Australia doesn’t have enough housing, and so many people are being allowed to come here and increase housing demand that we may never catch up on housing supply.

Labor, the Coalition and the Greens all want a big Australia despite the undisputed fact that most Australians themselves do not. These parties have never cared about what Australians want.

Record immigration under Labor is the primary cause of our current housing availability crisis. Rents are going through the roof as a result, further driving inflation.

Rather than fix the cause by slashing immigration, Labor has announced it plans to spend $32 billion of your taxes to build 1.2 million new homes by 2030. It’s about $26,700 per home.

As usual, Labor’s sums are all wrong. It costs close to $500,000 to build a new home in Australia these days, not $26,700. There’s already a report from the Property Council of Australia saying we’ll fall short of this ambitious 1.2 million home target by at least 450,000 homes.

 One of the reasons construction is so expensive has been a sharp rise in the cost of basic building materials since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Timber costs have risen more than 200%. Electrical material costs have risen almost 200%. Plumbing material and fixture costs have gone up by around 100%. After labour costs, these increases are also one of the main factors in the collapse of so many construction and building businesses in the industry.

That’s why One Nation has announced an election policy to exempt these building materials from the GST for a period of five years for new homes up to a value of $1 million.

Our policy also demands a review of the government taxes, fees, duties and charges which make up to 44% the cost of a new home, and getting rid of the new requirement that all new homes be disability-compliant. Most Australians don’t need disability-compliant homes, which also add significantly to construction costs.

Ultimately our housing crisis can only be solved by lowering immigration-driven demand as well as supply, but we should be doing all we can to accelerate housing construction and making it cheaper.