The Liberal Party’s plan to tie migration to home construction will not reduce immigration numbers, and could even result in an increase, according finance expert.
ABC TV presenter and author Alan Kohler looked at Liberal leader Angus Taylor’s post-Budget proposal to cap immigration numbers to the number of homes constructed each year in a column for the national broadcaster on Monday.
Mr Kohler wrote that he did not believe Mr Taylor’s policy was a bad one, but said it needed to go further in order to achieve its stated aims of reducing immigration, and argued the government should create a new Reserve Bank-style independent body to control migration levels.
“Linking migration policy to housing is unlikely to produce ‘one of the biggest cuts to immigration in Australian history’, as promised by Taylor in his budget reply speech,” Mr Kohler wrote.
“In fact, as things stand, it would not produce any cut in migration at all, although Angus Taylor did say immigration should be ‘significantly below’ the cap to allow housing to catch up.
“In 2024-25, the latest year for which we have data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, population growth was 419,300, made up of natural increase (112,600) and 304,700 net overseas migration (NOM) that includes the 185,000 target plus additional migrants drawn from those already in Australia for work or study, for example.
“Using the average occupancy of 2.4 occupants per household, those extra people in 25-26 would need 174,708 places to live. As it happens, dwelling completions in 2024-25 were almost the same as that — 174,792, or 84 more houses and flats than theoretically needed under Taylor’s plan.”
Mr Kohler also said the housing surplus was likely to be higher this year due to declining births and migration and an increase in dwelling starts in the second half of 2025.
“If Treasury’s forecast comes to pass and housing completions stay where they are, then matching migration with houses would involve increasing migration, not reducing it,” he said.
The finance presenter went on to state his case for a “well-resourced independent body, a bit like how the Reserve Bank runs monetary policy” which would not answer to politicians and have a “big staff of economists and experts who advise a board of decision-makers”.
Mr Kohler said the proposed body would look at housing, infrastructure, demography, the budget, the education system, as well as the tourism, agriculture and hospitality sectors in order to set the “right level” of migration.
He has previously warned that immigration levels are being controlled by universities, big business and the property lobby, and blamed record post-Covid arrivals on successive policy changes made under the Howard, Abbott and Morrison Coalition governments.
Header image: Left, Angus Taylor on a trip to Israel last year (Facebook). Right, new-build Sydney suburb The Ponds (hidflect – X).
