Is Mass Immigration Destroying Housing? Foreign Corps Pay Zero Tax & Pocock's Gambling Showdown
Punters PoliticsShow Notes
Sign up to the Punter Times Newsletter https://www.punterspolitics.com/pages/email-sign-upThis week, Konrad and James expose how foreign corporations like Shell made $127 billion in Australia while paying virtually zero tax, reveal the governments hidden gambling connections, and host the first-ever Puntermon Battle between two economists who can't agree whether mass immigration or property speculation is destroying Australia's housing market. Featuring - Economists Leith van Onselen & Matt Grudnoff Punter’s Politics Political Fundraiser Tickets: https://www.punterspolitics.com/pages/punters-political-fundraising-dinnerBe a dark money funder to help hire a lobbyist for the punters: https://chuffed.org/project/134297-fund-australias-first-punter-powered-lobbyist Leith's Notes"The first chart in this article shows why demand side policies never work as they just feed higher home prices:" https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2025/05/australians-snookered-by-mega-mortgages/"Even if we changed NG and the CGT discount today it wouldn't do squat for the rental market as the volume of migration would continue to overwhelm supply, driving vacancy rates lower and rents higher. Sure, building public housing would help and is worthwhile. But that would cost many billions and would merely be taken up by new migrants (this is happening now in Melbourne). We simply cannot build enough homes or infrastructure to keep up with demand. We don't have the capacity. Therefore, the only solution is to go back to pre 2005 levels of migration and ensure that it is focused on skills the country actually needs. We need quality, not quantity. As long as policymakers continue to pump immigration, the rental and infrastructure crises will continue. Nothing can be done on the supply side in any reasonable timeframe to change this fact. Matt's Notes I claimed that over the last 10 years the population has increased by 16% but the number of dwellings has increased by 19%Population data comes from National, state and territory population. Click on the “Population and components of change – national” towards the bottom of the webpage. In the spreadsheet that downloads we are looking for “Estimated Resident Population (ERP) ; Australia” (this is column L in the spreadsheet). 10 years comes from March 2015 to March 2025. The numbers are population in March 2015: 23,745,600. Population in March 2025: 27,536,900. The formular for calculating the percentage increase is (Mar-2025 – Mar-2015)/Mar-2015.Dwellings data comes from Total Value of Dwellings. Click on “Table 1. Total value of dwellings, all series” towards the bottom of the webpage. In the spreadsheet that downloads we are looking for “Number of residential dwellings; Australia” (this is Column AT in the spreadsheet). 10 years comes from the increase from March 2015 to March 2025. The numbers are dwellings in March 2015: 9,511,300. Dwellings in March 2025: 11,320,300.The quarterly dwellings data only goes back to Sep-2011. But the housing crisis really started in the early 2000s. So, to go back further I use census data. If you compare the 2001 census with the 2021 census (latest census), population has increased 33% and dwellings have increased 39%.Population and dwelling data for the 2001 census comes from 2022.0 – Census of Population and Housing: Classification Counts, Australia, 2001. In the downloads tab click on the first data cube “Australia Classification Counts 2001”.Click on the first spreadsheet called “Aust_Age.xls”. This has the population number at D110 in the spreadsheet. The population is 18,972,350.Click on the 14th spreadsheet is called “Aust_Dwelling Location.xls”. It has the dwelling number at B15 in the spreadsheet. The number of dwellings is 7,810,352.Population data for the 2021 census comes from Population; Census. At the bottom of the webpage click on “Data table for population data summary”. The population is 25,422,788 (D20 in Table 1 of the spreadsheet).Dwelling data for the 202
More from Punters Politics
This week, we’re joined by Alison Reeve from the Grattan Institute to ask who actually owns Australia’s gas and why we’re told taxing it is too complicated. We get into the petroleum resource rent tax, the export contracts Albo keeps pointing to, and the options on the table, from royalties to a super profits tax. And is now the right time to change it?
This week, we’re joined by Chris Kohler, to break down the legal-ish scams companies use to take more of your money, from surveillance pricing to loyalty programs. We also get into housing: the CGT and negative gearing changes, and what a generation of millennials have been left with.
I sat down with Ads Morris from the Redriven YouTube channel to talk about the cars we drive, and the political decisions behind them. From why our cars keep getting bigger, to the cars we can't buy here, to why so many new cars seem built not to last. I called it a car-spiracy. You decide if I'm wrong.
This week, we dig into the Gold Coast mayor still running the council that approves his own property developments, a taxpayer-funded Mar-a-Lago trip that lined up suspiciously well with a $1.5 billion Trump Tower deal, and expense rorting that cost him a $2,000 fine. We score Albo's poker face against a journalist's "gotcha" question at a UN event, and launch a new segment, Married at First Bill, putting the government's new gas reservation policy through a red flag test to see if it's the real deal or a total catfish.
This week, we bring in two experts to actually break down the Duty of Care bill. "Angertainment" author Ed Coper explains how algorithms exploit human psychology to manipulate us, and lawyer James Glissan, who's actually read the bill, walks through what it really says, what's overblown, and where the genuine problems are.