Australia Housing Shortfall Drives Push to Slash Migration Levels
Australia’s escalating housing crisis has triggered a sharp political push by the Coalition and One Nation to slash net overseas migration levels, according to recent reporting from the Sydney Morning Herald. Lawmakers from these parties argue that curbing population inflows is a necessary corrective to severe housing shortages gripping mainland states.
Official demographic data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics underscores the scale of the population pressures. According to an Australian Institute for Public Policy research note published in June 2025 by Senior Fellow Dr Kevin You, Australia’s population grew by 445,924 people during the 2024 calendar year, reaching 27,400,013.
Net overseas migration accounted for 76 percent of that annual population growth, while natural increase accounted for the remaining 24 percent. Between 2022 and 2024, net overseas migration drove 81 percent of the nation’s total population expansion, according to the same Australian Institute for Public Policy analysis.
Housing Shortfalls Across States
The rapid population increase has outpaced residential construction across almost every jurisdiction. The Australian Institute for Public Policy research estimates that population growth created a national housing supply shortfall of 19,570 units in 2024 alone, with a cumulative shortfall of 179,287 units between 2022 and 2024.
State-by-state breakdowns from the Australian Bureau of Statistics data show that Western Australia experienced a housing supply shortfall of 52,783 units between 2022 and 2024. Queensland recorded a cumulative shortfall of 48,737 units over the same timeframe.
Major population centers faced similar deficits. New South Wales registered a housing supply shortfall of 44,533 units between 2022 and 2024, while Victoria experienced a shortfall of 32,244 units. South Australia recorded a smaller deficit of 6,732 units.
Tasmania stood as the only state not to experience a net supply shortfall over the 2022 to 2024 period, according to the research data. In Tasmania, net overseas migration was more than double the state’s total population growth, offsetting declines from interstate movement.
Demographic Demand and Construction Realities
To calculate housing demand, researchers divided the total estimated resident population growth by 2.5, reflecting the average household size recorded in the 2021 Census. Between January 2022 and December 2024, Australia’s resident population grew by 1.63 million people, translating to 650,487 net new households demanding accommodation.
Against that demand, net new residential construction added 471,200 dwellings across the country during those three years. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, net overseas migration accounted for roughly 60 percent of Australia’s annual population growth on average. That figure climbed by 20 percentage points in subsequent years to about 80 percent annually.
The widening gap between home building completions and migration-driven demand has pushed housing affordability to the forefront of national policy debates. As the Coalition and One Nation campaign for lower migration caps, federal policymakers face mounting pressure to balance immigration targets with infrastructure and residential construction capacity.