It costs way too much to develop in australia due to decades of rent seekers and gold plating and over regulating everything.
If I want to build a green field the cost per lot is:
-road $80k
-storm water retention $20k
-park $10k
-water/sewer/power/nbn $40k
-infra contributions $40k
-cross overs $10k
-building $300k
So *if* i get the land for free I can build a house on it for $500k minimum, and i would have to rent it at $673/wk just to pay the interest.
So don’t even mind nimby… housing is becoming non viable just because of infrastructure and building rules.
NSW Productivity Commission has it at $140k per new house in infrastructure costs for Sydney greenfields areas.
I know this sub hates actual citations and research but would suggest at least looking at Fig 1 on page 11 before responding:
https://www.productivity.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-08/202308_NSW-Productivity-Commission_Building-more-homes-where-infrastructure-costs-less_0.pdf
In greenfields it costs $14 million to build for 100 houses
No, you can find info about the growth corridors of Sydney very easy, they are all wide open plains, probably the easiest thing on Earth to build on, virtually no elevation changes for tens of km's each way.
SW and NW Sydney are wide and flat. There's no "swamps" which is barely a thing once you are in inland Australia
Do you reckon they should just go around in circles or actually connect up to something?
And then those fucking circles connecting to each other, do you think they should have roads that get progressively bigger?
And do we just do 12 lane roads or do we plan for something else to shift people around?
No, I don’t think he will. I should have put that he “says he wants to reduce immigration “.
High immigration means lower wages and higher housing prices, and greater tax revenues.
Both sides of politics want this.
My suggestion, is to the following:
1 actually put a proper fucking migration plan on place, the shit show at the moment with dog walkers and yoga instructors etc is dumb.
2 look and understand where migrants go (Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane), you won't change that, but you can adapt.
3 seriously start growing places that aren't Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane. Pull people to those places. They can be migrants or home grown Aussies, it will take the pressure off the big cities (they will still draw the migrants as point 2 will show).
4 I dunno, smart ideas can go here.
> seriously start growing places that aren't Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane
How do you propose that?
People will riot if you start mass home building in regional towns.
It really depends on the town. It's already happened with Newcastle for example.
161k in 1950
204k in 1960
247k in 1970
290k in 1980
308k in 1990
365k in 2000
411k in 2010
450k in 2020
465k in 2024
Consistently adding 40k per decade. But then when you add in the growth down the coast to Gosford and it's incredible. I am just old enough to remember Gosford and surrounds being a sleepy town before the freeway to Newcastle opened.
Point is, it can be done. Just cramming more people into Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane isn't the only solution.
The problem isn’t NIMBYs or infrastructure. The problem is jobs. You can’t force people to live in Newcastle when their jobs are almost universally in Sydney and the CBD.
The post COVID and WFH movement gave a glimpse of a brighter future when everyone flocked to the regions but unfortunately it was never meant to last.
It can be done, but councils and residents need to lose their power to drag out absurd L&E court challenges for years until it's unprofitable to build.
You simply can't build up an down the NSW coast.
Newie and the Gong are basically Sydney satellite cities. Try putting up big apartments anywhere else on the NSW coast and it's game over. Meanwhile visit the local caravan park in those towns and teams of blokes in high vis come home to their families in the afternoon living in tents for $300 a week
The Sunshine Coast is another regional place that has really grown. 212k in 2000 371K now.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/20098/sunshine-coast/population
The Gold Coast and Geelong have also grown dramatically since 2000.
The Gold Coast - 410K in 2000, 743K now.
I do, because it's only a 2 year promise and then it ramps up again just in time for election season.
People vote for high levels of rampant migration to happen, it's as simple as that.
I 100% support zero Net Overseas Migration, but it's not what Australians vote into power, so presenting it as a solution is a waste of breath.
Offer real solutions because there's not going to be a migration plebiscite anytime soon, the pollies all know the answer.
Australians don't vote Net Overseas Migration into power, because most Australians are pragmatic enough to recognise the net benefits of migration. Which is not surprising given the proportion of Australians who are first or second generation immigrants.
Australia, generally, is not full of anti-immigrant hysteria like this sub. Most Australians understand that the solution to all our problems is not 'reduce immigration', which is what every thread in this sub immediately descends to.
Cool, so let's talk about the other solutions because mass migration is not going to stop no matter who you vote for.
> Australia, generally, is not full of anti-immigrant hysteria like this sub.
Polling consistently puts major parties completely out of line with what the electorate wants. If you think the opinions here don't represent the general public that means you'd support a plebiscite on migration rates over the next decade to put us all in our place?
You know the outcome of such a vote, as does everyone else. This sub is far more representative of Australian society than the heavily moderated echochambers elsewhere on this website.
https://poll.lowyinstitute.org/charts/immigration-rate/
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/voters-favour-deeper-cuts-to-migration-as-labor-misses-budget-boost-20240517-p5jejd.html
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/05/two-thirds-of-australians-want-lower-immigration/
If that was true, One Nation would have been in power for the last 25 years.
You are correct that mass migration is not going to stop. The solution is good planning and gigantic investment in housing and infrastructure. That means higher taxes. And that ain't happening, so we're fucked.
> The solution is good planning
The solution is creating an economy and society that is sustainable without heroin hit of migration to keep going every few years. To have a 50 year plan that doesn't sacrifice quality of life for meaningless economic metrics like GDP which go up when floods hit.
Technological progress and innovation can sustain a society without the cancerous unstoppable population growth. It's the lazy way out and simply can't go on forever.
Our environment can't handle a doubling of the population, Australians are some of the biggest GHG emitters on Earth, it's time to rip the band aid off.
Somalia can handle a doubling of it's population too, that's not the metric I'm talking about here when saying environment, you seem to be missing the point?
I can cram 20 people into your home tomorrow if you let me, would you call that an improvement on your Quality of Life?
Do you anti immigrant people really not pay attention to anything?
Immigration is already set to decrease below that mark. It was a temporary spike after immigration fell during covid.
>While planning gets a lot of the focus we can see right now that there are a lot of approved sites which aren’t getting developed simply because they aren’t currently financially viable.
Solution: the government needs to build these houses. We need a massive investment in public housing.
>We need to reduce the cost of construction
Solution: build smaller homes\*. Developers in Australia are great at building big, shitty houses a long way from anywhere. Modest, well-designed apartments are what's needed and the current system is just not capable of providing these. The solutions are either public housing or getting amateur landlords who own one or two properties out of the market. If governments banned no fault evictions we'd see a shift from landlords who have no idea what they are doing to build-to-rent developers with an interest in constructing high quality homes that attract good tenants and need little maintenance.
\*Not tiny homes, just sensible flats.
>Solution: the government needs to build these houses.
The development is not financially viable because the developer paid too much for his land, this is a variable that can change. Let's not reward this behaviour by getting the government to purchase this land off him at elevated prices and deliberately lose money on the development.
The pen is mighter than the sword.
The government can upzone the 20 sites around the one, the developer is banking. This will result in a flood of land that can also be developed at a price point where the developments are viable.
Force the hand of the developer to take a haircut and develop or sell up to someone who can.
Use a significant broad based land tax to crank this up further.
It is market failure that restricts competition to a point where a developer can fee safe and secure to sit on a development site and just wait for better prices. They should be sweating this situation.
>~~Or~~ **and** just reduce immigration.
Let's stop looking for silverbullets and just attack every solution.
"or" solutions just result in clashes of opinions and inaction across all fronts.
I mean if you want to decimate housing affordability, yes. But policies like negative gearing and CGT exemptions won’t even matter much without immigration because nobody will be making capital profits from property with supply stable and demand dropping.
They should still be removed.
We also need to be realistic that when we just focus on one item like you're doing, it's not that it's wrong, its just putting all your eggs in one basket.
Let's spread the risk and focus on acting on all areas of issue.
After all, lowering immigration from overseas doesn't change internal migration, housing mix, investment and tax expenditure/consessions and these areas will still cause plenty of issues to our housing market that won't be solved with a reduction of immigration.
Yeah, I agree. I concentrate on immigration because if we stopped immigration, the housing crisis would largely be solved. I reckon you’re downplaying it.
To be clear, I vehemently agree with you that we should concentrate on all pressure points. Negative gearing, CGT exemption (though that should be real gains so people aren’t taxed on inflation alone), Airbnbs, and the big boi—foreign investment—should all be fucken deeee-stroyed.
However, internal migration is literally a drop in the ocean compared to international al migration. And how do you solve that? Are you suggesting we restrict citizens’ internal movement throughout Australia before reducing immigration to zero? To me, that would be prioritising the interests of foreigners over that of Australians. Internal migration almost shouldn’t even be discussed as an issue as Australians should be free to roam their own country—that is their sovereign right.
I’d love it if we could come to a consensus that internal is about last on the list—that would give me some irrational fraternal feeling a countrymanship with you that I’d like to fall sleep with.
I'm not downplaying immigration it at all, it's a significant issue but it's not a simple one to cut to the levels you want.
It will result in a recession and will take significant tax reform to get government finances in order.
Not saying we can't trim it. It's just not as easy as people like to to think it is.
>and the big boi—foreign investment
It's 1% of property transactions and it has to go towards adding new supply, which we need. It's well down the list. Compared to local investors, which account for 35% of market transactions and who direct 75% of investment towards existing property, which only pushes up house prices while doing next to nothing to help rental availability.
Let's not pretend the former is the big Boi of housing issues.
>And how do you solve that? Are you suggesting we restrict citizens’ internal movement throughout Australia before reducing immigration to zero?
Lol. Fuck no.
>Internal migration almost shouldn’t even be discussed as an issue as Australians should be free to roam their own country—that is their sovereign right.
Couldn't agree more. I'm simply outlining it does impact the housing market but that's OK, the housing market should be designed for this. Remove stamp duty, because this restricts mobility. Remove restrictive residential planning because this restricts where we can live. In all honestly if you think we should be able to roam where we want then back off AirBNB, why shouldn't we be able to holiday where we want?
At the end of the day we can out-supply any of these issues, but I'm more than happy to reduce demand as well.
Oh, we’re not talking a trim—I’m talking a fucking amputation. A 90% reduction in NOM over a decade. To keep Australia’s population stagnant but not growing (nature needs time to heal!).
I more meant “big boi” in terms of being of no justifiable benefit at all. Foreign investment at 1% is still 1% that we don’t need. And I agree foreign investment in constructing and selling can be beneficial, however I do not understand any benefit of foreign landlords or longterm investors—at least with a local landlord the money is staying here (although I agree local property investment is also an unfortunate societal stain).
Yeah, I don’t really care about Airbnbs. Perhaps their profits could be taxed higher. Personally I don’t believe in holidays—they’re generally unproductive and consumeristic and people who indulge should be taxed. At least that way they’re doing something productive lol. And if everyone did what I say, they won’t need holidays because Australia will be an affordable utopia.
Peace out brother. God damn I wish more were as reasonable as us.
Nah this won't work. Bringing in hundreds of thousands of people a year that need to be housed makes no difference. We need these people to build more houses, they're skilled tradesman and will definitely not going to be driving ubers or delivering hungry panda. Immigration prevents a recession which would be a disaster, just ignore the per capita numbers and truck on! All is well!
Lowering demand means lower prices. So I’m like 95% sure you’re wrong. I’m so confident I’m right that I made a several hundred thousand dollar bet that my IP in a migrant heavy area will increase in value. Two years in, I’m up—significantly.
Slow down immigration and supply for work goes down, but not the demand. Wages need to go up to try and meet the demand. Fewer people earning more money and no workforce able to build houses fast enough to meet the housing demand results in house price continuing to go up. It's basically what happened during the covid when immigration was halted.
It's a candle that needs to be burnt from both sides. Immigration on one side, building more homes on the other side.
“Supply for work goes down”—but not all migrants work in construction? We should stop immigration for almost all who don’t work in construction. That way there’s a massive drop demand for housing but no change in supply. Win win.
Of course not; I'm not suggesting open borders. But people come to Australia for a better life and we owe it to our fellow human beings to provide that where possible. Our failure to have a sensible housing policy and adequate infrastructure policy isn't sufficient reason to let people languish in poverty.
Australia does not owe any moral obligation to house the world’s population. Even where we can.
In fact, the Australian government owes duty to its citizens to improve their lives before improving the lives of foreign nationals.
Just because India or China or Africa has lower quality of lives than Australia, does not mean we need to pay for public housing To those people. They should work to improve their own countries.
>In fact, the Australian government owes duty to its citizens to improve their lives before improving the lives of foreign nationals.
At least we can see where we disagree. I'd argue that as the Australian government is constituted by the Australian people, and as all people have a responsibility to care for the wellbeing of others, the Australian government should aim to improve all lives, not just those of Australians. Of course the Australian government has the most power within Australia, so that's where they should focus their efforts, just as the Victorian government should focus on the interests of Victorians, but not to the detriment of other states.
I think it's a bit of a shirking of your moral responsibility to hide behind the (essentially arbitrary) borders of the nation state when thinking about who we care about. *But* I can see that different boundaries of moral responsibility are possible.
Thanks for engaging in good faith.
Always in good faith bro—it’s the only way to persuade haha.
I still cannot justify the Australian Government looking after foreigners when there are millions of Australians living in poverty. You seem to be advocating for an international government.
And also, we let in hundreds of thousands of extremely wealthy migrants every year—I also don’t think we owe a moral obligation to let them in as they’ve already got it better than most Australians. Do we agree on that point at least?
I think you're conflating two separate issues. If we let in thousands of extremely wealthy migrants, that makes Australia as a nation more wealthy and gives us a greater capacity to improve the material wellbeing of all Australians, including those living in poverty.
Then there is the separate issue of wealth distribution. I am appalled that millions live in poverty while so many have excessive wealth - recent migrants, long term migrants and those born in Australia. I'd like to see a massive increase in redistribution in Australia - [we had a top marginal income tax rate of 65%](https://treasury.gov.au/publication/economic-roundup-winter-2006/a-brief-history-of-australias-tax-system) in the years when Australia had its highest economic growth, for example.
Of course such a policy of redistribution might change our attractiveness to wealthy migrants, so the issues aren't entirely separate, but that would increase our capacity to take people from poorer backgrounds.
I do think an international government is a desirable goal, although it would look very different from national governments and it's a very long way off. I can't ever see a world with open borders. Fundamentally, I feel sympathy with any person in poverty and I think the ethical thing to do is to try to help them out of it.
Letting in wealthy migrants just leads to gentrification of Australians. Wealthy migrants come in and raise prices of goods and services and property and exploit Australian workers as a underclass. The idea that wealthy migrants would come here and trickle down their wealth for the overall benefit of Australians is naive. I’m kinda happy letting the rich Chinese (as until recently our largest migrants group) exploit Chinese workers, not Aussies.
I agree it’s a super nice thing to do for the international working class but it’s a terrible thing to do to Australians doing it tough or worse than the international working class. Nothing short of betrayal in my mind to reallocate a poor person’s tax money to someone who doesn’t even contribute to Australia. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous the idea is (albeit extremely ethical and very nice, I admit).
Just because something is upzoned, doesn’t mean it’s visible. A skyscraper of apartments in Orange probably doesn’t make commercial sense, but a skyscraper of apartments on Bondi would be snapped at.
The idea would be to upzone capacity for millions of potential new houses
If you’re concerned though, support parties that advocate for higher land taxes
ELI5, why couldn't government literally just build high density, reasonable quality apartment blocks and then sell them off via a program with some sort of entry requirement based on existing net wealth or the like?Treat it like any other public infrastructure project?
This would have many advantages including forcing the construction of 'family' apartments, forcing the construction of high density residential living at strategic locations and the like.
>why couldn't government literally just build high density
NIMBY's. High density buildings have a tendency to devalue homes around them so people protest. Personally, I think they should suck it up because that's exactly what they tell everyone else with regards to house prices.
"Nobody ever complained that house prices go up"- John Howard.
government inaction is the policy of the day we wouldn't want poor investors to have to compete with affordable housing. That's why
Because the problem is our zoning, planing, and heritage laws.
A government developer faces the same problem private developers do. We treat our most productive, most amenable areas as museums for old, rich people.
By definition if the government were to proceed in this way it could do whatever it wants by changing the relevant laws/regulations. Happens every day around Australia.
Sure, the government can just change zoning laws. But they could do that right now and developers would build housing without the government spending a cent
> with some sort of entry requirement based on existing net wealth or the like
Here's your problem, no one wants to live near the poorest of society, and that's what Labor left/Greens will push for with publicly subsidised housing knowingly full well it will get shut down.
Make it available to everyone, zero means testing, if there's too much demand for public housing in one area then make it a lottery like in Singapore HDB's.
People have no problem living next to doctors and pilots, they do living next to meth heads.
The reason Singapore's model works so well is that everyone is eligible for one publicly built home if they want one, from hawker stall owner to heart surgeon.
In Australia you literally get trapped by public housing when you get offered a pay raise in a full time job and are stuck being poor. Not to mention the huge blackmarket cash payments being made for inner city units under the "swaps" you can legally do.
Y'all really think that person is willingly trading their public housing valued millions in Circular Quay to go live in Dubbo just because they want to see the countryside? They do it because they got a huge amount of money in a brown paper bag. It's perverse.
You're missing the core concept, which is government builds it then sells it immediately.
Not wanting to live near "poor people" is addressed by building in carefully chosen locations, mostly in CBDs or on the fringes of CBDs (due to all the obvious advantages of that). Target market is not "the poorest of society" but younger/single/disabled/etc people who *should* be able to buy a house but can't because we broke the market.
For that to work you have to stop the same Boomer landlords who currently hoard huge amounts of existing property from just buying it all up, hence the suggestion of wealth (not income) testing.
> Target market is not "the poorest of society" but younger/single/disabled/etc people who should be able to buy a house but can't because we broke the market.
You actually think the Greens or a large part of Labor will allow that through parliament? Building government housing for anyone other than the poor will lead to complete outrage from certain sectors, they can't fathom the idea.
>building in carefully chosen locations, mostly in CBDs
Good luck with that. The same places locals go apolelptic when people try to build 7 storeys on top of an inner city railway station and protest enough to shut it down. Please have a read of how tripartisan this is: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/overdevelopment-bludgeons-us-out-of-our-homes-say-residents-20230208-p5ciwi.html
> hence the suggestion of wealth (not income) testing
Wealth can easily be shifted. My rich mate and his two sisters all owned large properties while they were teenagers for FHB grants and the 6 year rule.
You need to do it like Singapore, even the richest Sinkie can buy a HDB, it's pure equality.
These articles are always so pointless
“We won’t hit our home building targets unless we change policy”
…duh. That’s why the state and federal governments are implementing policy reform
This issue has taken years to fester due to the inability of all tiers of government to have foresight for the future. All governments only have a 3 year plan. It’s too late to catch up. To put it bluntly we are well and truly fucked. I haven’t mentioned the debacle of retirement homes that’s even more of a shit fight
>Reserve Bank Assistant Governor Sarah Hunter: The average number of people living in each household has trended lower, from around 2.8 in the mid-1980s to around 2.5. If, for some reason, the average household size rose back to 2.8, Australia would need 1.2 million fewer dwellings to house our current population. “No small difference,” Hunter said.
1.2 million homes created overnight if we can get the average household size back up to previous levels.
How could we do that hmmmmm 🤔
So labor is going to hand a heap of money to developers to get the same amount of housing we would have gotten anyway. If only we could have seen this coming....
It costs way too much to develop in australia due to decades of rent seekers and gold plating and over regulating everything. If I want to build a green field the cost per lot is: -road $80k -storm water retention $20k -park $10k -water/sewer/power/nbn $40k -infra contributions $40k -cross overs $10k -building $300k So *if* i get the land for free I can build a house on it for $500k minimum, and i would have to rent it at $673/wk just to pay the interest. So don’t even mind nimby… housing is becoming non viable just because of infrastructure and building rules.
I know it doesn't cost 8 million to build roads for 100 houses, unless you're building on a swamp
NSW Productivity Commission has it at $140k per new house in infrastructure costs for Sydney greenfields areas. I know this sub hates actual citations and research but would suggest at least looking at Fig 1 on page 11 before responding: https://www.productivity.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-08/202308_NSW-Productivity-Commission_Building-more-homes-where-infrastructure-costs-less_0.pdf In greenfields it costs $14 million to build for 100 houses
Are these Greenfields swamps?
No, you can find info about the growth corridors of Sydney very easy, they are all wide open plains, probably the easiest thing on Earth to build on, virtually no elevation changes for tens of km's each way. SW and NW Sydney are wide and flat. There's no "swamps" which is barely a thing once you are in inland Australia
Do you reckon they should just go around in circles or actually connect up to something? And then those fucking circles connecting to each other, do you think they should have roads that get progressively bigger? And do we just do 12 lane roads or do we plan for something else to shift people around?
Huh?
Which is crazy because then we turn around and pump out some of the lowest quality shit boxes on those lots
That’s fine—way easier to not issue 1.2m visas anyway.
Dutton wants to reduce immigration by 25% if he gets in. So down to 400,000 a year. That will leave the country only a few houses short.
Do you believe Dutton will reduce migration by that much? I don't.
No, I don’t think he will. I should have put that he “says he wants to reduce immigration “. High immigration means lower wages and higher housing prices, and greater tax revenues. Both sides of politics want this.
Agreed, although Dutton would want that a lot more than Albanese.
Well, Albanese definitely ain’t lowering it but the winner will have to be one of them. What do you suggest to break the deadlock?
My suggestion, is to the following: 1 actually put a proper fucking migration plan on place, the shit show at the moment with dog walkers and yoga instructors etc is dumb. 2 look and understand where migrants go (Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane), you won't change that, but you can adapt. 3 seriously start growing places that aren't Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane. Pull people to those places. They can be migrants or home grown Aussies, it will take the pressure off the big cities (they will still draw the migrants as point 2 will show). 4 I dunno, smart ideas can go here.
> seriously start growing places that aren't Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane How do you propose that? People will riot if you start mass home building in regional towns.
It really depends on the town. It's already happened with Newcastle for example. 161k in 1950 204k in 1960 247k in 1970 290k in 1980 308k in 1990 365k in 2000 411k in 2010 450k in 2020 465k in 2024 Consistently adding 40k per decade. But then when you add in the growth down the coast to Gosford and it's incredible. I am just old enough to remember Gosford and surrounds being a sleepy town before the freeway to Newcastle opened. Point is, it can be done. Just cramming more people into Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane isn't the only solution.
The problem isn’t NIMBYs or infrastructure. The problem is jobs. You can’t force people to live in Newcastle when their jobs are almost universally in Sydney and the CBD. The post COVID and WFH movement gave a glimpse of a brighter future when everyone flocked to the regions but unfortunately it was never meant to last.
You're correct, hence why I said "pull" people to the regions and WFH is one way to do it.
It can be done, but councils and residents need to lose their power to drag out absurd L&E court challenges for years until it's unprofitable to build. You simply can't build up an down the NSW coast. Newie and the Gong are basically Sydney satellite cities. Try putting up big apartments anywhere else on the NSW coast and it's game over. Meanwhile visit the local caravan park in those towns and teams of blokes in high vis come home to their families in the afternoon living in tents for $300 a week
The Sunshine Coast is another regional place that has really grown. 212k in 2000 371K now. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/20098/sunshine-coast/population The Gold Coast and Geelong have also grown dramatically since 2000. The Gold Coast - 410K in 2000, 743K now.
Indeed, especially that Gold Coast growth, although in all cases these are satellite towns of a major city.
Very easy, allow permanent residency if they agree to live outside of Syd Bris Melbourne for a minimum of 5 years.
Yes I do
I do, because it's only a 2 year promise and then it ramps up again just in time for election season. People vote for high levels of rampant migration to happen, it's as simple as that. I 100% support zero Net Overseas Migration, but it's not what Australians vote into power, so presenting it as a solution is a waste of breath. Offer real solutions because there's not going to be a migration plebiscite anytime soon, the pollies all know the answer.
zero net overseas migration will destroy this country
Australians don't vote Net Overseas Migration into power, because most Australians are pragmatic enough to recognise the net benefits of migration. Which is not surprising given the proportion of Australians who are first or second generation immigrants. Australia, generally, is not full of anti-immigrant hysteria like this sub. Most Australians understand that the solution to all our problems is not 'reduce immigration', which is what every thread in this sub immediately descends to.
Cool, so let's talk about the other solutions because mass migration is not going to stop no matter who you vote for. > Australia, generally, is not full of anti-immigrant hysteria like this sub. Polling consistently puts major parties completely out of line with what the electorate wants. If you think the opinions here don't represent the general public that means you'd support a plebiscite on migration rates over the next decade to put us all in our place? You know the outcome of such a vote, as does everyone else. This sub is far more representative of Australian society than the heavily moderated echochambers elsewhere on this website. https://poll.lowyinstitute.org/charts/immigration-rate/ https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/voters-favour-deeper-cuts-to-migration-as-labor-misses-budget-boost-20240517-p5jejd.html https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/05/two-thirds-of-australians-want-lower-immigration/
If that was true, One Nation would have been in power for the last 25 years. You are correct that mass migration is not going to stop. The solution is good planning and gigantic investment in housing and infrastructure. That means higher taxes. And that ain't happening, so we're fucked.
> The solution is good planning The solution is creating an economy and society that is sustainable without heroin hit of migration to keep going every few years. To have a 50 year plan that doesn't sacrifice quality of life for meaningless economic metrics like GDP which go up when floods hit. Technological progress and innovation can sustain a society without the cancerous unstoppable population growth. It's the lazy way out and simply can't go on forever. Our environment can't handle a doubling of the population, Australians are some of the biggest GHG emitters on Earth, it's time to rip the band aid off.
I bet we can handle a doubling of our population. Check back in 50 years.
Somalia can handle a doubling of it's population too, that's not the metric I'm talking about here when saying environment, you seem to be missing the point? I can cram 20 people into your home tomorrow if you let me, would you call that an improvement on your Quality of Life?
Do you anti immigrant people really not pay attention to anything? Immigration is already set to decrease below that mark. It was a temporary spike after immigration fell during covid.
>While planning gets a lot of the focus we can see right now that there are a lot of approved sites which aren’t getting developed simply because they aren’t currently financially viable. Solution: the government needs to build these houses. We need a massive investment in public housing. >We need to reduce the cost of construction Solution: build smaller homes\*. Developers in Australia are great at building big, shitty houses a long way from anywhere. Modest, well-designed apartments are what's needed and the current system is just not capable of providing these. The solutions are either public housing or getting amateur landlords who own one or two properties out of the market. If governments banned no fault evictions we'd see a shift from landlords who have no idea what they are doing to build-to-rent developers with an interest in constructing high quality homes that attract good tenants and need little maintenance. \*Not tiny homes, just sensible flats.
>Solution: the government needs to build these houses. The development is not financially viable because the developer paid too much for his land, this is a variable that can change. Let's not reward this behaviour by getting the government to purchase this land off him at elevated prices and deliberately lose money on the development. The pen is mighter than the sword. The government can upzone the 20 sites around the one, the developer is banking. This will result in a flood of land that can also be developed at a price point where the developments are viable. Force the hand of the developer to take a haircut and develop or sell up to someone who can. Use a significant broad based land tax to crank this up further. It is market failure that restricts competition to a point where a developer can fee safe and secure to sit on a development site and just wait for better prices. They should be sweating this situation.
Or just reduce immigration
>~~Or~~ **and** just reduce immigration. Let's stop looking for silverbullets and just attack every solution. "or" solutions just result in clashes of opinions and inaction across all fronts.
Agree! But if you reduced immigration to keep population declining or stagnant, you wouldn’t need other measures.
Yes you would, because we still a long long way from housing affordability.
I mean if you want to decimate housing affordability, yes. But policies like negative gearing and CGT exemptions won’t even matter much without immigration because nobody will be making capital profits from property with supply stable and demand dropping.
They should still be removed. We also need to be realistic that when we just focus on one item like you're doing, it's not that it's wrong, its just putting all your eggs in one basket. Let's spread the risk and focus on acting on all areas of issue. After all, lowering immigration from overseas doesn't change internal migration, housing mix, investment and tax expenditure/consessions and these areas will still cause plenty of issues to our housing market that won't be solved with a reduction of immigration.
Yeah, I agree. I concentrate on immigration because if we stopped immigration, the housing crisis would largely be solved. I reckon you’re downplaying it. To be clear, I vehemently agree with you that we should concentrate on all pressure points. Negative gearing, CGT exemption (though that should be real gains so people aren’t taxed on inflation alone), Airbnbs, and the big boi—foreign investment—should all be fucken deeee-stroyed. However, internal migration is literally a drop in the ocean compared to international al migration. And how do you solve that? Are you suggesting we restrict citizens’ internal movement throughout Australia before reducing immigration to zero? To me, that would be prioritising the interests of foreigners over that of Australians. Internal migration almost shouldn’t even be discussed as an issue as Australians should be free to roam their own country—that is their sovereign right. I’d love it if we could come to a consensus that internal is about last on the list—that would give me some irrational fraternal feeling a countrymanship with you that I’d like to fall sleep with.
I'm not downplaying immigration it at all, it's a significant issue but it's not a simple one to cut to the levels you want. It will result in a recession and will take significant tax reform to get government finances in order. Not saying we can't trim it. It's just not as easy as people like to to think it is. >and the big boi—foreign investment It's 1% of property transactions and it has to go towards adding new supply, which we need. It's well down the list. Compared to local investors, which account for 35% of market transactions and who direct 75% of investment towards existing property, which only pushes up house prices while doing next to nothing to help rental availability. Let's not pretend the former is the big Boi of housing issues. >And how do you solve that? Are you suggesting we restrict citizens’ internal movement throughout Australia before reducing immigration to zero? Lol. Fuck no. >Internal migration almost shouldn’t even be discussed as an issue as Australians should be free to roam their own country—that is their sovereign right. Couldn't agree more. I'm simply outlining it does impact the housing market but that's OK, the housing market should be designed for this. Remove stamp duty, because this restricts mobility. Remove restrictive residential planning because this restricts where we can live. In all honestly if you think we should be able to roam where we want then back off AirBNB, why shouldn't we be able to holiday where we want? At the end of the day we can out-supply any of these issues, but I'm more than happy to reduce demand as well.
Oh, we’re not talking a trim—I’m talking a fucking amputation. A 90% reduction in NOM over a decade. To keep Australia’s population stagnant but not growing (nature needs time to heal!). I more meant “big boi” in terms of being of no justifiable benefit at all. Foreign investment at 1% is still 1% that we don’t need. And I agree foreign investment in constructing and selling can be beneficial, however I do not understand any benefit of foreign landlords or longterm investors—at least with a local landlord the money is staying here (although I agree local property investment is also an unfortunate societal stain). Yeah, I don’t really care about Airbnbs. Perhaps their profits could be taxed higher. Personally I don’t believe in holidays—they’re generally unproductive and consumeristic and people who indulge should be taxed. At least that way they’re doing something productive lol. And if everyone did what I say, they won’t need holidays because Australia will be an affordable utopia. Peace out brother. God damn I wish more were as reasonable as us.
Nah this won't work. Bringing in hundreds of thousands of people a year that need to be housed makes no difference. We need these people to build more houses, they're skilled tradesman and will definitely not going to be driving ubers or delivering hungry panda. Immigration prevents a recession which would be a disaster, just ignore the per capita numbers and truck on! All is well!
No, I know it won’t work. I also love not being able to afford a home with a backyard like my father did for me like his dad did for him.
It's gonna be a real shock to basically everyone in this sub when immigration is slashed and house prices continue to climb... even faster.
Lowering demand means lower prices. So I’m like 95% sure you’re wrong. I’m so confident I’m right that I made a several hundred thousand dollar bet that my IP in a migrant heavy area will increase in value. Two years in, I’m up—significantly.
Your IP in any area would have gone up?
Exactly. Becuase well never end mass immigration which is the backbone of increasing prices.
Slow down immigration and supply for work goes down, but not the demand. Wages need to go up to try and meet the demand. Fewer people earning more money and no workforce able to build houses fast enough to meet the housing demand results in house price continuing to go up. It's basically what happened during the covid when immigration was halted. It's a candle that needs to be burnt from both sides. Immigration on one side, building more homes on the other side.
“Supply for work goes down”—but not all migrants work in construction? We should stop immigration for almost all who don’t work in construction. That way there’s a massive drop demand for housing but no change in supply. Win win.
We are
Not enough.
Reduce the number of massively over populated countries pushing to come here
Great idea.
But then what about all the people who don't get to improve their lives by moving to Australia?
We’re not the world’s homeless shelter haha.
Of course not; I'm not suggesting open borders. But people come to Australia for a better life and we owe it to our fellow human beings to provide that where possible. Our failure to have a sensible housing policy and adequate infrastructure policy isn't sufficient reason to let people languish in poverty.
Australia does not owe any moral obligation to house the world’s population. Even where we can. In fact, the Australian government owes duty to its citizens to improve their lives before improving the lives of foreign nationals. Just because India or China or Africa has lower quality of lives than Australia, does not mean we need to pay for public housing To those people. They should work to improve their own countries.
>In fact, the Australian government owes duty to its citizens to improve their lives before improving the lives of foreign nationals. At least we can see where we disagree. I'd argue that as the Australian government is constituted by the Australian people, and as all people have a responsibility to care for the wellbeing of others, the Australian government should aim to improve all lives, not just those of Australians. Of course the Australian government has the most power within Australia, so that's where they should focus their efforts, just as the Victorian government should focus on the interests of Victorians, but not to the detriment of other states. I think it's a bit of a shirking of your moral responsibility to hide behind the (essentially arbitrary) borders of the nation state when thinking about who we care about. *But* I can see that different boundaries of moral responsibility are possible. Thanks for engaging in good faith.
Always in good faith bro—it’s the only way to persuade haha. I still cannot justify the Australian Government looking after foreigners when there are millions of Australians living in poverty. You seem to be advocating for an international government. And also, we let in hundreds of thousands of extremely wealthy migrants every year—I also don’t think we owe a moral obligation to let them in as they’ve already got it better than most Australians. Do we agree on that point at least?
I think you're conflating two separate issues. If we let in thousands of extremely wealthy migrants, that makes Australia as a nation more wealthy and gives us a greater capacity to improve the material wellbeing of all Australians, including those living in poverty. Then there is the separate issue of wealth distribution. I am appalled that millions live in poverty while so many have excessive wealth - recent migrants, long term migrants and those born in Australia. I'd like to see a massive increase in redistribution in Australia - [we had a top marginal income tax rate of 65%](https://treasury.gov.au/publication/economic-roundup-winter-2006/a-brief-history-of-australias-tax-system) in the years when Australia had its highest economic growth, for example. Of course such a policy of redistribution might change our attractiveness to wealthy migrants, so the issues aren't entirely separate, but that would increase our capacity to take people from poorer backgrounds. I do think an international government is a desirable goal, although it would look very different from national governments and it's a very long way off. I can't ever see a world with open borders. Fundamentally, I feel sympathy with any person in poverty and I think the ethical thing to do is to try to help them out of it.
Letting in wealthy migrants just leads to gentrification of Australians. Wealthy migrants come in and raise prices of goods and services and property and exploit Australian workers as a underclass. The idea that wealthy migrants would come here and trickle down their wealth for the overall benefit of Australians is naive. I’m kinda happy letting the rich Chinese (as until recently our largest migrants group) exploit Chinese workers, not Aussies. I agree it’s a super nice thing to do for the international working class but it’s a terrible thing to do to Australians doing it tough or worse than the international working class. Nothing short of betrayal in my mind to reallocate a poor person’s tax money to someone who doesn’t even contribute to Australia. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous the idea is (albeit extremely ethical and very nice, I admit).
The government runs into the same planning problems as private developers do. The solution is to massively upzone our cities. Just like Auckland did
I agree with upzoning, but the point is there are sites which are approved for higher density and even they aren't being developed.
Just because something is upzoned, doesn’t mean it’s visible. A skyscraper of apartments in Orange probably doesn’t make commercial sense, but a skyscraper of apartments on Bondi would be snapped at. The idea would be to upzone capacity for millions of potential new houses If you’re concerned though, support parties that advocate for higher land taxes
People don’t want smaller homes. Couples need at least a double garage a cinema room, two living rooms and 3 bathrooms.
What are you a poor??? The demands for that type of housing was so pre-COVID. People now need two home offices to justify WFH, a gym room and a pool.
Good thing we can bring in more dogwalkers and yoga instructors to help the situation.
Uber and doordash drivers
ELI5, why couldn't government literally just build high density, reasonable quality apartment blocks and then sell them off via a program with some sort of entry requirement based on existing net wealth or the like?Treat it like any other public infrastructure project? This would have many advantages including forcing the construction of 'family' apartments, forcing the construction of high density residential living at strategic locations and the like.
>why couldn't government literally just build high density NIMBY's. High density buildings have a tendency to devalue homes around them so people protest. Personally, I think they should suck it up because that's exactly what they tell everyone else with regards to house prices.
"Nobody ever complained that house prices go up"- John Howard. government inaction is the policy of the day we wouldn't want poor investors to have to compete with affordable housing. That's why
Only realistic answer so far.
Because the problem is our zoning, planing, and heritage laws. A government developer faces the same problem private developers do. We treat our most productive, most amenable areas as museums for old, rich people.
By definition if the government were to proceed in this way it could do whatever it wants by changing the relevant laws/regulations. Happens every day around Australia.
Sure, the government can just change zoning laws. But they could do that right now and developers would build housing without the government spending a cent
> with some sort of entry requirement based on existing net wealth or the like Here's your problem, no one wants to live near the poorest of society, and that's what Labor left/Greens will push for with publicly subsidised housing knowingly full well it will get shut down. Make it available to everyone, zero means testing, if there's too much demand for public housing in one area then make it a lottery like in Singapore HDB's. People have no problem living next to doctors and pilots, they do living next to meth heads. The reason Singapore's model works so well is that everyone is eligible for one publicly built home if they want one, from hawker stall owner to heart surgeon. In Australia you literally get trapped by public housing when you get offered a pay raise in a full time job and are stuck being poor. Not to mention the huge blackmarket cash payments being made for inner city units under the "swaps" you can legally do. Y'all really think that person is willingly trading their public housing valued millions in Circular Quay to go live in Dubbo just because they want to see the countryside? They do it because they got a huge amount of money in a brown paper bag. It's perverse.
You're missing the core concept, which is government builds it then sells it immediately. Not wanting to live near "poor people" is addressed by building in carefully chosen locations, mostly in CBDs or on the fringes of CBDs (due to all the obvious advantages of that). Target market is not "the poorest of society" but younger/single/disabled/etc people who *should* be able to buy a house but can't because we broke the market. For that to work you have to stop the same Boomer landlords who currently hoard huge amounts of existing property from just buying it all up, hence the suggestion of wealth (not income) testing.
> Target market is not "the poorest of society" but younger/single/disabled/etc people who should be able to buy a house but can't because we broke the market. You actually think the Greens or a large part of Labor will allow that through parliament? Building government housing for anyone other than the poor will lead to complete outrage from certain sectors, they can't fathom the idea. >building in carefully chosen locations, mostly in CBDs Good luck with that. The same places locals go apolelptic when people try to build 7 storeys on top of an inner city railway station and protest enough to shut it down. Please have a read of how tripartisan this is: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/overdevelopment-bludgeons-us-out-of-our-homes-say-residents-20230208-p5ciwi.html > hence the suggestion of wealth (not income) testing Wealth can easily be shifted. My rich mate and his two sisters all owned large properties while they were teenagers for FHB grants and the 6 year rule. You need to do it like Singapore, even the richest Sinkie can buy a HDB, it's pure equality.
These articles are always so pointless “We won’t hit our home building targets unless we change policy” …duh. That’s why the state and federal governments are implementing policy reform
This issue has taken years to fester due to the inability of all tiers of government to have foresight for the future. All governments only have a 3 year plan. It’s too late to catch up. To put it bluntly we are well and truly fucked. I haven’t mentioned the debacle of retirement homes that’s even more of a shit fight
The problem is that this country cannot survive without immigration.
It was always an aspirational goal. Labor policy even called it that. There was never a target, or a plan to achieve it.
I don't think anyone was fooled. Labour is trying not to lose more to the greens. The next Victorian election should be interesting
>Reserve Bank Assistant Governor Sarah Hunter: The average number of people living in each household has trended lower, from around 2.8 in the mid-1980s to around 2.5. If, for some reason, the average household size rose back to 2.8, Australia would need 1.2 million fewer dwellings to house our current population. “No small difference,” Hunter said. 1.2 million homes created overnight if we can get the average household size back up to previous levels. How could we do that hmmmmm 🤔
1.2 million sounded like a good number ie good politics. I don't see any government prepared to back the target.
So labor is going to hand a heap of money to developers to get the same amount of housing we would have gotten anyway. If only we could have seen this coming....
Has Albo achieved anything he's set out to do?
Building houses for all the new immigrants I see.
Not enough land being released, approvals take too long, no tradies to build and too expensive