The 30-year policy collision behind Australia's housing crunch
How two sets of policies, housing and migration, compounded on each other over 30 years and created the housing affordability crisis we have today.
The housing crisis in Australia can be traced back to a 30-year policy collision that began under the Howard government. This collision consisted of deregulating housing and effectively deregulating migration. While housing construction was heavily regulated, migration was left largely market-driven with no targets on the overall level. These two sets of policies compounded over 30 years, leading to the current housing affordability crisis.
The Keating and Howard governments streamlined temporary migration by making it demand-driven rather than based on quotas or policy targets. In July 2001, student visas were made country-neutral, leading to a significant influx of students from countries like India, China, and Asian countries. Permanent residency was added, incentivizing students to apply for it on completion of their degrees in occupations on the Migration Occupations in Demand List.
This policy transformed international education into Australia's second-biggest export industry but also outsourced a large part of Australia's migration policy to universities.
The working holiday maker visa (subclass 417) was introduced in November 2005, allowing first-time holders to extend their stay by 12 months if they spent 88 days in regional areas doing specified work in agriculture, mining, fishing, or construction. This was designed to fill gaps in the horticulture labor force and construction trades. However, Australia's trades qualification authorities did not fully recognize qualifications from these visas, leading to no increase in the trades sector.
From 2001 to 2007, net overseas migration attributable to the student visa stream rose from 45,250 to 108,740 people, accounting for 47% of all nominal growth over that period. However, this did not result in more construction trades or increased housing construction due to various factors, such as the qualifications not being recognized by trades authorities and the students focusing on degrees rather than apprenticeships.
Written by urgent.news from ABC News AU's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
