The federal government is under intense pressure to accelerate the construction of new homes and temporarily pause overseas migration, with some declaring the situation has"gone too far".
Australia's population climbed to 26.8 million in the year to September 2023 at a rate of 2.5 per cent. Picture: Richard Dobson “When you’ve got an intake of 500,000 last year, there is enormous scope to reduce immigration -outside of the skilled workers - and even at 250,000, there is still enormous scope.”
“We need migration, there’s no doubt about it, but the we’re facing is migration from the rest of Sydney, because those areas that don’t want to build the houses, people are moving out of, but then we obviously have the overseas migration,” he told AM Agenda host Laura Jayes. “There definitely needs to be a cut in migration, it’s gone too far. We just need to bring it back down. We love migrants, its nothing about that. We’re a migrant nation,” he said.
In December last year the Albanese government announced it would overhaul the temporary migration system with students seeking to remain in Australia post expiry of their visas.