Australia’s housing crisis is the result of failing to build enough well-located homes, not excessive migration. Cutting migration instead risks weakening the economy while leaving the real problem untouched.

Immigration has become a hot political topic in the last year or so. Certainly, the rise in support for One Nation seems to have been driven by those who are increasingly concerned about immigration. Although whether One Nation’s support has risen because of greater concern about migration, or whether One Nation has created that greater concern is uncertain.

In the last couple of months, all three of the major political party groupings have released new migration policies – first One Nation, then Labor and most recently the Liberal-National Party Coalition.

Interestingly, the Coalition has tied its future immigration targets to the availability of housing. Presumably that is because the Coalition wants us to believe that the ‘housing crisis’ has been caused by an excessive migrant intake. But no evidence has been provided in support of that assumption, and, as will be shown below, it is not supported by the available facts.

Australia’s post-war migrant policy was started by the Chifley Labor government soon after the end of the Second World War. Substantial numbers of immigrants continued to enter Australia during the 1950s and 1960s during the Menzies Coalition governments. Indeed, under Menzies, the Coalition was if anything more pro-migration than........

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