DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
4 April 2025


The Greens claim high immigration is not the cause of soaring house prices or Australia's rental crisis - but says it is actually down to negative gearing.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants are still arriving in Australia and boosting population growth, with a net 432,400 landing in the country in the year to January.

Meanwhile house prices in Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and parts of western Sydney soared by double-digit figures in 2024, despite the 13 recent interest rate rises.

But Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather says 2021's record property price rises - when Australia was closed to migrants during Covid - proves there is no link to immigration.

'Firstly, let's think about Covid - during that period, we had negative migration,' he told Triple J's Hack program on Thursday.

'There were more people leaving the country than arriving, to the tune of tens or even hundreds of thousands.

'[But] house prices went up at record rates, record rates, in the middle of that period where we had zero migration.

'We've had a test of what happens when you get migration to zero, house prices keep going up.'

The Greens claim record-high immigration has no link with soaring house prices or Australia's rental crisis


Australian house prices soared by 24.5 per cent nationally in 2021. Sydney had even stronger growth of 29.6 per cent and Brisbane values soared by 30.4 per cent, CoreLogic data showed.

However the exploding property market was also fuelled by the record low Reserve Bank interest rate of just 0.1 per cent.

Banks were offering fixed and variable mortgage rates under three per cent, triggering investors to snap up real estate, before borders eventually reopened.

But Mr Chandler-Mather argued negative gearing was chiefly responsible for driving up house prices, with median capital city house prices now above $1million.   

The Greens now want to restrict those tax breaks to just one investment property rather than scrap it altogether.

'The two biggest problems with the housing system right now are, one, the government gives hundreds of billions of dollars in tax handouts to property investors,' he said.   

'What that does is put money in their pockets to bid up the price of housing and turbocharge house prices.'   

Mr Chandler-Mather claimed big banks were campaigning against high immigration, despite bank chiefs publicly speaking out in favour of it.

'This often happens in the middle of a housing and cost-of-living crisis - people attached to the big banks or big financial interests will turn around and try and blame migrants,' the Greens MP added.

House prices in Brisbane , Adelaide , Perth and parts of western Sydney soared by double-digit figures in 2024, after even the Reserve Bank had raised interest rates 13 times.   


But Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn last year suggested high immigration was good for banks, considering higher population growth meant more customers.

'Undoubtedly, the strong population growth and migration growth is a big tailwind for the Australian economy and clearly the Commonwealth Bank is a beneficiary of higher economic growth,' he told a results presentation.

The Business Council of Australia, which represents the big banks, has been a vocal advocate for high immigration, with its former chief executive Jennifer Westacott arguing migrants should not be blamed for the housing crisis.

'Migration should not be the scapegoat for poor planning and the failure to deliver housing supply,' Ms Westacott said in 2023.

The Grattan Institute think tank and a range of economists have suggested reducing immigration would ease pressure on the rental market, with SQM Research data showing the capital city vacancy rate tight at 1.3 per cent.

The rental crisis has eased since Australia's net overseas migration rate moderated from record-high levels approaching 550,000 in late 2023.

The annual growth in Sydney's median house rent, of 3.3 per cent during the March quarter, was the slowest since 2019 before Covid, Domain data showed.

Sydney renters, however, are still typically being charged $775 a week for a house.

Domain's chief of research and economics Nicola Powell said renters were still in a worse position than landlords.

'Despite a softening of growth, the data suggests Australia is still very much a landlord's market,' she said.

The median capital city house price of $1.014million requires someone to earn $156,000 just to get a mortgage with a 20 per cent deposit.

It’s all going to be ok.
Fair go Albo has just announced he and blackout Bowen are going fund batteries into homes too help reduce their power bills by 2k a year.


Fantastic news for Albo fair go battlers!

The families living in cars and those who won the Australian dream of paying 60% of their wages in rent won’t get any help but they can with the homeless all come together and stand outside homeowners lounge room windows watch tv via their window!
Albo and labor creating a sense of community via ensuring those living the hardest miss out  on any help at all!
Great work fair go Albo!

Looking only after the home owners  and via that the banks at the cost of everyone else.

LNP/Labor = exactly the same!

Leroy wrote on Apr 6^th, 2025 at 9:57am:


Good in theory, but it practice many small towns have   "closing down"  signs in shops in their main streets - partly a result  of the dysfunctional modern global economy in which the local smithy is obsolete and which has even destroyed big cities in the US - which has made Trump very angry...

There's something wrong with the WTO's mainstream   'free-trade/free-market/'comparative advantage' ideology.....which even the Greens are signed up to.

Covid Emigration was the flight of the wild geese students and visitors etc - there was not one reason on this whole earth to embark upon mass immigration to make up for their 'loss' - they were only here for the moment anyway, and were no 'net loss' to IMMIGRATION.

Students and visitors are NOT 'migrants'.

I guess that settles it for yez, ay?

When do you know a politician is lying?   The lips move...

"Migration is the movement of people away from their usual place of residence to a new place of residence, either across an international border or within a State."

Nowhere in anyone's wildest dreams does a visitor or temporary student 'migrate' to a new country - they ..... VISIT!

Leroy wrote on Apr 6^th, 2025 at 9:57am:


$550 is a starting price for the northern rivers and Gold Coast.
Expect to compete with a hundred others for the lease.

I agree not everyone can afford to pay to live in a city but nor can they afford the costs of a car too commute to a city for a couple hours each day for work!

Faced with the reality of what life is really like what do you suggest?

Buy them all new car batteries so the kids can go to sleep in the backseat to the sounds of talkback radio ?

Perhaps we need a “ final solution “ to solve the homeless/ rent less situation?

Take ‘em all out west and shoot them?

Labor and Lnp, same / same/ shame

Grappler Truth Teller wrote on Apr 6^th, 2025 at 12:27pm:


So far so good graps, will you spoil it? (Let's read on...)

Quote:


Again, fair comments, but you are ignoring the elephant in the room, namely dysfunctional WTO freetrade rules which Oz depends on, to fund government services.

Hence Oz lost its self-sufficiency in motor production (and yet we could survive by flogging dirt to China); Trump is determined not to let that happen in the US.   

Quote:


Not so simple, graps,  that's the problem.  Trump would have fixed trade issues in the US during  his first term, if it was.

whiteknight wrote on Apr 6^th, 2025 at 9:00am:


Do you think anyone believes the bullshit from the Greens?

The problem is supply and demand.

People are paying the prices the demand is there supply isn't

We built less than 200K new homes last year while bringing in over 400K people.

With those less than 200K new homes how many were knockdowns and rebuild which isn't increasing number of homes?

Armchair_Politician wrote on Apr 8^th, 2025 at 1:54pm:



cause it was all fine and dandy before labor won office, right? you dumbarse ...

twice labor tried to fix the housing problem and twice they lost an election for it. Made worse by the libs determination to cut tafe, leading to skills shortages right across the sector. The housing crisis is a result of decades of libs in government. Mr potato's plan to allow first home buyers to use their super is only going to exacerbate the problem.