Letter to the Editor: Space is available for more migrants

DEAR News Of The Area,

IN his budget reply speech, the Opposition Leader claimed Australia’s immigration levels were too high for the number of houses available for them to live in.

Since this speech, I heard some interesting statistics from an authoritative source about Australia’s migrant intake and the number of new houses being built.

Two years ago, net immigration was 536,000 per year while only 175,000 new houses were completed.

An average of 2.4 people moved into a house, therefore there were more migrants than new houses available to accommodate them.

That was then.
Net migration is now at 300,000 pa and forecast to decrease further while the same number of new houses are being built each year.

A simple calculation shows there are now more new houses available than migrants to fill them, so by the opposition’s argument, isn’t Australia’s migrant intake now too low?

Regards,

Stephen OTTAWAY

Red Rock.