Walking the new puppy this morning, I saw a rather confronting sight at the local sports ground. A homeless person camping near the toilet block. This is a confronting sight, not because of any grudge against the homeless, but simply because it’s even happened. In all the years I’ve lived in our little town, I’ve never seen homeless people sleeping in tents before.
Indeed, in all my life, I’ve never seen people sleeping rough outside the big cities like Melbourne.
Yet, suddenly, homeless encampments are springing up everywhere. Little tent cities have appeared under bridges and in parks in Hobart and Launceston. It’s a sight I daresay hasn’t blighted Australia since the Great Depression.
Perhaps we should dub them “Albovilles”?
Because it’s not about to get any better in a hurry.
Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy says the economy peaked in the September quarter of last year and that it’s all downhill from here.
If this is the best Albo and Zippy have got to offer us, then I hate to see where it’s all going to end up.
“Interest rates have risen sharply and are likely to remain elevated for a time, and inflation is unlikely to return to the RBA’s target band quickly,” he said.
The Treasury boss said the pain of rising interest rates and high cost of living “differs markedly across households”.
In other words, the rich who vote for the Teals, Greens and Labor, don’t have to worry about the economic carnage wreaked by their elite obsessions with boutique policies like “Net Zero”.
Nor do they have to deal with the impacts of their cosy obsession with mass immigration. The left-elite reap all the benefits of record-high immigration — cheap labour, and twee ethnic cafes in the inner cities — without ever being inconvenienced by collapsing infrastructure, crammed schools, or endless waits to see the local GP.
And they certainly don’t have any scruffy foreigners competing for houses in their whiter-than-white, wealthy suburbs.
Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy said the “faster than anticipated” recovery in migration this year has “compounded” the challenges in the rental market, where vacancy rates are near record lows of just above 1 per cent.
Speaking at senate estimates, Dr Kennedy noted that advertised rents were rising by 10 per cent, and that “the lift in advertised rents will gradually flow through to average rental costs, as existing lease agreements are renewed” […]
“The increase in demand for housing from local residents has been compounded by the return of overseas migrants post Covid.”
Not just “return”, though: a new flood, unprecedented in modern Australian history.
Treasury forecasts a surge in net overseas migration of 400,000 in 2022-23, and 315,000 in 2023-24 – or 245,000 more than anticipated in the October budget.
The Australian
Australia simply cannot import the equivalent of the entire population of Auckland in just a few years and not expect it to metastasize an already critical housing crisis.
Expect the Albovilles to grow and grow.