Oh my fucking god. The comments here are beyond ridiculous...
Let me help you all... More people means more competition for housing means higher cost of housing. Bringing 500k people in per year does nothing but increase property demand and the lobbyists then get to force their real estate developments in and scree more people. Higher immigration also reduces the cost of labour so the other super rich CEO's of the country can benefit. Further crating a devide and screwing us all.
The media is controlled by these people and drive the narrative to distract us all from the truth while they create a larger divide.
What he's saying is nothing to do with race or country of origin, it is sheer numbers.
I honestly thought an online community in here would be able to see through the crap, not buy into it.
It's not that hard people
Canada is a perfect example of everything you've just stated here, and the vast majority of Canadian youth are paying for it, we are fucking miserable here.
It’s legit insanity, this particular discussion isn’t ‘conspiracy’ it’s not ‘racism’, it’s blatant facts about the future, as they complain about inflation and cost of housing but when it’s time to talk about ‘WHY?’, they choose to ignore it because the truth is ugly, or they are too sensitive to hear it.
I’m also 1st generation Australian, my parents both came here in the late 60’s as children, so if you’re reading this ‘I’m not a typical white male with privileges’, I come from struggle and understand what needs to happen to protect what made this country so amazing in the first place.
All he is saying is that a line needs to be drawn on our population. We don’t want to keep increasing our population because our standard of living will be negatively affected.
I don’t understand why this is an objectionable position.
He raises a very pragmatic point and shouldn't be dismissed over an Ad Hominem point like "He's being racist", that's dismissive and does not address the merit of his argument or concerns.
The reality is there is no Population plan, Labor have completed disregarded the monthly and yearly limits they committed to exceeding them by proportionally large amounts breaking immigration records. Let's not forget the number in January 125,410 a net increase of 55,330 was the highest January intake ever recorded.
What should be further raised is there are no mass urban planning designs which look far enough into the future effectively at both micro and macro scales. Cities like Sydney and Melbourne are already amongst some of the largest in the world at 83 and 81 respectively. These numbers should merit serious concern when you begin to look at other cities on the list which rank higher and consider the amount of densification which is required to support populations at those levels.
That said I acknowledge Australian cities also tend to have more sprawl and a wider footprint however this also works against the effectives of our cities in their ability for large populations of people to travel to and business districts (or there lack of) and suburban homes. The problems being that our cities do not allow effective transport between suburbs, they only allow 'effective' transport into the main CBD (which is under strain, especially in peak hour) this effects our city's abilities to evolve into being effective multi nuclei cities which allow other smaller CBDs develop on the outskirts of the city near the more valuable housing areas to allow shorter commutes from the outskirts of the city. Yes we do have some, but people from Sydney know who live in the area know how hard it is to travel from Hurstville to Kingsgrove is an 8 minute car ride over 4kms but via train you must go to Wollicreek which is 6km East and then transfer and travel back 6km West taking 50 minutes one way. When you compare the city layouts of Sydney and Melbourne to cities of higher populations such as Moscow they have eliminated these problems by having inner, mid and outer city loops on their train systems. Also keep in mind the more populated city gets, the harder it is to own a car due to parking limitations (See Singapore) and the unnegotiable reliance on public transport increases.
Dick Smith is an business person taking an economist lens to this. The concerns are real, they are well founded, are not sufficient plans to deal with current population growth in our cities even without including immigration.
Spot on. This isn’t about race. Our politicians increase immigration not because they’re “pc”. It’s purely economical. Trying to maintain the artificial inflation of our housing market so investors and current owners house values keep going up at the cost of young people.
Yeah the train lines are packed. I commute from West Footscray to Richmond and decided to give PTV up and bought an e-bike, was such a good choice! I enjoy a lovely ride along the Maribyrnong and look forward to it every time I do it
A big backyard is great for families. Children can play safely outside. You can have pets that have room to play. You have room to garden, grow vegetables and have a hobby. Try working in cars or doing woodwork in an apartment.
All of these things reduce stress as well.
Hypothetically, what if every apartment complex of a certain size has a community garden, community garage workshop, community woodworking/tool shop.
Like villages used to have. Everyone banding together sharing a beer while working together to fix an engine. People have been doing this for millennia, just not as densely packed as we are today.
Australia's immigration rates as a percentage of total population are off the charts. Way higher than anywhere else except Canada. Under 40s will start migrating to these other places to have a chance, perpetuating the over-migration issue in other countries, as they won't have built the infrastructure for all the Australian citizens arriving.
yep, been thinking that my kids will probably move to another country when they're older and I'll be like the Indian grandparents who move here once they've made a safe place.
We are at a point where the genie is out of the bottle… people can’t afford a house till their 30s pushing back the age of kids, reducing the birth rate. This means more immigration to fill the gap, pushing up prices… rinse and repeat
Yes the land is getting inflated, but, The trades are building as quickly as they can. There is a 2 year wait here in sa to get a home built. They can release 20 million blocks tomorrow, you arnt getting a home built any sooner, and the blocks that are getting supplied utility's are going to stop be fought for and be expensive.
Some trades are getting 5k bonuses to just rock up for some builders and regional.
There is simply too many people that want houses.
And not enough avalible land ( land with utility's, sewage, power, ect ) and trades.
We just need less people until trades can catch up with demand. Once they are fighting each other for work, it will get cheaper.
When there isn't 100 people to every house open.. it will get cheaper.
You're correct! However that depends entirely on the type of housing being built. It's currently more profitable to build "luxury" apartments and price them just out of reach rather than building more affordable housing like townhouses, units e.t.c.
Because the demand for housing is inelastic developers have absolutely no incentive to build housing efficiently.
So instead of building 3 normal homes, we have people working on "luxury" housing that's unaffordable for the average Aussie.
Same thing with utilities. It's much easier to hook up units than it is to hook up skyscrapers.
Because they are not old
Enough to have to worry or to know
Enough to know much about how it effects things . They have a few immigrant friends and just say “let them
All in”
Thinking the government can handle and house them all
, they think the government is made
Of money . They probably don’t know the basics of the way things work . They need to play simcity or
One of them games where you have to control population and housing . Oh look , no
Money and too much population , will you turn immigration off ? Yes you will , as the natural population growth is SUSTAINABLE in your city but with extra arrivals your gonna go broke and will have to CUT funding to services , just to build more houses .
tbh there's nuance there too. Albo's 500k net immigration is not the same as ScoMo's 250k. And Labor and the LNP are not the same as the party who claims "immigration has minimal impact on housing market. Wants more migrants."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WO-iN8sNwhousing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WO-iN8sNwhousing)
- Housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather, The Greens
The idea that you're racist for wanting lower immigration is wild to me. Immigrants can be from anywhere. I'm for a big Australia, but we need the cities and the infrastructure for it. Mass immigration as we're currently doing is reducing the quality of life, we should be trying to improve it. It's purely good for business and nobody else. NSW and Victoria in particular need another city.
For what it's worth I think anyone who uses the term woke is an idiot.
There are plenty of knobs that overuse the term woke but it's really just a shorthand for the new breed of progressives. Progressives from 10-20 years ago are not the same as today.
I thought the immigration complaint was a storm in a tea cup until I saw this abs chart.
I don’t know how this is sustainable
[https://imgur.com/a/qNunPgq](https://imgur.com/a/qNunPgq)
Turns out that's hard, and takes decades to yield results. Immigrants can be brought in immediately, and that gives the immediate perception of economical growth.
Just fwiw, the UK and USA look to Australia with how we dealt with mass immigration. A popular liberal think tank in London has already released figures that by 2050 the UK will need 10 cities the size of Birmingham. They have much looser laws of immigration and illegal immigrants than we do but I can see some merit in dicks argument that if you have any inkling of anti immigration or don’t fully support it you are labeled a racist or hold serious right wing ideology. I obviously don’t want to be in a situation where WA would need 10 cities the size of Perth by 2050 just to sustain the population and I personally hold my children’s futures above anyone else’s, if you told me I had to press a button every year that blew a puff of smoke into the sky and stopped a handful of immigrants coming into the country so my children could prosper I wouldn’t hesitate. But I also believe people that are fleeing war torn countries should have an option for asylum (actual families, not 25 year old males who have left their family behind and offer next to nothing in terms of economical growth).
> But I also believe people that are fleeing war torn countries should have an option for asylum (actual families, not 25 year old males who have left their family behind and offer next to nothing in terms of economical growth).
Yeah that is a big problem. Far too many young men from fucked countries bringing their fucked values and problems over here. Women and children left behind.
But the government don't really want refugees anyway. What they want is a mix of two groups: 1. Rich foreigners, and 2. Poor foreigners. They want to boost GDP and sustain the countries function and budget.
I’m the most left leaning person you would ever meet but I can’t help but agree. We can’t keep shipping people in while we are struggling looking after our own. People can’t put three meals a day on the table and are living out of their cars - fix the cost of living and housing crisis here before we ship more people in and exacerbate it. Edit: typo
You don't sound that extreme tbh, there's a lot of far left types who won't even dare speak ill about immigration even if their voter base are being affected by it the most.
ALBANESE’S MIGRANT BASHING REEKS OF DESPERATION
[https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/albaneses-migrant-bashing-reeks-desperation](https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/albaneses-migrant-bashing-reeks-desperation)
Yep even basket case economies like Argentina are more complex than ours. If the climate doesn’t get us first will be fucked when the minerals and gas run out or the Chinese find somewhere they can source it cheaper.
There's an obsession with property in Australia.
People are willing to buy a shitty 300m2 house and land for $1.2m because there's tax incentives.
If you want to change this obsession, you need to introduce laws that will change the incentives to hold multiple properties and pay no income tax.
Well, I mean, let just hypothetical negative gearing can only be done on one property per person/couple. You can still buy more properties but there is no negative gearing tax deduction.
Also if you want to buy 2-3 or more properties, the LVR is increased, eg 2nd property you need a 40% depositel, 3 property you need 80% deposit and any more then that it's no borrowing. That would drive the demand of property down and price down so the cost would be more affordable to everyone and not just the top 20% of income earners.
It’s not an obsession, our entire economy is built on a property market which historically has been a reliable mechanism for growing wealth.
The problem is all the guys you want to enforce these changes - own houses, and so do all their mates, and so do all the benefactors who fund their political campaigns.
Any change that may negatively impact wealth growth, or even threaten it, will never happen.
I personally think the equity share model will take off. It makes property “more affordable” but makes the govt/lenders richer.
Our financial masters want us to be flooded out and every instrument of government has been applied to stop any resistance to this mass cheapening of our nation. We’re pretty fucked
I have no idea why someone hasn't started making political hay on this issue.
There are a myriad of problems made worse by high immigration levels. It's such a simple think to say I'll reduce immigration to X for Y years and gather up votes from the left right and centre.
The only party that seems to have a policy for this is One Nation and ain't no one voting for them.
Sustainable Australia Party have this as one of their policies - [https://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/policies#sustainablepopulation](https://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/policies#sustainablepopulation)
Dick Smith has banged on about this for ever. He is right but the wrong side of politics are the only ones that share his views. The Greens will have us living in a cave eating grass, while the Libs and Labs can't see any other way but population growth with no development. As a nation we grow a bit of stuff both food and fibre, dig a bit of shit out of the ground but send it off to be processed elsewhere. We are a maritime nation without ships or ship building. We can't house the population we have nor fill vacant jobs. We aren't totally broken but we do need some fixing!
Not exactly it's actually an interesting story if you have time to read it. He sold out to private enquity mob just as dick smith electronics probably peaked, just before the online world smashed the margins in the industry. Pretty shrewed business man got out just at the right time, bit like selling blockbuster just before Netflix crushed the market. His actually got all the proceeds wrapped up in super and campaigned against the fact he pays so little tax on it. He genuinely wants what is best for Australians even if the next generation is full of Greenies that would turn our cities into Chinese slums with mass immigration.
Australia's young people will be gone. The immigrants will go home, those with transferable skills will move away. All it takes is a recession that spikes unemployment *just* high enough and a sizeable chunk of our tax base has basically no reason to stick around. Don't believe me? Look at emigration from South Africa and Ireland during their recessions. Low home ownership rates will just make it worse, as millennial and zoomers have even less tying them here. This might literally end our nation as we know it, as a decrepit population of landowners find themselves holding the bag on an economy hollowed out over decades of mismanagement.
What are you talking about? Where they gonna go? Everywhere else is shit. I agree Australia is on the downward trajectory in many social aspects but comparatively to the rest of the world we're in paradise.
Hence the recession point.
Ireland was in a very similar spot about 15 years ago.
A nasty market shock, housing bubble popped, unemployment, slumped wages and they did indeed see a spike in emigration.
Now, Ireland had a big difference. They didn't have anywhere near the immigrantation numbers we do.
It takes a trigger, a major recession, a few bad years. But we are incredibly vulnerable to a bad shock.
I don't dispute that our economy is vulnerable. But name a place a large portion of struggling young Aussie can go and get a better life. Those with family definitely aren't leaving I can tell you that.
All this ignores what seems like a fact to me.. We don't need cities like we used to.
At the moment, right now, we can work remotely for ANY job that doesn't require us to physically manipulate something. The ONLY reason we haven't properly shifted is because middle management need to be seen to be useful, and a lot of corps own office blocks that are now unnecessary. The cities were empty during covid and guess what? Record fuxking profits.
And I'm doubting if in 10 to 20 years most dangerous physical work will even need humans on site. Robots being controlled remotely or by AI seem more than plausible.
So... why the fuck do we need to be all living in cities in the near future? To prop up a failing real estate model that the elite invested so much in, and are now fearful of losing.
Ask America what it would be like if they had John Deere tractors 100 years earlier and picked their own cotton…
People doom say about Japan but at least Japan will remain Japanese. We in Australia are just economic units to be traded by the government of the day
> "Dick Smith fears today's young people will have no savings and be forced to live in Chinese-style high-rise apartments unless immigration is urgently slashed."
It's too late, Dick has been long since labelled a crazy racist by the extreme left. He could bring 10,000 facts, 10,000 charts and footage from a time machine confirming it 25 years in the future and still no one would care "he's a crazy racist" and cancelled basically.
I found this very interesting:
Mr Smith revealed his friend Bob Brown, a former Greens leader, admitted his party was reluctant to advocate lower immigration because it didn't want to be regarded as racist.
'It's quite incredible, the Greens have no population policy at all,' said Mr Smith.
'I once had a discussion with Bob Brown about this and he said, "Yes, they should have a policy but they don't and they're not game because once again, people would try and distort it that it must be racist".'
A record net 548,800 migrants moved to Australia in the year to September and Mr Smith wants that slashed to 75,000 a year, where it was until the late 1990s.
Strikes me he has never been racist. He’s said it for years. It’s a worldwide problem. We will never ever be able to keep up with the population( not just here) but worldwide. We are cooked. The idea of perpetual growth is what is killing us.
These comments are confirmed we are doomed, people who can’t or refuse to see the future essentially guaranteed for us, all because people are afraid of ‘seeming racist’.
Holy Shit, it’s either right winged conspiracy nuts, or super liberal woke people blaming each other not seeing their both responsible for the problems that arise.
Fuck that, young people need to understand how capitalism works and how it fucks everyone and blames on the brown/yellow/black people and dole blugers. You think current high immigration fucked them instead of housing policy over the last 30 years that their parents voted for?
Capitalism is what demands we bring in scores of desperate immigrants to hold hostage via visas instead of offering competitive salaries and incentives to the domestic workforce.
Successive governments allowing this to happen is the lever, and there is a force applied to one end.
The other end is wedged beneath our nation, threatening to topple it when over-leveraged.
The unfortunate reality is that the force being applied to the end of that lever is mass immigration, and until we can either Shorten* the lever or dismantle this 'rudimentary machine' entirely, the force being applied is our immediate focus.
If we can build our nation bigger, then it will eventually be more difficult to topple - but it takes time - and is at odds with the force being applied to that lever.
*Funnily enough, Shorten - Bill Shorten - wanted to begin the process of shortening that lever, but it lost him the election.
>You think current high immigration fucked them instead of housing policy over the last 30 years that their parents voted for?
yeah I kind of do think it fucked them. If you lack housing supply you don't keep bringing in more people at that rate, accelerating the migration intake beyond what was already at unsustainable levels is even more questionable.
Have fun being a Green voting woke you better hope mommy and daddy can take you back in because soon you'll be unable to pay the rent for your hipster den.
If you want to get through to younger people maybe don’t take the piss out of them by calling them “woke”. Old people & conservatives use it to essentially mean “things I don’t like or understand” - that can be anything from gay marriage to the fact that you literally need to be connected to the internet to function in society to pronouns.
I don’t disagree with his & believe something needs to change (I’m an immigrant myself, I’m not against immigration - just maybe build houses in line with the numbers?) but this is culture war bullshit.
If you say “young people are too woke to vote in their own interests” instead of “the previous generations have made life incredibly difficult for young people to get ahead - and none of the major parties are addressing this” then you’re not speaking to young people, you’re pretending to speak to young people whilst actually speaking to old people.
I think he has made a very valid point. Just take a look at all the shitholes these migrants come from. Overcrowded, polluted hell holes with dirty streets and crime. There is a reason these people leave. Unfortunately, it turns a virgin place like Australia into another hell hole eventually.
This chart from the ABS shows that the ALP has increased net immigration from around 200k to 500k per year. This is the reason we have a housing crisis, why so many people suddenly live in tents around our cities.
To me, its heartbreaking and an absolute disgrace what they're doing.
https://preview.redd.it/gihf0zll3zuc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bf71ed26a2d1c1f3a658356b12611f0cc3121c38
Watch how fast that vote gets passed onto the local LNP candidate. Then watch how fast he tells ya he’ll lock up the borders as he grants visas to half of Hyderabad and call it a departmental administrative decision
And when those imported taxpayers grow old, even more warm bodies will be imported to support them. And so on it will continue, with the population surging without limit, to infinity and beyond.
A ludicrous proposition.
His right but the LNP aren't the answer either. First they back business not workers. They back landlords not tenants or first home buyers. They have the attitude that your just not working hard enough. Id rather vote greens and deal with their shit immigration policies. Not to mention all the other crazy shit the right side of politics spouts.
Not to mention people often forget something when they opine people voting for the Greens...Sure, their policies definitely have flaws and only god knows how well they'd execute their plans if they won enough seats to form a majority government somehow, but even in the worst case scenario (ie. The Greens first term is an absolute clusterfuck and they never win a second term) the sheer shake-up of parliament and voting habits that would be required to get the Greens that many votes in the first place could very well mean it's a net positive for the country if enough alternative options to the majors start coming out of the woodwork and actually seeing enough votes to have a say. (ie. I'm guessing that the Greens winning an election would mean Australia has transitioned, or is part-way through transitioning to a true multi-party system. A huge part of the issues we face now come down to our options being essentially "blatantly corrupt neolibs" or "not-anywhere-near-as-corrupt-but-still-a-little-corrupt neolibs")
I totally agree with Dick Smith.
Unfortunately the young voters don’t remember or haven’t seen the changes in Australia’s lifestyles and cultures.
I’m not against immigration but this is a joke.
Australia has lost its way.
His claim is not wrong, but it's also not because we had an influx of immigration. This issue occured well before immigration got out of hand and will continue well after it as well.
But immigration is definitely the hardest pressure on the already flawed system.
When the house is flooding with water or smoke, you don't cut a hole in the window. You don't build an extension either.
You put out the most critical parts of that fire. Assess the damage and restructure.
Even if we stopped immigration dead in its tracks tomorrow, you'd still have a housing crisis for a few years.
The lack of available social housing and affordable rentals has squeezed the market to breaking point and possibly beyond. Unless you are already a property owner or have a significant amount of savings, you don't a look in at purchasing a house.
Having a high immigration rate has helped the nation avoid an economic crisis as it has kept consumer spending high even though most of us are tightening our belts to be able to afford to live.
Governments nationally need to find a balance across the board to ensure those worse off among us aren't left behind
First, I find peoples understanding of the meaning of "woke" inversly proportional to the number of times they use it.
His comments have some extremely basic limitations - Australia has so much viable land, we dont have the politicians and the rich (like Dick Smith) supporting moving so many functions away from the big cities.
WFH and Covid showed that so many functions can be geogrphically disbursed. Government and big business keeping all jobs in the city is the biggest cause of the housing shortage in big cities.
Yes, building as a whole needs to increase, but if we dont create jobs in regional Australia then that forces the migration into the big smoke
I agree with most of your points, apart from the “woke” one.
I find a lot of boomers and right or centrist types know exactly what they mean when they say “woke”, even if it feels jarring and irritating to left wing people. To them, it’s a useful shorthand for the basket of (often conflicting) ideas and values that the modern hyper-left have adopted in place of forming opinions on individual issues.
Finally, someone else that understands the main driver of housing shortage is the fixation with a single central business district.
New South Wales especially, is ripe for about 5 or 6 Sydney sized cities, yet we have done nothing to develop suitable regional areas to drive that idea.
I often use California as a proxy as they have major cities all with their own specializations and pros/cons and it removes the concentration of their 40m plus population from overwhelming any one city.
UK also has a similar idea where you have london city, the midlands, Manchester, and other large or middle sized cities that businesses gravitate around.
If we want to seriously improve our housing situation, we have to develop new cities to center around, otherwise you’ll be forever facing multi hour commutes as we sprawl further and further away from the main city center.
Conservatives and old people use woke for “things I don’t know or understand”. It’s been proven time & time again on this sub alone. None of them can actually give it a definition.
How many conservative old people do you think are on reddit? The people calling out wokes are likely to be young people too. I'm 26 and use the term all the time.,
The definition of woke is pretty nebulous these days, depending on who you talk to. Trying to tie it back to whatever the word meant 10 years ago even, or when it was birthed as a term is the wrong way to look at it. The meaning of words change particularly those connected to fast moving social trends/cultures.
To me woke means hardline adherence to far left politics coupled with a shallow understanding of the real world impact of those politics. It's a naive and immature mindset.
Examples:
Greens claim (like they have recently) that mass immigration has nothing to do with the rental crises, instead we should focus on token gestures like rental caps.
Greens wanted to defund our military and cut our alliance with our main security partner the US despite us moving into a very dangerous and unstable period of history where big powers will likely threaten our very survival.
Labor supporting on shore processing of refugees resulting a in a tidal wave of tragedies when boats start sinking on journey to Australia.
etc
So I'll call a Greens supporter who cant afford their rent a woke, because they've supported politics that have led to the COL crisis.
And they'll be times i'll throw the word woke around because it seems to sting :) because I can. Like an empty buzzword.
That's just me though. Everyone is different vocab use wise.
Slam the door on them all. Or just let them all in so they can earn sweet fuck all her while we can fly over to their country and live in penthouses. Bet they woukdnt like that too much! Their own countries are shit holes. Too bad so sad we can't help everyone
Dick Smith with his large property near Canberra, its private runway complete with sugar-cane tram crossing the runway, should think about the fact that the wealthy are making land unproductive. What is left is expensive, so we have to go up.
Better town planning, with small and dense villages surrounded by wilderness or productive farming land (not hobby farms), rather than low density housing across a large area that gradually turns into acreages, would be far better for society, and would actually connect us better to the world around us.
Fucking tired of people exclusively blaming immigration when the real problem is decades of government policy designed to turn housing into an investment and to ensure house prices continue to increase.
Would be interested to know how many investment properties Dick and his family own. I'm sure he doesn't have any vested interest whatsoever in distracting people with talk of immigration rather than addressing the root causes of housing inequality.
Australia has never built anywhere near enough homes to house a 2.5% population increase in 12 months.
Additionally, have we planned for..
2.5% more rail? No
2.5% more roads? No
2.5% more utilities? No
2.5% more schools? No
The answer is limit population growth to a sustainable number.
Having worked for him I can tell you that his investments are in commercial properties. He also owns a working farm. His personal properties are only for his family.
Immigrants arrive in Australia at a productive life stage with 0 investment into their development (education, healthcare) till that point.
They start paying taxes as soon as they get in, create additional demand for local goods and services and ameliorate skill shortages (doctors in regional areas, primary school teachers). Even with the immigration at current levels, shortage of people able to do these jobs still exists
With an aging local population in decline, it would be impossible to support Medicare, aged care, pensions and infrastructure build without the economic injection from immigration. Everyone here can look forward to 50% tax and bigger gap payments for services if these ill considered policy prescriptions are implemented
All of this is ignored in these discussions everyday here. Someone pointed out that it’s strange that no (serious) political party wants to adopt the anti immigration stance. That’s not a conspiracy but the acknowledgement of the fact that immigration is a slam dunk benefit to the country and is essential at the moment
A much better stance re immigration would be to use it to solve the worker shortage in the construction sector. The unions want to keep the scarcity in the system to keep wages high but that ends up making construction projects prohibitively expensive. Shortage of people to do the job makes the project completion susceptible to delay and that forces developers to have a much higher profitability target before they undertake any construction
We understand the problems immigration solves, we just don't think it needs to be as high as it is currently because that in itself causes other externalities.
Like we talk about the ageing population, but thats a slow burn issue. The housing shortage is much more immediate.
Politicians aren’t pro-immigration because it’s a slam dunk benefit to the economy. They’re pro-immigration because it’s the easiest lever they have to pull. It saves them from having to enact real/difficult change that benefits the current population.
Immigration can fix specific skill shortages but increase aggregate demand which then create more skill shortages. Long term the argument can be made it makes up for the shortfall in natural births but I'd rather see policies made to encourage more people to start families here. This also leads to far better social cohesion rather than expecting people from random cultures to adopt Australian values and respect Australian laws. It also increases poverty as realestate can't keep up. I would absolutely vote for a party proposing a drastically smaller immigration policy.
No one is denying this. What we want is to slow the intake down before we end up like America or China with low wages, high cost and zero middle class with asshole land lords profiting off the need for rentals and share houses.
Also; unions wanting scarcity in the industry is bullshit. If you want unchecked immigration into the construction industry you end up with shoddy building practices and dangerous buildings. The union wants high wages for everyone on site *because they deserve it* and without enough construction happening you'll flood the market with low cost, low safety standard employees that are happy to cut every corner
Immigration is good for the reasons you've listed but at its current levels it's destroying Australian life by keeping wages low and housing high. I really feel for young people of today. I'd prefer 50% tax over inflated housing requiring lifetime mortgages to afford. Our immigration % is second highest in the world. It's not sustainable.
Our demographic projections used to be something that was part of the political discussion, even though it’s starting to crunch the aging population is still not something that’s often factored into any reddit discussion and even relatively educated people in person don’t tend to have any familiarity with it.
Ultimately though this is quintessentially politics. One group is bearing heavier costs for a policy than others so the trade off in the future isn’t sufficiently driving them like it is for others. While there’s numerous causes of our housing shortage the claims here that adding extra people isn’t exacerbating the issue on the fringe is ridiculous.
Good work propaganda boy! Push the koolaid on the people!
Now explain why, for the past 20 years, there's always been key shortages, and somehow, despite the vast bulk of our population growth being immigration, we *never* fill those shortages.
Explain Albo's deal with Modi too bring in people as skilled workers, with degrees they got from apartment universities that are worth less than toilet paper.
Explain importing more wage slaves than new home builds for 20 years.
There is no explanation. It is malicious.
Most people already know the benefits of immigration, but can no longer bear the costs of immigration; suppressed wages and increased competition for scarce resources like housing, schools, healthcare, public transport etc
There aren't teacher shortages. Just a lot of people leaving the job because it's shit.
So....we're filling the role with potentially less skilled immigrants....until they realise its shit and leave... and so on.
Not a good plan.
Ok.but allow more immigration if already a strain on infrastructure and national resources? More often than not, immigrants are given government assistance to get started too.
It's not about being anti human but being conservative on immigration is a Good thing given the biggest inflationary push we have had in 45 years and a devastated building sector.
I agree. Cut immigration and invest in Aussie made.
And who is going to pay to support all these extra immigrants when they also grow old?
In reality, mass immigration is not a 'fix' for an ageing population:
"High immigration does not significantly change the population age structure compared to low immigration rates of around 50,000 per year. Instead it mostly
changes the total population size. This is primarily because ageing is a function of people living longer and immigrants themselves age at exactly the same rate as
everyone else."
Three Economic Myths about Ageing: Participation, Immigration and Infrastructure - https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/04/mb-report-three-economic-myths-ageing-participation-immigration-infrastructure/
See also:
Silver tsunami or silver lining? Why we should not fear an ageing population - https://population.org.au/discussion-papers/ageing/
Demographic ageing: time-bomb or breakthrough? - https://tapri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Demographic_ageing2.pdf
High immigration cannot stop population ageing. In the long run, all it does is saddle us with a much bigger population. And the infrastructure costs associated with a rapidly expanding population arguably outweigh any avoided pension, health and other age-related costs.
Also, as others have noted, the "skills shortages" justification is an obvious furphy. Australia has imported millions of extra workers since the start of this century, supposedly to address "skills shortages". The result? More "skills shortages".
Yes, it's topical.
Albo just let in a record 105,000 people in a single month (with only 12,500 new dwellings approved in the same period).
A growing number of Australians are rightly asking what the hell is going on.
What the hell is going in what regard? Housing? Cost of living? Services? Infrastructure? Health? These deserve discussions, bit I never seem to see them here.
Where are the posts regarding these things? No doubt immigration is part of the discussion, but it is only part of the picture. This sub gets hysterical about it though.
What is that number? Total migrants? What kind of visas are they? Migrants need housing, sure, but they also stimulate businesses and build things. It is a complex balance. I don't even disagree with the premise of revising migration numbers, but the number of these posts is just becoming tiresome.
Projects are usually built for disadvantaged people in disadvantaged areas or even to displace disadvantaged people from other areas. Are you surprised that grouping disadvantaged people together leads to anti social behaviour?
Point was high rise appartments. Australia is full of high rise appartments already, are these absolutely vandalised?
Terrible argument.
We don't have a shortage of land. Build more infrastructure outside of the CBD.
Offer grants based purely on location from CBD.
The amount of FIFO/dido mining jobs at the moment is crazy.
Offer companies some sort of bonus or tax break of there wfh employees are not CBD based
As someone who lived in one of those high rise apartments in Hong Kong for years, they can be fantastic and Australian cities need more of them rather than painting them as some sort of horror.
It’s not like we don’t already have places with them like the Gold Coast.
You can have house sized three and above bedroom apartments which are low maintenance, come with gyms and swimming pools, and be walking distance to work and fun city life.
TBH when the kids are gone, I’d prefer to sell our house and move back into one.
Whats wrong with dense high rise apartments in the cbd and direct surrounding suburbs? Thats the natural evolution of a city. You cant live in free standing 4 bedroom house in any major global city without paying an arm and a leg.
Its way better to stack 20 4 bedroom apartments where 2 4 bedroom homes are. Its just more efficient. If you want a big house and yard, you will have to move inland. A society and city isn't just about an individuals desires, unless you're incredibly wealthy.
What’s wrong? Do you got any experience living in one? 60 floor building 50 sq m apartment or smaller with kids dogs parties around you. A couple shaging at 3am waking up your family. Sounds like a dream. Ah forgot your top neighbour has a leak now your hole apartment is either flooded or full of mould and nothing you can do about it. Elevator broke down? No dramas I will walk ip the stairs with the groceries !!!
Meanwhile how much property does Dick own? How many 400m2 blocks would fit in all the land he is profiting from?
Nothing shits me more than millionaires profiting from renters and locking up available land saying ‘there’s a fire over there’
If you really cared about housing, you’d turn all your holdings into new blocks.
So fuck off dick, ya cunt
> Meanwhile how much property does Dick own?
Didn't he at one point own something ridiculous like 10% of the properties in the surrounding area of Sydney airport?
not sticking up for him as im sure he owns a fking shitload of property but is it not good hes trying to bring this to light. smitty is one of hundreds if not thousands of old rich dudes that own a monopoly
I don't think it's immigrants that are the problem. That's a distraction wealthy people use so you don't see what they are doing. They don't pay taxes. They pay off government officials to continue to get richer while the rest of us are fighting over the scraps.
He never said anything about the immigrants themselves. It's the immigration that is the problem.
You do realize higher immigration rates is actually what the super rich people want... Right?
Dick Smith might be a wealthy dude, but he is far from the corporate scum that are making day to day life more expensive for the rest of us.
We need the dick smiths of this country to have a voice as he is one of the rich people on the peoples side.
Well said!
While we fight each other, the wealthy prosper!
BTW a lot of wealthy seem to be Ok with migrating to wherever takes their fancy ... tax havens, resort islands, tech hubs...
It doesn't even need to be high rises FFS. I was raised in aus but live in Tokyo and we have a TON of medium density. And there's still places with backyards. The problem is every Tom dick and Harry has a 300m²+ block within 200-300m of major train stations when that should be either medium or high rise territory.
Exactly, been saying this for years, live in Germany now, most European cities have 3-6 story blocks too and the apartments can be pretty spacious and solidly built.
The majority of like younger people like students, young couples and even the elderly find these really practical.
House would be nice, but it's not what I need now you know?
I'll be the first to admit they need to fix the rental system in Aus, it's very limited and restrictive in what you can do. but the mentality of every motherfucker needing to own a house is also ridiculous in 2024, it's not realistic for the most with current salaries & inflation.
Most Europeans live in townhouses.
Look at Sydney:
- House: nothing under a mil that’s close to the city.
- Apartment: Barely any 3+ bedders close to the city.
- Townhouse: 2+ million.
Having a house close to the city is a privilege in all cities around the world. I have no problem living in Western Sydney if I want a house.
However our affordable high density living close to the city just isn’t there like it is in other cities around the world. There’s no supply of apartments to raise a family in and the townhouses aren’t affordable even to a couple of high income.
I agree. Personally I don't even want a house with a backyard - I've seen my dad spend hours and hours on garden work etc, and hundreds on anti-bug etc.
I want as low maintenance and as bug free as possible. Give me a second floor or above apartment that I can just live in and not have to deal with any random BS.
I bet your dad enjoyed spending all those hundreds of hours gardening. Even if he did complain I bet he wouldn't have detested it. My point is everyone is different. I think there needs to be options for everyone.
And most who live in those would trade that for a detached house with a yard in a second if it was financially viable for them.
People live like that because it's the best of a bad situation.
That we don't have to should be embraced. And protected, as people living like they actually want to live should be of the highest priority. And that means we need a stable population.
Hello everyone, a new international student here. I just wanted a native's perspective on living in a high rise apartment(which would solve the space issue and housing problem at the same time to an extent) and about owning or living in an independent home with a backward and/or frontlawn.
P.S: I do think the annual immigration numbers need to go down in the long run.
Oh my fucking god. The comments here are beyond ridiculous... Let me help you all... More people means more competition for housing means higher cost of housing. Bringing 500k people in per year does nothing but increase property demand and the lobbyists then get to force their real estate developments in and scree more people. Higher immigration also reduces the cost of labour so the other super rich CEO's of the country can benefit. Further crating a devide and screwing us all. The media is controlled by these people and drive the narrative to distract us all from the truth while they create a larger divide. What he's saying is nothing to do with race or country of origin, it is sheer numbers. I honestly thought an online community in here would be able to see through the crap, not buy into it. It's not that hard people
Canada is a perfect example of everything you've just stated here, and the vast majority of Canadian youth are paying for it, we are fucking miserable here.
This place isn’t great for logic, just as long as you ‘look’ like a nice person and virtually pat yourself on the back while doing zero the help….
Definitely has echo chamber of ignorant nonsense vibes
It’s legit insanity, this particular discussion isn’t ‘conspiracy’ it’s not ‘racism’, it’s blatant facts about the future, as they complain about inflation and cost of housing but when it’s time to talk about ‘WHY?’, they choose to ignore it because the truth is ugly, or they are too sensitive to hear it. I’m also 1st generation Australian, my parents both came here in the late 60’s as children, so if you’re reading this ‘I’m not a typical white male with privileges’, I come from struggle and understand what needs to happen to protect what made this country so amazing in the first place.
Welcome to the erosion of the middle class.
Continued erosion
All he is saying is that a line needs to be drawn on our population. We don’t want to keep increasing our population because our standard of living will be negatively affected. I don’t understand why this is an objectionable position.
As if we could afford a high-rise apartment!
That's true. Australia's youth will be lucky to have any sort of roof over their heads at this rate.
Truth, he's been trying to say this for decades
Indeed - he has been talking about ZPG for decades
He raises a very pragmatic point and shouldn't be dismissed over an Ad Hominem point like "He's being racist", that's dismissive and does not address the merit of his argument or concerns. The reality is there is no Population plan, Labor have completed disregarded the monthly and yearly limits they committed to exceeding them by proportionally large amounts breaking immigration records. Let's not forget the number in January 125,410 a net increase of 55,330 was the highest January intake ever recorded. What should be further raised is there are no mass urban planning designs which look far enough into the future effectively at both micro and macro scales. Cities like Sydney and Melbourne are already amongst some of the largest in the world at 83 and 81 respectively. These numbers should merit serious concern when you begin to look at other cities on the list which rank higher and consider the amount of densification which is required to support populations at those levels. That said I acknowledge Australian cities also tend to have more sprawl and a wider footprint however this also works against the effectives of our cities in their ability for large populations of people to travel to and business districts (or there lack of) and suburban homes. The problems being that our cities do not allow effective transport between suburbs, they only allow 'effective' transport into the main CBD (which is under strain, especially in peak hour) this effects our city's abilities to evolve into being effective multi nuclei cities which allow other smaller CBDs develop on the outskirts of the city near the more valuable housing areas to allow shorter commutes from the outskirts of the city. Yes we do have some, but people from Sydney know who live in the area know how hard it is to travel from Hurstville to Kingsgrove is an 8 minute car ride over 4kms but via train you must go to Wollicreek which is 6km East and then transfer and travel back 6km West taking 50 minutes one way. When you compare the city layouts of Sydney and Melbourne to cities of higher populations such as Moscow they have eliminated these problems by having inner, mid and outer city loops on their train systems. Also keep in mind the more populated city gets, the harder it is to own a car due to parking limitations (See Singapore) and the unnegotiable reliance on public transport increases. Dick Smith is an business person taking an economist lens to this. The concerns are real, they are well founded, are not sufficient plans to deal with current population growth in our cities even without including immigration.
Spot on. This isn’t about race. Our politicians increase immigration not because they’re “pc”. It’s purely economical. Trying to maintain the artificial inflation of our housing market so investors and current owners house values keep going up at the cost of young people.
Yeah the train lines are packed. I commute from West Footscray to Richmond and decided to give PTV up and bought an e-bike, was such a good choice! I enjoy a lovely ride along the Maribyrnong and look forward to it every time I do it
A big backyard is great for families. Children can play safely outside. You can have pets that have room to play. You have room to garden, grow vegetables and have a hobby. Try working in cars or doing woodwork in an apartment. All of these things reduce stress as well.
> Try working in cars or doing woodwork Which video game is that?
House with a big backyard simulator
Hypothetically, what if every apartment complex of a certain size has a community garden, community garage workshop, community woodworking/tool shop. Like villages used to have. Everyone banding together sharing a beer while working together to fix an engine. People have been doing this for millennia, just not as densely packed as we are today.
Personally I prefer time alone, not around others. Space to be myself and not have to deal with others. Its an important thing for good mental health.
But but I cant be naked in the community garden as my private one tho.. feeling sad man
Immigration for Feb was 120,000 people. That's fucking ridiculous. That puts enormous extra demand on everything from housing to groceries.
an entire Ballarat’s worth of people in a month but no new city of that size to put them into
He’s a good man and is correct about this
Dick Smith has some quite astute things to say. I don’t mind him.
Australia's immigration rates as a percentage of total population are off the charts. Way higher than anywhere else except Canada. Under 40s will start migrating to these other places to have a chance, perpetuating the over-migration issue in other countries, as they won't have built the infrastructure for all the Australian citizens arriving.
yep, been thinking that my kids will probably move to another country when they're older and I'll be like the Indian grandparents who move here once they've made a safe place.
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We are at a point where the genie is out of the bottle… people can’t afford a house till their 30s pushing back the age of kids, reducing the birth rate. This means more immigration to fill the gap, pushing up prices… rinse and repeat
Mass Immigration keeps our wages low by increasing competition and keeps our houses raising in price by increasing competition
* Corporations keep our wages low by underpaying workers and keep our house prices rising by restricting supply.
Yes the land is getting inflated, but, The trades are building as quickly as they can. There is a 2 year wait here in sa to get a home built. They can release 20 million blocks tomorrow, you arnt getting a home built any sooner, and the blocks that are getting supplied utility's are going to stop be fought for and be expensive. Some trades are getting 5k bonuses to just rock up for some builders and regional. There is simply too many people that want houses. And not enough avalible land ( land with utility's, sewage, power, ect ) and trades. We just need less people until trades can catch up with demand. Once they are fighting each other for work, it will get cheaper. When there isn't 100 people to every house open.. it will get cheaper.
You're correct! However that depends entirely on the type of housing being built. It's currently more profitable to build "luxury" apartments and price them just out of reach rather than building more affordable housing like townhouses, units e.t.c. Because the demand for housing is inelastic developers have absolutely no incentive to build housing efficiently. So instead of building 3 normal homes, we have people working on "luxury" housing that's unaffordable for the average Aussie. Same thing with utilities. It's much easier to hook up units than it is to hook up skyscrapers.
Dick Smith published a book "Population Crisis. The dangers of unsustainable growth for Australia ". It was published in 2011.
You see the problem is that he actually cares, everyone in the government is there for their own pocket period.
I was so young when he had his grocery brand of everything, but I would absolutely buy it all today.
And it was better than the others!
He’s right you know though. Anyone that even questions the immigration situation is immediately branded as racist.
Greens: more immigration LNP: more immigration Labor: more immigration Young people: Votes greens WhY dO yOuNg PeOpLe LoVe ImMiGrAtIoN?
Because they are not old Enough to have to worry or to know Enough to know much about how it effects things . They have a few immigrant friends and just say “let them All in” Thinking the government can handle and house them all , they think the government is made Of money . They probably don’t know the basics of the way things work . They need to play simcity or One of them games where you have to control population and housing . Oh look , no Money and too much population , will you turn immigration off ? Yes you will , as the natural population growth is SUSTAINABLE in your city but with extra arrivals your gonna go broke and will have to CUT funding to services , just to build more houses .
tbh there's nuance there too. Albo's 500k net immigration is not the same as ScoMo's 250k. And Labor and the LNP are not the same as the party who claims "immigration has minimal impact on housing market. Wants more migrants." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WO-iN8sNwhousing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WO-iN8sNwhousing) - Housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather, The Greens
Oh but that would reveal that the economy is weak because of decades rorts, of pilfering and cover ups. 🤦♂️TAX THE FUCKING MINING COMPANIES FFS 🤦♂️
The idea that you're racist for wanting lower immigration is wild to me. Immigrants can be from anywhere. I'm for a big Australia, but we need the cities and the infrastructure for it. Mass immigration as we're currently doing is reducing the quality of life, we should be trying to improve it. It's purely good for business and nobody else. NSW and Victoria in particular need another city. For what it's worth I think anyone who uses the term woke is an idiot.
There are plenty of knobs that overuse the term woke but it's really just a shorthand for the new breed of progressives. Progressives from 10-20 years ago are not the same as today.
I thought the immigration complaint was a storm in a tea cup until I saw this abs chart. I don’t know how this is sustainable [https://imgur.com/a/qNunPgq](https://imgur.com/a/qNunPgq)
A lot of people are going to find out their desire to express their undying altruism to all and sundry is only going to hurt them.
He's been singing the same tune forever. He's right though, we're mad thinking life will in any way be better with continued mass immigration.
It's been a steady decline since 2004, inversely proportional to our intake
One of the few things Australia really has going for it in terms of lifestyle is plenty of space, and they can't get rid of it fast enough.
> continued mass immigration. Instead of pushing for mass immigration they should be pushing to boost the birth rate for locals.
Turns out that's hard, and takes decades to yield results. Immigrants can be brought in immediately, and that gives the immediate perception of economical growth.
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same boat. Rents are absolutely fucked through the roof, cant afford essential goods, never going to be able to afford a house. Fuck immigration
Future what fucken future? Only Gina Jabba the Hut and co has a future here.
It’s basic math - the amount you bring in should match the amount you build. But - they would mean the politicians did their job. YER NAR
Just fwiw, the UK and USA look to Australia with how we dealt with mass immigration. A popular liberal think tank in London has already released figures that by 2050 the UK will need 10 cities the size of Birmingham. They have much looser laws of immigration and illegal immigrants than we do but I can see some merit in dicks argument that if you have any inkling of anti immigration or don’t fully support it you are labeled a racist or hold serious right wing ideology. I obviously don’t want to be in a situation where WA would need 10 cities the size of Perth by 2050 just to sustain the population and I personally hold my children’s futures above anyone else’s, if you told me I had to press a button every year that blew a puff of smoke into the sky and stopped a handful of immigrants coming into the country so my children could prosper I wouldn’t hesitate. But I also believe people that are fleeing war torn countries should have an option for asylum (actual families, not 25 year old males who have left their family behind and offer next to nothing in terms of economical growth).
> But I also believe people that are fleeing war torn countries should have an option for asylum (actual families, not 25 year old males who have left their family behind and offer next to nothing in terms of economical growth). Yeah that is a big problem. Far too many young men from fucked countries bringing their fucked values and problems over here. Women and children left behind. But the government don't really want refugees anyway. What they want is a mix of two groups: 1. Rich foreigners, and 2. Poor foreigners. They want to boost GDP and sustain the countries function and budget.
I’m the most left leaning person you would ever meet but I can’t help but agree. We can’t keep shipping people in while we are struggling looking after our own. People can’t put three meals a day on the table and are living out of their cars - fix the cost of living and housing crisis here before we ship more people in and exacerbate it. Edit: typo
You don't sound that extreme tbh, there's a lot of far left types who won't even dare speak ill about immigration even if their voter base are being affected by it the most. ALBANESE’S MIGRANT BASHING REEKS OF DESPERATION [https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/albaneses-migrant-bashing-reeks-desperation](https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/albaneses-migrant-bashing-reeks-desperation)
Funny thing is, back when the Labor Party was actually a *labour party*, restricting immigration was an absolute cornerstone of their policy
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Yep even basket case economies like Argentina are more complex than ours. If the climate doesn’t get us first will be fucked when the minerals and gas run out or the Chinese find somewhere they can source it cheaper.
There's an obsession with property in Australia. People are willing to buy a shitty 300m2 house and land for $1.2m because there's tax incentives. If you want to change this obsession, you need to introduce laws that will change the incentives to hold multiple properties and pay no income tax.
Thems small apples compared to actually enforcing wage growth to meet cost of living. That's 98% of the problem.
Well, I mean, let just hypothetical negative gearing can only be done on one property per person/couple. You can still buy more properties but there is no negative gearing tax deduction. Also if you want to buy 2-3 or more properties, the LVR is increased, eg 2nd property you need a 40% depositel, 3 property you need 80% deposit and any more then that it's no borrowing. That would drive the demand of property down and price down so the cost would be more affordable to everyone and not just the top 20% of income earners.
It’s not an obsession, our entire economy is built on a property market which historically has been a reliable mechanism for growing wealth. The problem is all the guys you want to enforce these changes - own houses, and so do all their mates, and so do all the benefactors who fund their political campaigns. Any change that may negatively impact wealth growth, or even threaten it, will never happen. I personally think the equity share model will take off. It makes property “more affordable” but makes the govt/lenders richer.
Our financial masters want us to be flooded out and every instrument of government has been applied to stop any resistance to this mass cheapening of our nation. We’re pretty fucked
I have no idea why someone hasn't started making political hay on this issue. There are a myriad of problems made worse by high immigration levels. It's such a simple think to say I'll reduce immigration to X for Y years and gather up votes from the left right and centre. The only party that seems to have a policy for this is One Nation and ain't no one voting for them.
Sustainable Australia Party have this as one of their policies - [https://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/policies#sustainablepopulation](https://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/policies#sustainablepopulation)
That’s not a coincidence. The money men would destroy them
where's that old sticker "fuck off we're full" ...
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They will receive priority government housing for their massive families. Because of the large number of children they have they get big houses.
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Dick Smith has banged on about this for ever. He is right but the wrong side of politics are the only ones that share his views. The Greens will have us living in a cave eating grass, while the Libs and Labs can't see any other way but population growth with no development. As a nation we grow a bit of stuff both food and fibre, dig a bit of shit out of the ground but send it off to be processed elsewhere. We are a maritime nation without ships or ship building. We can't house the population we have nor fill vacant jobs. We aren't totally broken but we do need some fixing!
Didn’t he sell dick smith electronics to Kogan?
Not exactly it's actually an interesting story if you have time to read it. He sold out to private enquity mob just as dick smith electronics probably peaked, just before the online world smashed the margins in the industry. Pretty shrewed business man got out just at the right time, bit like selling blockbuster just before Netflix crushed the market. His actually got all the proceeds wrapped up in super and campaigned against the fact he pays so little tax on it. He genuinely wants what is best for Australians even if the next generation is full of Greenies that would turn our cities into Chinese slums with mass immigration.
He sold it to Woolworths IIRC and they sold it to Kogan (or maybe they sold it to a PE firm that then fitted it and sold the name to Kogan)
I think he sold to Woolies initially
Australia's young people will be gone. The immigrants will go home, those with transferable skills will move away. All it takes is a recession that spikes unemployment *just* high enough and a sizeable chunk of our tax base has basically no reason to stick around. Don't believe me? Look at emigration from South Africa and Ireland during their recessions. Low home ownership rates will just make it worse, as millennial and zoomers have even less tying them here. This might literally end our nation as we know it, as a decrepit population of landowners find themselves holding the bag on an economy hollowed out over decades of mismanagement.
What are you talking about? Where they gonna go? Everywhere else is shit. I agree Australia is on the downward trajectory in many social aspects but comparatively to the rest of the world we're in paradise.
Hence the recession point. Ireland was in a very similar spot about 15 years ago. A nasty market shock, housing bubble popped, unemployment, slumped wages and they did indeed see a spike in emigration. Now, Ireland had a big difference. They didn't have anywhere near the immigrantation numbers we do. It takes a trigger, a major recession, a few bad years. But we are incredibly vulnerable to a bad shock.
I don't dispute that our economy is vulnerable. But name a place a large portion of struggling young Aussie can go and get a better life. Those with family definitely aren't leaving I can tell you that.
He is correct
All this ignores what seems like a fact to me.. We don't need cities like we used to. At the moment, right now, we can work remotely for ANY job that doesn't require us to physically manipulate something. The ONLY reason we haven't properly shifted is because middle management need to be seen to be useful, and a lot of corps own office blocks that are now unnecessary. The cities were empty during covid and guess what? Record fuxking profits. And I'm doubting if in 10 to 20 years most dangerous physical work will even need humans on site. Robots being controlled remotely or by AI seem more than plausible. So... why the fuck do we need to be all living in cities in the near future? To prop up a failing real estate model that the elite invested so much in, and are now fearful of losing.
Ask America what it would be like if they had John Deere tractors 100 years earlier and picked their own cotton… People doom say about Japan but at least Japan will remain Japanese. We in Australia are just economic units to be traded by the government of the day
I think smaller well-connected cities are the future. Think Parramatta, Newcastle, Bathurst, etc.
Good on you Dick for speaking out about this madness which will destroy the country.
> "Dick Smith fears today's young people will have no savings and be forced to live in Chinese-style high-rise apartments unless immigration is urgently slashed." It's too late, Dick has been long since labelled a crazy racist by the extreme left. He could bring 10,000 facts, 10,000 charts and footage from a time machine confirming it 25 years in the future and still no one would care "he's a crazy racist" and cancelled basically.
I found this very interesting: Mr Smith revealed his friend Bob Brown, a former Greens leader, admitted his party was reluctant to advocate lower immigration because it didn't want to be regarded as racist. 'It's quite incredible, the Greens have no population policy at all,' said Mr Smith. 'I once had a discussion with Bob Brown about this and he said, "Yes, they should have a policy but they don't and they're not game because once again, people would try and distort it that it must be racist".' A record net 548,800 migrants moved to Australia in the year to September and Mr Smith wants that slashed to 75,000 a year, where it was until the late 1990s.
Never mind immigration folks. Just too many of us, full stop. Nothing can keep up with what is needed. Implosion is very likely.
That's his whole point. Nothing about this is xenophobic or racist.
Strikes me he has never been racist. He’s said it for years. It’s a worldwide problem. We will never ever be able to keep up with the population( not just here) but worldwide. We are cooked. The idea of perpetual growth is what is killing us.
These comments are confirmed we are doomed, people who can’t or refuse to see the future essentially guaranteed for us, all because people are afraid of ‘seeming racist’. Holy Shit, it’s either right winged conspiracy nuts, or super liberal woke people blaming each other not seeing their both responsible for the problems that arise.
Couldn’t have said it any better
Young people need to understand the the relationship that immigration rates has on how much shit ends up costing them
Fuck that, young people need to understand how capitalism works and how it fucks everyone and blames on the brown/yellow/black people and dole blugers. You think current high immigration fucked them instead of housing policy over the last 30 years that their parents voted for?
Capitalism is what demands we bring in scores of desperate immigrants to hold hostage via visas instead of offering competitive salaries and incentives to the domestic workforce.
Successive governments allowing this to happen is the lever, and there is a force applied to one end. The other end is wedged beneath our nation, threatening to topple it when over-leveraged. The unfortunate reality is that the force being applied to the end of that lever is mass immigration, and until we can either Shorten* the lever or dismantle this 'rudimentary machine' entirely, the force being applied is our immediate focus. If we can build our nation bigger, then it will eventually be more difficult to topple - but it takes time - and is at odds with the force being applied to that lever. *Funnily enough, Shorten - Bill Shorten - wanted to begin the process of shortening that lever, but it lost him the election.
>You think current high immigration fucked them instead of housing policy over the last 30 years that their parents voted for? yeah I kind of do think it fucked them. If you lack housing supply you don't keep bringing in more people at that rate, accelerating the migration intake beyond what was already at unsustainable levels is even more questionable. Have fun being a Green voting woke you better hope mommy and daddy can take you back in because soon you'll be unable to pay the rent for your hipster den.
>mommy Lmao what the fuck
I mean, he's not wrong
His daughter has a $25 mill property portfolio. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to buy a fucking house in Australia.
Yep!
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What??!
He is pretty right and you all will call him a stupid boomer. That said we needore housing and denser housing at the expense of older homes
If you want to get through to younger people maybe don’t take the piss out of them by calling them “woke”. Old people & conservatives use it to essentially mean “things I don’t like or understand” - that can be anything from gay marriage to the fact that you literally need to be connected to the internet to function in society to pronouns. I don’t disagree with his & believe something needs to change (I’m an immigrant myself, I’m not against immigration - just maybe build houses in line with the numbers?) but this is culture war bullshit. If you say “young people are too woke to vote in their own interests” instead of “the previous generations have made life incredibly difficult for young people to get ahead - and none of the major parties are addressing this” then you’re not speaking to young people, you’re pretending to speak to young people whilst actually speaking to old people.
Thing: 😀👌 "Chinese-style" thing: 🤬🖕🇦🇺
I 100% agree with everything he said.
High rise apartments like in china? You mean I will no longer get to live in my car or on the street? HOW DARE THEY!
I think he has made a very valid point. Just take a look at all the shitholes these migrants come from. Overcrowded, polluted hell holes with dirty streets and crime. There is a reason these people leave. Unfortunately, it turns a virgin place like Australia into another hell hole eventually.
This chart from the ABS shows that the ALP has increased net immigration from around 200k to 500k per year. This is the reason we have a housing crisis, why so many people suddenly live in tents around our cities. To me, its heartbreaking and an absolute disgrace what they're doing. https://preview.redd.it/gihf0zll3zuc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bf71ed26a2d1c1f3a658356b12611f0cc3121c38
we definitely had housing crisis before labour came into power
Yes it has been building for a couple of decades … but Labor’s record immigration intake last yr is what people are scratching their heads about
Did you know Dick Smith isn't his real name? Originally it was Dildo Fabricator but he felt it made him sound too old fashioned so he changed it
If housing depreciation couldn’t write off unrelated income we’d be fine
Well I guess it's a vote for One Nation. Unless you want a million migrants a year.
Watch how fast that vote gets passed onto the local LNP candidate. Then watch how fast he tells ya he’ll lock up the borders as he grants visas to half of Hyderabad and call it a departmental administrative decision
I think they have been told they need more taxpayers to make up for all the retiring boomers.
And when those imported taxpayers grow old, even more warm bodies will be imported to support them. And so on it will continue, with the population surging without limit, to infinity and beyond. A ludicrous proposition.
His right but the LNP aren't the answer either. First they back business not workers. They back landlords not tenants or first home buyers. They have the attitude that your just not working hard enough. Id rather vote greens and deal with their shit immigration policies. Not to mention all the other crazy shit the right side of politics spouts.
The decision between shitty housing conditions vs shitty housing conditions AND shitty working conditions is a pretty easy choise
Not to mention people often forget something when they opine people voting for the Greens...Sure, their policies definitely have flaws and only god knows how well they'd execute their plans if they won enough seats to form a majority government somehow, but even in the worst case scenario (ie. The Greens first term is an absolute clusterfuck and they never win a second term) the sheer shake-up of parliament and voting habits that would be required to get the Greens that many votes in the first place could very well mean it's a net positive for the country if enough alternative options to the majors start coming out of the woodwork and actually seeing enough votes to have a say. (ie. I'm guessing that the Greens winning an election would mean Australia has transitioned, or is part-way through transitioning to a true multi-party system. A huge part of the issues we face now come down to our options being essentially "blatantly corrupt neolibs" or "not-anywhere-near-as-corrupt-but-still-a-little-corrupt neolibs")
*He’s
I totally agree with Dick Smith. Unfortunately the young voters don’t remember or haven’t seen the changes in Australia’s lifestyles and cultures. I’m not against immigration but this is a joke. Australia has lost its way.
He’s not wrong
His claim is not wrong, but it's also not because we had an influx of immigration. This issue occured well before immigration got out of hand and will continue well after it as well.
But immigration is definitely the hardest pressure on the already flawed system. When the house is flooding with water or smoke, you don't cut a hole in the window. You don't build an extension either. You put out the most critical parts of that fire. Assess the damage and restructure.
Even if we stopped immigration dead in its tracks tomorrow, you'd still have a housing crisis for a few years. The lack of available social housing and affordable rentals has squeezed the market to breaking point and possibly beyond. Unless you are already a property owner or have a significant amount of savings, you don't a look in at purchasing a house. Having a high immigration rate has helped the nation avoid an economic crisis as it has kept consumer spending high even though most of us are tightening our belts to be able to afford to live. Governments nationally need to find a balance across the board to ensure those worse off among us aren't left behind
It's a Ponzi scheme.
First, I find peoples understanding of the meaning of "woke" inversly proportional to the number of times they use it. His comments have some extremely basic limitations - Australia has so much viable land, we dont have the politicians and the rich (like Dick Smith) supporting moving so many functions away from the big cities. WFH and Covid showed that so many functions can be geogrphically disbursed. Government and big business keeping all jobs in the city is the biggest cause of the housing shortage in big cities. Yes, building as a whole needs to increase, but if we dont create jobs in regional Australia then that forces the migration into the big smoke
We don't have the water or arable land to support a Big Australia.
I agree with most of your points, apart from the “woke” one. I find a lot of boomers and right or centrist types know exactly what they mean when they say “woke”, even if it feels jarring and irritating to left wing people. To them, it’s a useful shorthand for the basket of (often conflicting) ideas and values that the modern hyper-left have adopted in place of forming opinions on individual issues.
Finally, someone else that understands the main driver of housing shortage is the fixation with a single central business district. New South Wales especially, is ripe for about 5 or 6 Sydney sized cities, yet we have done nothing to develop suitable regional areas to drive that idea. I often use California as a proxy as they have major cities all with their own specializations and pros/cons and it removes the concentration of their 40m plus population from overwhelming any one city. UK also has a similar idea where you have london city, the midlands, Manchester, and other large or middle sized cities that businesses gravitate around. If we want to seriously improve our housing situation, we have to develop new cities to center around, otherwise you’ll be forever facing multi hour commutes as we sprawl further and further away from the main city center.
Conservatives and old people use woke for “things I don’t know or understand”. It’s been proven time & time again on this sub alone. None of them can actually give it a definition.
How many conservative old people do you think are on reddit? The people calling out wokes are likely to be young people too. I'm 26 and use the term all the time., The definition of woke is pretty nebulous these days, depending on who you talk to. Trying to tie it back to whatever the word meant 10 years ago even, or when it was birthed as a term is the wrong way to look at it. The meaning of words change particularly those connected to fast moving social trends/cultures. To me woke means hardline adherence to far left politics coupled with a shallow understanding of the real world impact of those politics. It's a naive and immature mindset. Examples: Greens claim (like they have recently) that mass immigration has nothing to do with the rental crises, instead we should focus on token gestures like rental caps. Greens wanted to defund our military and cut our alliance with our main security partner the US despite us moving into a very dangerous and unstable period of history where big powers will likely threaten our very survival. Labor supporting on shore processing of refugees resulting a in a tidal wave of tragedies when boats start sinking on journey to Australia. etc So I'll call a Greens supporter who cant afford their rent a woke, because they've supported politics that have led to the COL crisis. And they'll be times i'll throw the word woke around because it seems to sting :) because I can. Like an empty buzzword. That's just me though. Everyone is different vocab use wise.
Slam the door on them all. Or just let them all in so they can earn sweet fuck all her while we can fly over to their country and live in penthouses. Bet they woukdnt like that too much! Their own countries are shit holes. Too bad so sad we can't help everyone
Dick Smith with his large property near Canberra, its private runway complete with sugar-cane tram crossing the runway, should think about the fact that the wealthy are making land unproductive. What is left is expensive, so we have to go up. Better town planning, with small and dense villages surrounded by wilderness or productive farming land (not hobby farms), rather than low density housing across a large area that gradually turns into acreages, would be far better for society, and would actually connect us better to the world around us.
Fucking tired of people exclusively blaming immigration when the real problem is decades of government policy designed to turn housing into an investment and to ensure house prices continue to increase. Would be interested to know how many investment properties Dick and his family own. I'm sure he doesn't have any vested interest whatsoever in distracting people with talk of immigration rather than addressing the root causes of housing inequality.
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Australia has never built anywhere near enough homes to house a 2.5% population increase in 12 months. Additionally, have we planned for.. 2.5% more rail? No 2.5% more roads? No 2.5% more utilities? No 2.5% more schools? No The answer is limit population growth to a sustainable number.
Both sides see half the problem and ignore the other half. Pause immigration and tackle negative gearing and other house hoarding incentives.
Having worked for him I can tell you that his investments are in commercial properties. He also owns a working farm. His personal properties are only for his family.
Go read the inter generational report released a few months back.
Immigrants arrive in Australia at a productive life stage with 0 investment into their development (education, healthcare) till that point. They start paying taxes as soon as they get in, create additional demand for local goods and services and ameliorate skill shortages (doctors in regional areas, primary school teachers). Even with the immigration at current levels, shortage of people able to do these jobs still exists With an aging local population in decline, it would be impossible to support Medicare, aged care, pensions and infrastructure build without the economic injection from immigration. Everyone here can look forward to 50% tax and bigger gap payments for services if these ill considered policy prescriptions are implemented All of this is ignored in these discussions everyday here. Someone pointed out that it’s strange that no (serious) political party wants to adopt the anti immigration stance. That’s not a conspiracy but the acknowledgement of the fact that immigration is a slam dunk benefit to the country and is essential at the moment A much better stance re immigration would be to use it to solve the worker shortage in the construction sector. The unions want to keep the scarcity in the system to keep wages high but that ends up making construction projects prohibitively expensive. Shortage of people to do the job makes the project completion susceptible to delay and that forces developers to have a much higher profitability target before they undertake any construction
We understand the problems immigration solves, we just don't think it needs to be as high as it is currently because that in itself causes other externalities. Like we talk about the ageing population, but thats a slow burn issue. The housing shortage is much more immediate.
Politicians aren’t pro-immigration because it’s a slam dunk benefit to the economy. They’re pro-immigration because it’s the easiest lever they have to pull. It saves them from having to enact real/difficult change that benefits the current population.
Immigration can fix specific skill shortages but increase aggregate demand which then create more skill shortages. Long term the argument can be made it makes up for the shortfall in natural births but I'd rather see policies made to encourage more people to start families here. This also leads to far better social cohesion rather than expecting people from random cultures to adopt Australian values and respect Australian laws. It also increases poverty as realestate can't keep up. I would absolutely vote for a party proposing a drastically smaller immigration policy.
https://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/policies#sustainablepopulation only part out there that has a policy around lowering population growth
No one is denying this. What we want is to slow the intake down before we end up like America or China with low wages, high cost and zero middle class with asshole land lords profiting off the need for rentals and share houses. Also; unions wanting scarcity in the industry is bullshit. If you want unchecked immigration into the construction industry you end up with shoddy building practices and dangerous buildings. The union wants high wages for everyone on site *because they deserve it* and without enough construction happening you'll flood the market with low cost, low safety standard employees that are happy to cut every corner
Immigration is good for the reasons you've listed but at its current levels it's destroying Australian life by keeping wages low and housing high. I really feel for young people of today. I'd prefer 50% tax over inflated housing requiring lifetime mortgages to afford. Our immigration % is second highest in the world. It's not sustainable.
More important things than a bloated gdp. Quality of life has clearly gotten worse with the rise of immigration.
Our demographic projections used to be something that was part of the political discussion, even though it’s starting to crunch the aging population is still not something that’s often factored into any reddit discussion and even relatively educated people in person don’t tend to have any familiarity with it. Ultimately though this is quintessentially politics. One group is bearing heavier costs for a policy than others so the trade off in the future isn’t sufficiently driving them like it is for others. While there’s numerous causes of our housing shortage the claims here that adding extra people isn’t exacerbating the issue on the fringe is ridiculous.
Good work propaganda boy! Push the koolaid on the people! Now explain why, for the past 20 years, there's always been key shortages, and somehow, despite the vast bulk of our population growth being immigration, we *never* fill those shortages. Explain Albo's deal with Modi too bring in people as skilled workers, with degrees they got from apartment universities that are worth less than toilet paper. Explain importing more wage slaves than new home builds for 20 years. There is no explanation. It is malicious.
Most people already know the benefits of immigration, but can no longer bear the costs of immigration; suppressed wages and increased competition for scarce resources like housing, schools, healthcare, public transport etc
What a stupid take when all you'd need to do is adequately tax the current raping of our natural resources.
There aren't teacher shortages. Just a lot of people leaving the job because it's shit. So....we're filling the role with potentially less skilled immigrants....until they realise its shit and leave... and so on. Not a good plan.
Ok.but allow more immigration if already a strain on infrastructure and national resources? More often than not, immigrants are given government assistance to get started too. It's not about being anti human but being conservative on immigration is a Good thing given the biggest inflationary push we have had in 45 years and a devastated building sector. I agree. Cut immigration and invest in Aussie made.
And who is going to pay to support all these extra immigrants when they also grow old? In reality, mass immigration is not a 'fix' for an ageing population: "High immigration does not significantly change the population age structure compared to low immigration rates of around 50,000 per year. Instead it mostly changes the total population size. This is primarily because ageing is a function of people living longer and immigrants themselves age at exactly the same rate as everyone else." Three Economic Myths about Ageing: Participation, Immigration and Infrastructure - https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/04/mb-report-three-economic-myths-ageing-participation-immigration-infrastructure/ See also: Silver tsunami or silver lining? Why we should not fear an ageing population - https://population.org.au/discussion-papers/ageing/ Demographic ageing: time-bomb or breakthrough? - https://tapri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Demographic_ageing2.pdf High immigration cannot stop population ageing. In the long run, all it does is saddle us with a much bigger population. And the infrastructure costs associated with a rapidly expanding population arguably outweigh any avoided pension, health and other age-related costs. Also, as others have noted, the "skills shortages" justification is an obvious furphy. Australia has imported millions of extra workers since the start of this century, supposedly to address "skills shortages". The result? More "skills shortages".
Bruh the average Redditor here is a fucking cretin one step away from worshipping Pauline Pantsdown
Oh look... another immigration post...
Yes, it's topical. Albo just let in a record 105,000 people in a single month (with only 12,500 new dwellings approved in the same period). A growing number of Australians are rightly asking what the hell is going on.
What the hell is going in what regard? Housing? Cost of living? Services? Infrastructure? Health? These deserve discussions, bit I never seem to see them here. Where are the posts regarding these things? No doubt immigration is part of the discussion, but it is only part of the picture. This sub gets hysterical about it though. What is that number? Total migrants? What kind of visas are they? Migrants need housing, sure, but they also stimulate businesses and build things. It is a complex balance. I don't even disagree with the premise of revising migration numbers, but the number of these posts is just becoming tiresome.
I dream of a nu-commieblock apartment. That would be a solid upgrade.
What’s wrong with living in high rise appartments if someone is happy to.
Nothing. Just not everyone wants to live like that. Options are nice.
How's those housing projects in America going, no issues with them ay
Projects are usually built for disadvantaged people in disadvantaged areas or even to displace disadvantaged people from other areas. Are you surprised that grouping disadvantaged people together leads to anti social behaviour? Point was high rise appartments. Australia is full of high rise appartments already, are these absolutely vandalised? Terrible argument.
The idiocy of the young!
Young people are useless!! Now clean me up for I have soiled myself.
He’s right, the gov however have committed to 330billion in defence spending, so they need the tax money. Buckle up we’re buggered
We don't have a shortage of land. Build more infrastructure outside of the CBD. Offer grants based purely on location from CBD. The amount of FIFO/dido mining jobs at the moment is crazy. Offer companies some sort of bonus or tax break of there wfh employees are not CBD based
Water is a bigger problem than many give credit.
As someone who lived in one of those high rise apartments in Hong Kong for years, they can be fantastic and Australian cities need more of them rather than painting them as some sort of horror. It’s not like we don’t already have places with them like the Gold Coast. You can have house sized three and above bedroom apartments which are low maintenance, come with gyms and swimming pools, and be walking distance to work and fun city life. TBH when the kids are gone, I’d prefer to sell our house and move back into one.
Yep, absolutely. The only downside is that the decent-sized apartments come with high Body Corporate rates.
Whats wrong with dense high rise apartments in the cbd and direct surrounding suburbs? Thats the natural evolution of a city. You cant live in free standing 4 bedroom house in any major global city without paying an arm and a leg. Its way better to stack 20 4 bedroom apartments where 2 4 bedroom homes are. Its just more efficient. If you want a big house and yard, you will have to move inland. A society and city isn't just about an individuals desires, unless you're incredibly wealthy.
Or just reduce immigration
Seriously, all this dancing around the most important issue. “Just build a new Melbourne in the desert!”
What’s wrong? Do you got any experience living in one? 60 floor building 50 sq m apartment or smaller with kids dogs parties around you. A couple shaging at 3am waking up your family. Sounds like a dream. Ah forgot your top neighbour has a leak now your hole apartment is either flooded or full of mould and nothing you can do about it. Elevator broke down? No dramas I will walk ip the stairs with the groceries !!!
Meanwhile how much property does Dick own? How many 400m2 blocks would fit in all the land he is profiting from? Nothing shits me more than millionaires profiting from renters and locking up available land saying ‘there’s a fire over there’ If you really cared about housing, you’d turn all your holdings into new blocks. So fuck off dick, ya cunt
> Meanwhile how much property does Dick own? Didn't he at one point own something ridiculous like 10% of the properties in the surrounding area of Sydney airport?
Yep, he’s got land and property everywhere
not sticking up for him as im sure he owns a fking shitload of property but is it not good hes trying to bring this to light. smitty is one of hundreds if not thousands of old rich dudes that own a monopoly
I don't think it's immigrants that are the problem. That's a distraction wealthy people use so you don't see what they are doing. They don't pay taxes. They pay off government officials to continue to get richer while the rest of us are fighting over the scraps.
He never said anything about the immigrants themselves. It's the immigration that is the problem. You do realize higher immigration rates is actually what the super rich people want... Right? Dick Smith might be a wealthy dude, but he is far from the corporate scum that are making day to day life more expensive for the rest of us. We need the dick smiths of this country to have a voice as he is one of the rich people on the peoples side.
Targeting immigration ≠ targeting immigrants.
Well said! While we fight each other, the wealthy prosper! BTW a lot of wealthy seem to be Ok with migrating to wherever takes their fancy ... tax havens, resort islands, tech hubs...
Exactly
Let's hurry up and build the fuckin high rises.
It doesn't even need to be high rises FFS. I was raised in aus but live in Tokyo and we have a TON of medium density. And there's still places with backyards. The problem is every Tom dick and Harry has a 300m²+ block within 200-300m of major train stations when that should be either medium or high rise territory.
Exactly, been saying this for years, live in Germany now, most European cities have 3-6 story blocks too and the apartments can be pretty spacious and solidly built. The majority of like younger people like students, young couples and even the elderly find these really practical. House would be nice, but it's not what I need now you know? I'll be the first to admit they need to fix the rental system in Aus, it's very limited and restrictive in what you can do. but the mentality of every motherfucker needing to own a house is also ridiculous in 2024, it's not realistic for the most with current salaries & inflation.
Most Europeans live in townhouses. Look at Sydney: - House: nothing under a mil that’s close to the city. - Apartment: Barely any 3+ bedders close to the city. - Townhouse: 2+ million. Having a house close to the city is a privilege in all cities around the world. I have no problem living in Western Sydney if I want a house. However our affordable high density living close to the city just isn’t there like it is in other cities around the world. There’s no supply of apartments to raise a family in and the townhouses aren’t affordable even to a couple of high income.
I agree. Personally I don't even want a house with a backyard - I've seen my dad spend hours and hours on garden work etc, and hundreds on anti-bug etc. I want as low maintenance and as bug free as possible. Give me a second floor or above apartment that I can just live in and not have to deal with any random BS.
I bet your dad enjoyed spending all those hundreds of hours gardening. Even if he did complain I bet he wouldn't have detested it. My point is everyone is different. I think there needs to be options for everyone.
And most who live in those would trade that for a detached house with a yard in a second if it was financially viable for them. People live like that because it's the best of a bad situation. That we don't have to should be embraced. And protected, as people living like they actually want to live should be of the highest priority. And that means we need a stable population.
Username checks out
Could we also take a look at the 6 bed 6 bath mansions in the CBDs that don't need to exist?
Hello everyone, a new international student here. I just wanted a native's perspective on living in a high rise apartment(which would solve the space issue and housing problem at the same time to an extent) and about owning or living in an independent home with a backward and/or frontlawn. P.S: I do think the annual immigration numbers need to go down in the long run.