Burke says the quiet part out loud: immigration and housing are linked

September 17, 2026 — 3:58pm

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The sands have shifted rapidly in Australia’s migration debate and Labor has belatedly sniffed the wind.

Last year the vanquished Liberal leader Peter Dutton was being assailed by party moderates for saying loudly that the high migration was contributing to elevated rents and property prices.

Liberal senator Andrew Bragg said, in the wash-up, that Dutton’s message had hurt the Coalition badly in its election thrashing. “We love multicultural Australia,” Bragg said, and “we’re not wanting to make people feel unwelcome.”

An example of Dutton’s rhetoric came in a budget-in-reply speech where he said Labor’s “poor management of migration” had helped cause “congestion on our roads and pressure on services”.

The notion that the housing crisis was driven solely by a lack of housing supply had become a shibboleth in the left. Until Home Affairs Tony Burke stood up at the National Press Club.

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© The Age