STEPHEN JOHNSON: How Andrew Hastie’s call to tie immigration with housing could backfire for Liberal Party

The Coalition’s call to peg net overseas migration to the supply of new homes is sounding eerily similar to what their Opposition counterparts in Canada suggested two years ago — and it didn’t end well.

Andrew Hastie, a prospective future Liberal leader who is for now the shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability, articulated this idea on Monday night, with The Nightly understanding the policy was discussed on Tuesday morning at the Coalition’s joint party room meeting.

“The Coalition has said that we will peg net overseas migration to the amount of homes that we build every year,” Mr Hastie told the ABC’s National Forum hosted by David Speers.

“Last year, we built 170,000 homes and the net overseas migration figures, for the last four years, have been well above that and we’re now seeing the consequences of that with Australians not being able to find homes.

“I’ve seen people waking up in their cars down on the beach in Western Australia. I know of children who are living in tents and caravans because our housing stock has not kept pace with the growth of immigration.”

A net overseas migration figure of 170,000 is 75,000 less than Labor’s 245,000 figure nominated in the May Budget and would, outside of the COVID border closure in 2020 and 2021, be the slowest pace of foreign arrivals since 2006 in the lead-up to the mining boom.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke is yet to outline how the intake will be reduced from last year’s level above 300,000 with new SQM Research data released on Tuesday showing national rents soared by 7.3 per cent during the past year — or more than double the elevated 3.5 per cent inflation rate.

In the year to March, Australia built 173,367 homes which is well behind the 240,000 annual average needed for Labor’s National Housing Accord target of 1.2 million homes in the five years to June 2029.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor last week also suggested a 170,000 net overseas migration figure, which was slightly lower than a suggestion from another Andrew — Senator Andrew Bragg with the housing and homelessness portfolio — who nominated 180,000 at the National Press Club in Canberra.

Mr Hastie’s articulation of the policy before an ABC studio audience sounded a lot like the Conservative Party of Canada’s leader Pierre Poilievre who in January 2024 promised to tie immigration with housing supply.

“We need to make a link between the number of homes built and the number of people we invite as new Canadians,” he told a Winnipeg media conference.

Despite his commonsense idea being popular among younger voters, Mr Poilievre went on to lose the April 2025 election and his own Ontario electorate, in hauntingly parallel circumstances to Australia’s own Federal poll five days later that saw the Coalition and Liberal leader Peter Dutton lose both the election and his own seat in Brisbane.

Donald Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs hurt conservatives on both sides of the Pacific Ocean but nonetheless, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney from the governing centre-left Liberal Party went on to halve international student numbers and slash by 70 per cent the intake of temporary foreign workers.

Little wonder One Nation leader Pauline Hanson on Monday hailed him as a role model as she vowed to slash immigration numbers by 750,000 over three years, before settling on a longer-term net overseas migration target of 130,000 a year.

A Leger poll released this week showed Canada’s Liberal Party with 49 per cent support, despite its telegenic former leader Justin Trudeau presiding over an immigration surge during his decade as PM.

The Opposition Conservative Party of Canada had just 33 per cent support, ironically for a party established in 2003 as part of merger with the Canadian Alliance, an anti-immigration populist party like Australia’s One Nation.

If Canada is any guide, the centre-left Australian Labor Party could simply dump Anthony Albanese as leader and slash immigration too to alleviate the housing crisis it perpetuated with record-high immigration levels after COVID.

One in 10 or a record high 2.9 million people living in Australia are on temporary visas.

“I think reducing the amount of temporary graduate visas is really important,” Mr Hastie said.

“I think stopping the visa hopping is a very good idea.”

In a fickle political climate, few people care whose idea it was to cut immigration — permanent or temporary — as long as it’s done.