SA Premier Peter Malinauskas said Australia’s “self-defeating” migration debate had turned to madness, as the nation’s regions struggled to find fruit pickers and build homes.
“We don’t have a migration crisis. We’ve got a housing crisis,” Malinauskas told the Bush Summit in Dubbo, warning that too-harsh migration cuts would only exacerbate the problem because most people working on housing builds came from other countries.
“I think we should spend a lot more time as a country not debating how we unwind migration, we should spend a lot more time developing the policy and making the investments increasing housing supply. But of course, that’s far less emotive, isn’t it?” he said.
“I desperately hope that 10, 15, 20 years from now, we don’t look back on this moment in time, where there’s been a surge of populism on the back of a migration debate, and ask ourselves, where did that get us? … Meanwhile, fruit’s falling on the ground because we don’t have pickers … It’s madness, and I, for one, have no reticence in the lead-up to the election and after it, making the case that we don’t need a self-defeating debate on migration. Let’s focus on the real issue, which is housing supply.”
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