NATION Migrants call on housing

AUSTRALIA should cut its immigration intake unless state governments boost the housing supply in capital cities, according to a major report to be released today.

Major cities including Brisbane are building too many houses on the suburban fringe, instead of encouraging medium- density in the innercity and middle- ring suburbs where the jobs are located.

Brisbane is also tying up too much of its established suburbs from redevelopment in onerous heritage listing of Queenslander- style homes, which were built for a time when there was no airconditioning.

Lowering migration would make housing more affordable “but it would probably leave Australians worse off”, according to the Grattan Institute report.

The report will reignite the contentious debate over the country’s levels of immigration, after former prime minister Tony Abbott last month called for the intake to be reduced from 180,000 to 110,000 a year amid “stagnant wages, unaffordable housing and clogged infrastructure”.

Grattan Institute chief executive John Daley said Australia couldn’t continue failing to provide adequate housing stock at the current rates of migration.

“In an ideal world, you run good planning policy and stronger migration. But that’s not the world we are in,” Mr Daley said.

“Where we differ from Tony Abbott is, if you do decide you want to constrain migration, it is not as simple as saying we are going to reduce the number of permanent skilled visas.

“You want to actually think through exactly how you’re going to do it.”

Mr Daley said Brisbane needed to relax its heritage listings, which locked up Queenslanders from redevelopment, as well as making it easier to subdivide in the inner- city and middle- ring suburbs.

“Those houses were extremely well designed for the Brisbane climate in the 1950s given the technology at the time; they are pretty bad now that we have airconditioners,” Mr Daley said.

He said Brisbane City Council had done a better job of relaxing its planning laws than authorities in Sydney and Melbourne.

The report urges state and federal governments to change planning schemes to make it easier to develop mediumdensity housing in established suburbs “that are close to jobs and transport”.

It also calls for the Turnbull Government to limit negative gearing and reduce the capital gains tax discount.