capita recession. The total GDP is still going up on paper. Technically, the government can say that we aren’t in a recession, yet on average the gross domestic product per Australian went backwards. That’s a per capita recession. You are not imagining it; life is getting far worse on average for the entire country. This is not news to anyone who has recently paid a grocery docket or a power bill or tuned in to hear Philip Lowe—whether or not the Reserve Bank is going to make their lives even harder this month. It is news to the Albanese government, though, because they are more interested in telling everyone to vote for the Voice than in doing something to fix the cost of living.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has confirmed what we already knew: on average, life is only getting tougher, far tougher for Australians. The major cause of Australia’s per capita recession is the UN 2050 net-zero policies that are putting a chokehold on our country. This fact is one of many that exposes the lie that wind and solar are cheapest sources of electricity. With more wind, solar and batteries on the grid than ever in history, power prices have never been higher. This is mirrored around the world in countries adopting solar and wind.

The record expensive power bills bite more than once, not only when Australians hand over more money than ever to their electricity and gas companies. Power prices feed into nearly every level and part of our lives. Without cheap power, manufacturers can’t produce the products we want and need at a reasonable price; farmers can’t afford to pump the water that irrigates crops and keeps cattle alive; shops can’t afford to keep the lights on and the doors open. So you don’t just pay the price of the climate net-zero pipedream once when your power bill; you pay for it again and again and again in every other bill as well.

It’s irrefutable; life is getting worse for Australians, who are all having to make tougher and tougher choices around the dinner table. There has never been more proof Australians can’t afford the UN 2050 net-zero pipedream. This is leading to huge cracks in our economy. Everyday businesses are becoming insolvent. The trend for retail spending—usually good indicator of whether households are feeling the pinch—is negative. The average cost of housing as a proportion disposal income is at 20.1 per cent, up from almost 16.5 per cent only a few years ago. The lowest-fifth of earners who hold a mortgage are spending on average nearly two-thirds of their disposal income on their loan—two-thirds of their disposal income on a house loan. All this means in real terms that our economy is getting worse for Australians yet that isn’t showing up on the total GDP, which records the amount of activity in the economy. This is where the government are using their favourite Ponzi scheme, mass immigration, to cover the cracks.

Listen carefully. When you let more immigrants into the country, they have to spend money on the same things we all have to like food, housing, transport, energy. All of this spending counts towards our total gross domestic product. If the total gross domestic product goes down, we enter a recession, which is an embarrassing look for the government. It’s a pretty simple equation for the Albanese government: more immigrants equals more spending, which equals the total gross domestic product going up, and the government can say, ‘We are not in an official recession.’ That’s why they’re doing it, and bugger the cost to individuals. At the same time, life continues to get worse for Australians—smaller amounts of gross domestic product growth and our limited housing services have to be shared with hundreds of thousands of new immigrants. That’s the per capita recession. With more people, demand increases and prices increase even more.

The Albanese Labor government expects to increase our net immigration to 715,000 people over two years. That is the size of the entire Gold Coast-Tweed Heads area or 1½ Canberras arriving in just two years. Every arrival will need a bed. Every arrival will need a roof over their head. Where does the Albanese Labor government expect them to live? To which one of our overfilled schools will children go? To which overflowing hospital will they go when they get sick? The Albanese government does not care about the answers to these questions, as long as they can say, ‘We’re not in technical recession.’ Bugger the cost to people—their lives.

The solutions to the cost-of-living crisis are clear. They will just take some guts and some honesty. Abandon unaffordable climate UN 2050 net-zero pipedreams and cut immigration to zero until our essential services and housing catch up.

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Rent Caps Increases Rents

Renting is a big issue for Australians. Rents are going up and finding a rental home is growing more difficult.

Listening to everyday Australians across regional Queensland in recent weeks, what I heard most about rent controls was how much damage they do.

A rent cap actually damages before it’s introduced.

The Greens announced they’re pursuing rent caps, and the reaction has been immediate. Landlords all over the country are now furiously putting up rents ready for the freeze.

The Greens never think things through.

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One Nation: Right in 1997 and Right Again Today

For 25 years One Nation has been raising issues the major parties are too scared to talk about.

Whether it’s being labelled racist for wanting to treat every Australian equally regardless of race, or xenophobic for pointing out unsustainable rates of immigration, the mainstream media’s lies have never stopped us in our journey to put Australia first.

Transcript

In the months ahead One Nation will explain our vision for this beautiful country of ours. We will explain what we mean when we talk of one Queensland community and one nation with one flag that represents all Australians—those who were here first and those who have come since. We’ll cover the importance of treating each and every Australian fairly, offering equality of opportunity and assistance with dignity for those who cannot support themselves.

In the 25 years since Pauline Hanson founded One Nation to advance these principles her predictions have proven prescient. Remember when Pauline said Australia was going to be 25 per cent foreign-born within 25 years and the media piled on, calling that fear mongering, impossible and racist, for good measure. Well, Australia is now 29 per cent foreign-born and the number is rising. Where are the industries and jobs to support 28 million people by 2026? Where are the roads and railways? Where is the water and power generation? Where are the schools, hospitals and police stations? These are the policy time bombs that One Nation has been trying to get the public to discuss for 25 years. Now the day Pauline warned us about has arrived.

In the last few weeks I have travelled and listened to Queenslanders who are not safe in their own homes and can no longer afford their power bills, their grocery bills and their rent or their mortgages. Our national housing stock is short one million homes, and Prime Minister Albanese’s solution in today’s housing bill is to create a scheme that will help a few thousand people, not the million who need it. And that’s just those who are here now.

Warning of the impending population crisis has caused One Nation to be called racist and Nazi. These words no longer provide protection for the groups in our community they were designed to protect, so devalued have they become from their use as extreme expressions of misrepresentation, disagreement and hatred. These words tell me about our opponents, not about who I am. Everyday Australians now find their backs against the wall the government put there. Pauline saw this day coming. Why didn’t you?

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We bloody told you so!

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has been warning of the impact of high migration on Australia for 25 years. We have been talking about the strain on health, housing, transport, crime and schools in particular.

All of those warnings have now come true. Australians can no longer afford housing, their mortgage or rental payments, or their electricity bills. Jobs are hard to find and breadwinner jobs are even harder to find.

All of this comes back to the rate of immigration over the last 25 years. It did not need to be this way.

Had the government listened to Pauline, we would have seen money going into schools, hospitals, police stations and housing to meet the demand from new Australians. This did not happen and now look at the problems we have.

One Nation will get the economy going again to create breadwinner jobs, get housing construction and infrastructure underway, and secure a future for all Australians.

Transcript

I want to turn my attention to another topic.

In 1996 Pauline Hanson named her new party ‘One Nation’ as an expression of her heartfelt belief that this beautiful nation must include all Australians, fairly and equally. She and I serve the people of Queensland and Australia. No single group should be favoured over another and no-one should be denied opportunity.

One Nation is committed to the belief that we must give all Australians the same opportunity to lift themselves up through their own hard work and endeavour. And we must provide a safety net for those who can’t provide for themselves. Where one group in our community is trailing behind, then the solution is not arbitrary or forced inclusion. That didn’t work in the Soviet Union and it will not work in Prime Minister Albanese’s soviet republic of Australia. Why? Because it doesn’t actually solve the problem of why people have fallen behind in the first place. It does, though, let politicians and compliant community leaders off the hook. ‘See here,’ they go. ‘Look at this thing we are doing. Aren’t we wonderful, vote for us and you too can feel good.’ Not solve anything, just feel good, look good. Not do good, just paper over the problems and pretend to do good. 

One Nation stands for solutions not feelings. We will build the east-west corridor across the Top End, bringing power, water, rail transport and the internet to remote Aboriginal communities, opening up markets, expanding job opportunities, educational opportunities and tourism, which we know exposes the world to Aboriginal culture. And that’s a good thing. One Nation will build the Great Dividing Range project to bring environmentally responsible hydropower—cheap power—and water to North Queensland to drive agriculture and tertiary processing, adding tens of billions to our national wealth. One Nation will build the Hughenden Irrigation Project, the Urannah dam and hydro project, the Emu Swamp dam and the Big Buffalo dam in Victoria. All of these will make more productive use of land already in use for agriculture so as to grow more food and fibre to feed and clothe the world. This is the difference between One Nation and the parties of feelings. We offer Australians natural wholesome food and natural fibres, while the tired old parties in this place offer you bugs and used clothes. 

What I don’t understand is the black armband view of prosperity that permeates the policies of the old parties in this place. Abundance is not a dirty word. Abundance is not mutuality exclusive with environmental responsibility. The attack on the food and manufacturing sectors is one of ideology, not environmentalism. It’s about controlling us using deliberately created scarcities. Food scarcities and energy scarcity are deliberately created and can be easily corrected by a One Nation government. Soviet politics of oppression are not the Australian way. 

Australia is a place where a coalminer born in India can become a senator, where the daughter of a migrant from a war-torn country can come to Australia and find not only peace and prosperity but a place amongst the leaders of our beautiful country and where a refugee from the fall of Saigon can come to Australia stateless and take her place in the House of Representatives. There are so many examples just in this parliament of how Australia’s proud history of equality of opportunity has lifted up those who have chosen to embrace the opportunity given to them. Equality of opportunity though does not mean equality of outcome. I remember a story about a wise old Russian, just a regular citizen of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet approach to mandatory equality. The wise old Russian drew a series of stick figures of different heights on a piece of paper, and then he said, ‘In the Soviet Union everyone is equal,’ and proceeded to draw a line across the page to the height of the smallest figure. The heads of the successful were chopped off to bring everyone down to the height of the worst performing. That’s, indeed, how socialism works. That’s why the Soviet Union failed, and it’s why left-wing ideology permeating this government is failing and will fail. 

What people do with the opportunity they’re given is their own business. Governments cannot provide an equality of outcome, because governments cannot control how people handle the opportunity we are all given. As a government, we can only ensure every Australian has access to a breadwinner job, a home that suits their needs, a safe community, transport, education, health care and, of course, a safety net. The rest is up to the individual. But mark my words: depriving Australians of these core government functions, no matter the geography or the background, will not be tolerated. 

Sadly, deprivation is exactly what is happening not just in remote Australia but in our cities as well. After attending public forums across Queensland in the last few weeks, it’s obvious there is a failure to deliver basic government services by Premier Palaszczuk and by successive federal governments. Feelings will not fix failure—they just lead people into false security. Ideas, vision and hard work will fix Australia. One Nation is ready to take up the challenge. We have the policies, and Senator Hanson stands ready to lead. I must say the fire burns as strongly as ever in the heart of Australia’s favourite redhead. 

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Huge Immigration numbers causing rental crisis

Has your rent gone up in the previous year? Well you can thank Anthony Albanese. He’s bringing in up to 400,000 immigrants a year and every one of them needs a house too.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people making our amazing Queensland community, I know rental prices are a savage problem. Interest rate rises are increasing mortgage repayments and forcing more investment property owners to dip into their own pockets to pay their mortgage. If owners do not have that extra money, then negative gearing is not going to help. Inflation of 7.8 per cent means that council rates, water rates, maintenance costs and insurance are making it harder and harder to hang on to investment properties.

Now the Greens propose a rent freeze, which is really a 7.8 per cent rent reduction each year that it goes on. The only effect of a rental freeze will be to drive investment property owners out of the market. Australia needs investment property owners to provide a home to people who are renting. Driving them out of the market will hurt the 400,000 new Australians who arrived last year and the one million likely to arrive during the course of this government. 

Rising rentals are a product of too many people chasing too few rentals. We know 10 per cent of Australian homes are owned by investors who are not renting them out. Their investment strategy is to buy a new home and keep it locked up while it appreciates in value. Having a tenant in there is a complication they don’t want and lowers the resale value because the home is no longer new. Most of these properties are foreign-owned.

One Nation would give these owners 12 months to sell those properties to Australians. Bringing that number of homes onto the market would do more to bring prices down than a price cap. And One Nation would reduce immigration to net zero, meaning there would be only enough arrivals each year to replace those that leave. This will allow time for the housing construction industry to catch up with demand. It is about supply and demand.

These sensible, honest policies are One Nation’s solutions to high rents, which will protect real estate values from the chaos a rental cap will introduce. 

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