ANU “demographer” Liz Allen is renowned for spreading propaganda in support of “Big Australia’ immigration.
She is also renowned for complaining about poor housing affordability in Australia.
On Sunday, Allen Tweeted “No, lowering immigration doesn’t make homes cheaper. COVID-19 border closures proved this”:
Hilariously, Liz Allen’s claim is contradicted by the ANU’s Centre for Social Policy Research, which released a report in January entitled: “It’s the economy (and housing), stupid: Views of Australians on the economy and the housing market in January 2024”.
In Section 9.2: Perceptions of house price change, the ANU authors wrote:
“Despite some year-to-year fluctuations brought about by recessions or exogenous shocks, house prices have gone up in Australia in both nominal and real terms”.
“The main pressure on house price increases is population growth, and this has been strong for most years due in large part to migration policy”.
Whoops!
The impact of immigration on rents is even more profound.
As we know, net overseas migration briefly turned negative over the pandemic before shooting to unprecedented levels once the international border reopened:
Unsurprisingly, rents also fell at the start of the pandemic before launching after the border reopened amid the population deluge:
Let’s get real here. Australia will forever struggle to build enough homes so long as the nation’s population continues to grow so aggressively via net overseas migration.
It took Australia 2012 years to reach a population of 19 million in the year 2000. Yet, the 2023 Intergenerational Report projects that Australia’s population will reach 40.5 million people by mid-2063:
That would represent a population increase of 21.5 million (113%) in only 63 years!
Anybody with a shred of common sense would understand that such an aggressive population increase in a relatively short period of time will have detrimental impacts on housing affordability.
