The immigration debate is heating up in Australia .. here’s what we’re not talking about.
We just clicked over 28 million Australians. A new resident lands roughly every 75 seconds. And depending on which talkback caller you believe, this is either the engine of our prosperity or the reason your kids will never own a home.
The truth? It’s both. Let me explain – without the political shouting.
First, the actual numbers
Net overseas migration was 306,000 last financial year. That’s down from a frankly enormous 429,000 the year before, and well below the 538,000 post-COVID record. So the intake is easing. But it’s still doing the heavy lifting – migration drove about three-quarters of our population growth, because as a nation we’re simply not having enough babies to replace ourselves.
Hold that thought. It matters more than you’d think.
The good news (yes, there is some)
Here’s the bit that gets lost in the noise.
We are getting older as a country, fast. The ratio of retirees to workers is set to balloon over the next 40 years, and someone has to pay the tax that funds the pension, Medicare and aged care.
That someone is increasingly a migrant.
They arrive young, job-ready, and they pay more in tax than they take out in services for years. More than 70 per cent of our workforce growth this century has come from migration.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reckons the program adds up to a full percentage point to our economic growth every year, largely by softening the ageing hit.
Walk into any hospital, aged-care home or building site and the point makes itself. Pull that workforce out and the economy doesn’t boom – it seizes up.
The bad news (and it’s the bit that stings)
Now the part your household budget already knows.
When people arrive faster than we build homes, rents and prices go one way: up. It’s not racism, it’s arithmetic. Roughly a third of the rent increases over the past two decades can be traced to migration, and about 80 per cent of new arrivals head straight for our already-stretched capital cities. They rent first, so the squeeze hits the rental market immediately.
Then there’s the stat that captures why so many of us feel poorer despite being told the economy is “growing.” On a per-person basis, we’ve actually gone backwards – economic output per Australian has fallen in nine of the last eleven quarters. The pie is getting bigger mostly because there are more of us at the table, not because everyone’s slice is growing. Economists call it a per-capita recession. You probably just call it “everything costs more and I’m not getting ahead.”
And it’s not just housing. Roads, trains, schools and hospitals are planned years in advance. Add a few hundred thousand people quickly and you feel it as traffic, waiting lists and packed classrooms long before the new capacity shows up.
So who’s right?
Both sides, partly – and that’s the honest answer.
The benefits of migration are real but spread out and long-term: a healthier budget, a younger workforce, and services that stay staffed. The costs are concentrated and immediate: the 28-year-old paying record rent in Sydney is wearing them today.
The problem was never really the migrants. It’s that for three years straight we’ve grown the population faster than we’ve built the homes and infrastructure to cope. Close that gap and migration goes back to being the quiet success story it was for decades. Leave it open and the resentment writes itself.
That’s why both sides of politics are now talking about tying immigration numbers to how many homes we actually build. Finally, a conversation about the right thing.
Build more. Bring people in at a pace we can house. It’s not glamorous policy – but it’s the maths that adds up.
