Dick Smith blames “ridiculous immigration” for the lack of affordable housing, saying young couples are being robbed of the right to the great Australian dream.
The entrepreneur told Sky News that all the country’s problems, including Sydney’s congested roads, are due to an immigration increase that he says sees about 200,000 migrants arrive in Australia each year.
“We’re told, and you think, that each generation is going to be better off, and yeah, you can buy more LCD TV sets and you can fly to Bali cheaper but the most fundamental right is to get a house with a backyard and young couples can’t do that anymore,” Smith says.
“It’s purely driven in 95 percent of the cases by the enormous population increase, [which is] mainly driven by ridiculous immigration.”
Property data firm CoreLogic revealed this week that there are now more suburbs in Sydney with a median house price of more than $2 million than there are suburbs with a median price below $600,000.
The government’s latest data on migration, for the year to June 30, 2016, show that 189,770 people immigrated to Australia in that 12 months. More than 20 percent of those people were from India, about 15 percent from China and 10 percent from the UK.
New South Wales attracted the highest number of migrants, with 61,742 settling in the state, followed by Victoria with 47,516, Western Australia with 22, 488 and Queensland with 21,860.
Commenting on Smith’s comments, the Macro Business site, which hosts blogs from a number of economists and financial professionals, Leith van Onselen, a former Treasury and Goldman Sachs economist, says it’s hard to deny that excessive immigration is a significant contributor to Australia’s unaffordable housing.
Van Onselen notes that since 2003, Australia’s population has grown at nearly 2..5 times the OECD average.