Coalition to cap migration based on housing supply under new policy

The Coalition will cap net overseas migration in line with new home completions under a tougher immigration policy that ties the number of people coming into Australia with available housing supply.

Angus Taylor will use his first budget-in-reply speech next Thursday to unveil the second plank of the Coalition’s immigration policy and ramp up attacks on Anthony Albanese for “pitting Australian against Australian”.

As the Prime Minister and Jim Chalmers prepare to overhaul capital gains tax concessions and negative gearing as part of Labor’s intergenerational equity budget, Mr Taylor accused the government of “dividing the country on immigration and housing”.

New Coalition analysis shows that, under Labor, the number of new arrivals compared with new dwellings constructed has more than doubled to 2.4 migrants per new home, up from 1.1 migrants per new home prior to the pandemic.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics data reveals the higher number of migrants arriving per new home has been driven by 15 per cent fewer houses being built each year on average and 85 per cent more migrants arriving since 2022. Current figures show dwelling completions are down 14 per cent, while migration was up 39 per cent.

With net migration reaching 311,000 in the past year and building completions falling to 173,000, the Opposition Leader said “housing and immigration are out of whack … a sustainable NOM (net overseas migration) has to be in line with housing completions”.

The Australian has confirmed that while the Coalition’s NOM policy won’t be finalised until closer to the next election, the target may need to be dramatically lower initially to close the housing supply gap.

Mr Taylor, who last month released the first stage of the Coalition’s revamped immigration policy dubbed the Australian Values Migration Plan, said Mr Albanese and Dr Chalmers “will say that older Australians are ripping younger Australians off in the housing market … we will say, no, the government’s just got its immigration policy wrong”.

The Coalition analysis claims that since the Albanese government was elected, population has increased by 1.8 million (1.4 million due to net migration) compared with enough dwellings to house 1.4 million people being built. The analysis identifies a 400,000-person housing shortfall since the Coalition left office.

“If this (NOM) gets out of whack with what you can accommodate with housing completions, then you just get a mismatch in the market, and younger Australians are going to pay for that,” Mr Taylor told The Australian.

“We’ll lock in on specific (NOM) numbers when we know more about what unfolds over the next 18 months or so. But the principle is: you cannot bring people to this country if you don’t have the houses for them, it’s that simple.”

Senior Coalition figures are confident the new immigration blueprint, which incorporates tougher values tests, closer links between net overseas migration and housing, an overhaul of the nation’s skills priorities, and stricter targets, will move on from Peter Dutton’s failed policy.

As the Coalition faces pressure from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation on immigration policy, Mr Taylor said that rather than offering a magic number, political parties have to “start further back” on immigration.

“You’ve got to say, we’ve seen population growth, and most net overseas migration which is the vast majority of the population growth, that has grown way faster than our housing supply can absorb,” he said.

“And once you realise that, you say you’ve got to get it into balance, you’ve got to deal with those past failures … but we’ll be guided, in our view on the NOM, by what housing is available, and we will cap it at the available housing.

“That means young Australians won’t have to unfairly compete for houses in a market where there’s too much demand for the houses available. Young Australians are going to auctions and they’re just getting out-competed.”

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil last week acknowledged a government report showing Labor’s commitment to build 1.2 million new, well-located homes by mid-2029 was on track to fall more than 200,000 homes short.

Mr Taylor rejected capital gains tax and negative gearing overhauls because they would not fix critical housing supply shortages, and accused the Albanese government of “blaming Australians” for its own failures.

“How do you solve this problem by increasing taxes? When you increase taxes on something, you get less of it, and we need more houses, not less,” he said. “Only Jim Chalmers thinks that taxing something will mean you get more of it.

“Their solution … is to pit Australian against Australian. Older Australians against younger Australians. They are dividing the country. They tried to divide the country on the voice (referendum). Now they going to try to divide the country on immigration and housing.

“It’s the politics of division rather the politics of raising Australians up.”

Mr Taylor said he was hearing from building material suppliers that work was “way down”, as Master Builders Australia this week revealed the cost of building a new home “is now 48.6 per cent more expensive than it was right before the pandemic”.

After copping criticism from Labor for declaring those who migrate from liberal democracies have a “greater likelihood of subscribing to Australian values compared to those migrating from places ruled by fundamentalists, extremists and dictators”, Mr Taylor said it was factual that “there are bad regimes in the world”.

“I think there are risks for people who come from countries with bad regimes that we have to be aware of, and our intelligence agencies have to take into account,” he said.

“Labor has failed on their immigration policy. They’ve failed the values test. They’ve failed on the numbers.

“If Paul Keating wants to have a crack at me for saying that we should discriminate based on values, not race or religion, I say bring it on, because I think Australians agree with me that we are right to discriminate on whether someone is prepared to adopt our values.”

Mr Taylor – who described Mr Albanese as “incompetent, a fraud and a liar” – said the government was slicing the pie because it “cannot make the pie grow any more”, and was “taking from one group and giving to another to divide Australians”.

“That’s all they’ve got left,” he said. “It’s abject failure, and what we need is an economy where people can get ahead, where we’ve got rising real incomes, rising real wages, which hasn’t been true under Labor, and a housing market that’s in balance.”

While not committing to repealing all of Labor’s taxes until after seeing Tuesday’s budget, Mr Taylor said he would prepare tax policies based on a “reward-for-effort economy”.

“When young Australians look at Australia now, they’re giving up hope. They’re giving up hope that if you work hard, you can get ahead, buy a home, start a family, start a business, and that’s got to change,” he said.

“Part of that is tax, part of that is housing, part of that is immigration, part of that is energy. And all of those things have got to be fixed. Labor’s policy right now is to let inflation drive up taxes every year. That’s what they are doing. And that is funding their budget.

“Record levels of spending, record levels of taxation. The only thing that’s not a record, because it’s been going backwards, is our standard of living, our real wages, productivity, and our GDP per person.”

Mr Taylor, who questioned whether the government would deliver on its promise to drive efficiencies in the Australian Public Service, said the Coalition would bank savings by getting rid of Labor’s “green hydrogen initiatives, because they failed … We’re going see off the manufacturing programs that are sending manufacturing offshore. We’re going to see off their power lines to nowhere”.

“These are initiatives that are not working. They’re failing Australians,” he said. “They’re driving up the cost of energy and the cost of everything else.

“We’ll agree with Labor on some things and disagree with others. When I first came into this job, one of the first things I did is write to Albanese, and I said, ‘we will work with you on a bipartisan basis to deliver saves’. We’ll work with them again on the NDIS to make sure that it’s sustainable.”