Immigration Unfairly Blamed for Australia’s Housing Crisis

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Australia has seen a wave of protests against mass immigration recently — and while they drew in violent neo-Nazi groups (who were widely condemned), many of the people marching weren’t extremists at all. They were everyday Australians worried about rising house prices, stretched hospitals, and a system they feel can’t keep up.

Take 62-year-old Chris Fisher from Queensland. He joined a “March for Australia” rally, even though his own family came to Australia as migrants. For him, the issue isn’t about shutting people out — it’s about whether the country has the housing and healthcare capacity to support both new arrivals and those already here.

“I’d happily welcome half a million immigrants a year if the conditions were right,” Fisher said. “But right now? The healthcare system is struggling. Housing prices are through the roof. Vulnerable Australians can’t get the basics.”

He’s not alone in feeling that way. But economists and human rights experts say blaming migrants is the wrong target.

The economic reality

Australia Institute economist Matt Grudnoff says the idea that immigration is the main cause of housing stress and cost-of-living pressures is simply “misdirected.”

Here’s why: skilled workers make up about 71% of Australia’s annual migrant intake. If we suddenly stopped bringing them in, businesses would struggle to deliver goods and services, prices would go up, and the Reserve Bank would likely respond with higher interest rates.

Cutting migration, he explained, wouldn’t make housing or healthcare cheaper. In fact, if just 25,000 skilled visas were cut — as Peter Dutton once suggested — it could cost the federal budget more than $10 billion a year by the 2040s. That’s about a third of what the government currently spends on public hospitals and health services in an entire year.

And when it comes to jobs and wages? The data doesn’t back up the fear. According to the Grattan Institute, regions with higher migrant populations actually report slightly higher wages — about 1.3% higher for every 10% increase in migrant share.

So what’s really driving the housing crisis?

It turns out the problem isn’t about the number of people versus the number of houses. In fact, between 2001 and 2021, housing supply grew faster than the population.

The real issue, says Grudnoff, is who’s buying those homes. Thanks to policies like the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing, property has become one of the most attractive investments in the country. Investors are piling in, outbidding first-home buyers, and pushing prices up.

“Housing used to be seen as a safe place to live. Now it’s a financial asset, a way to build wealth for retirement,” Grudnoff explained. “That’s what’s driving prices more than migration.”

Protests, politics, and scapegoating

The March for Australia rallies didn’t just highlight economic concerns. They also created fear. After the protests ended, neo-Nazi groups attacked a sacred Indigenous site in Melbourne and assaulted two Palestinian brothers in Sydney.

Australian Human Rights Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman said he’d heard from community groups who felt unsafe before and after the rallies.

“That’s the problem with marches like this,” he said. “Migrants get scapegoated for much more complex problems — things like tax policy, banking behaviour, even overseas factors like tariffs. These are hard problems to solve, and blaming migrants is the easy way out.”

He also pointed out that white supremacists often hijack anti-immigration rhetoric, flooding social media with misinformation, false statistics, and fear campaigns that thrive in echo chambers.

That’s why he believes politicians need to tread carefully. “When leaders use divisive language, it gets amplified online — and that makes vulnerable communities feel even less safe.”

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has been outspoken on this, blasting the Opposition for “using migrants as a scapegoat for a housing crisis” and stressing that the rallies don’t reflect broader Australian values.

“Those protests didn’t represent Australia,” Wong said. “I don’t think Australian values are values of division.”

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