Liberal MP Andrew Hastie said Australia must cut immigration levels to align with the number of completed homes to ease the national housing crisis.
The proposal addresses a critical intersection of population growth and infrastructure. If housing supply cannot keep pace with arrivals, the resulting shortage increases rental costs and prevents first-time buyers from entering the market.
Hastie said that approximately 1.4 million people have moved to Australia over the last four years [1]. He said that this surge has placed an unsustainable burden on the existing residential infrastructure.
"We’re not building enough homes, which is why young Australians are locked out of the housing market," Hastie said.
The MP linked the lack of available housing to a rise in instability for current residents. He said that quite a few Australians are homeless because they cannot secure a rental property.
To resolve the imbalance, Hastie advocated for a policy shift that ties population intake directly to construction output. This approach would ensure that the number of new residents does not exceed the capacity of the housing market to accommodate them.
"Our plan is to cut immigration, cut it right back, and peg it to housing completions," Hastie said.
The proposal suggests that reducing the intake of migrants is the most direct way to alleviate the pressure on the rental and ownership markets while the construction sector attempts to catch up.
“"We’re not building enough homes, which is why young Australians are locked out of the housing market."”
This proposal represents a shift toward a supply-side immigration policy, where population growth is treated as a variable dependent on infrastructure capacity rather than a fixed economic target. By pegging immigration to housing completions, the policy aims to decouple population growth from escalating real estate prices, though it may create tensions with industries that rely on high migration for labor growth.
