Factcheck: No, immigration hasn't 'killed the Australian dream of home ownership'

Yesterday, during Question Time, Nationals MP Alison Penfold asked the Prime Minister:

“By bringing 1.5 million migrants into Australia over the past four years, Labor’s record on migration has killed the Australian dream of home ownership. How many more migrants does the Prime Minister intend to bring into Australia, before his government builds enough homes to house them?”

Claim: Increased migration has driven population growth so high that Australia has failed to build enough homes, making home ownership unaffordable for Australians.

Is this correct?

The COVID pandemic was the biggest disruption to population growth since federation.

After the borders closed, population growth fell off a cliff, even going negative for half of 2020. This is because government COVID support was not available for visa holders. They couldn’t work and they couldn’t get support, so they left the country. Classes also went online and international students no longer had to be in Australia to learn. Most of them left as well.

But after the borders reopened, they came back.

This is the period that people dishonestly cherry pick figures from. The graph below shows the annual population growth rate. You can see it crashes during the pandemic and rebounds after. In the last year, it has resettled at the pre-COVID rate.

As for the claim that Australia hasn’t been building enough homes to keep up with population growth, the numbers tell a different story.

Over the past 10 years, Australia’s population has increased by around 16%, while the number of homes has increased by around 19%. Homes are increasing faster than the population.

Now that the government’s tax changes in the budget are pushing out investors, we’re actually seeing housing becoming more affordable.

Verdict: No, migration hasn’t ‘killed the Australian dream of home ownership’.