Multi-billionaire Meriton property empire founder Harry Triguboff has called for an immediate increase in immigration along with faster development approvals.
Mr Triguboff, 91, wrote in a article for The Australian on Thursday that rather than attempt to bring inflation under control with interest rates, the government should ramp up immigration and fast-track construction to house all of the new arrivals instead.
Australia is in the midst of a housing crisis which experts say will last for years unless record levels of immigration – there have been 1.15 million arrivals since 2022 – are drastically cut, but Mr Triguboff said that the real problem was the average person’s wealth dropping due to higher interest rates.
“One solution is to start bringing in more migrants. At once. And not only nurses. We need to bring people who will build the nation. Get the approvals for them issued now, I say,” he wrote.
“We also need faster turnarounds. Governments around the nation need to make it a condition that units must be approved in 60 days, as is the case in Queensland. They need to stop promising rubbish.”
“All parties need to stop attacking foreigners. They are not buying anyway, so the governments are getting nothing in the way of revenue. We need to let builders find solutions, not show them 50-year-old rules which stop building.”
The property developer added that construction workers should be diverted from commercial and infrastructure projects into building homes, and that banks should remove barriers to lending to purchasers and builders.
In May, Mr Triguboff complained to the same publication that Australia needed more migrants “from everywhere” since he was seeing fewer Chinese buyers for his apartments.
Meriton has built almost 80,000 apartments on Australia’s east coast, including 5,000 in Sydney that it owns and operates as rental properties. It also leases privately owned apartments in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast through Meriton Property Management
The rental income has allowed Mr Triguboff to offset lower sales during economic downturns, and earlier this year revealed he was only putting one-third of his new apartments on the open market due to the lack of Chinese purchasers.
Mr Triguboff is worth $26.49 billion, putting him at number two on Australia’s rich list this year after mining magnate and heiress Gina Rinehart. He was one of three Jews in the top 10, ahead of packing tycoon Anthony Pratt at number four, and former Glencore boss Ivan Glasenberg in ninth.
Header image: Harry Triguboff, left (Meriton Apartments Photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) a Meriton apartment building in Southport, Queensland, right (Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
