Universities, big business and the property industry have total control over Australia’s immigration policy, a finance expert has warned.
Respected ABC TV presenter and author Alan Kohler wrote on Monday that the situation was set to create a larger housing shortfall than ever, and that government seemed “unwilling or unable” to bring down record-high migration levels.
“Universities are back in full control of Australia’s migration program, alongside the Business Council of Australia and the property industry,” Mr Kohler wrote for ABC News.
“The only things with which the level of immigration seems to have any connection are the revenue needs of universities — starved as they are of government funding — the demands of business for more consumers and cheap labour, and the hunger of the property sector for buyers and renters.
“Dwelling approvals have now declined from 16,000 a month to about 13,000, so if net migration continues at the current pace — and the number of student visas issued in November and December suggests it will — then the housing shortfall will be bigger this year.”
That is because the government’s target of 1.2 million home over five years will not be met, according to the finance expert, due to lagging greenfields infrastructure, worker shortages and local opposition to high-rise developments.
Mr Kohler said that in light of higher education visa numbers granted in the last two months of 2024, a new record high, it was unlikely that this year’s net migration forecast would be met, nor those for the coming years.
Last year’s forecast was revised upwards three times to 395,000 before eventually blowing out to 446,000, with Labor Treasurer Jim Chalmers trying to cast the blame on immigrants refusing to leave.
But Mr Kohler said the government must take immigration seriously despite the power of the business and tertiary education lobbies, warning the housing affordability crisis was an existential threat.
“There should be a target for net migration and a single cabinet minister in charge of administering it as we have had for most of the time since World War II. It shouldn’t just be an afterthought in the Home Affairs portfolio,” he said.
In August last year Mr Kohler laid the blame for the mass immigration-driven housing affordability crisis on successive conservative governments in his weekly column for The New Daily.
Mr Kohler said two changes made by the Howard government in 2001 had laid the foundation for the current situation – allowing students from countries such as China and India, and creating a pathway to permanent residency.
Then the Abbott government brought in a swathe of new policies to ramp up international student numbers, including by shifting the risk rating from country to education provider.
The Morrison government in 2022 then removed working hour limits or foreign students and scrapped visa application fees.
The finance presenter said the result was a “dire housing crisis” and a situation where the government is trying to cap foreign student intake while also facing the impossible tasks of trying to build enough houses for their own unlikely migration targets.
Header image: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese panders to Vietnamese immigrants in Sydney (Facebook).
