‘Strangers in our own home’: Hastie posts again, blaming migration for housing crisis

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Outspoken opposition frontbencher Andrew Hastie has claimed Australians feel like “strangers in our own home”, claiming the post-COVID influx of migrants was creating a housing crisis that could keep the Liberals in exile for years if the party did not tackle it.

Most housing experts contend high house prices have been driven mostly by a failure to build enough homes, but Hastie put a spotlight on migrant-driven demand in an Instagram post on Wednesday, making it the latest policy issue on which he has put forward populist talking points that differ from those of Opposition Leader Sussan Ley.

Ley is not under immediate threat of being challenged, according to several party MPs. However, a group of right-wing Liberals are privately building Hastie up as the conservative alternative to Ley while he lays out a social media-driven crusade on nativist policies on local manufacturing, family values, migration and energy.

“We’re starting to feel like strangers in our own home,” Hastie said in the post.

“Our infrastructure is under pressure, essential services from schools and hospitals are stretched thin. Australians are locked out of the housing market. Many are house poor, spending most of their income on rent or mortgages.”

“Labor talk about a housing supply crisis, but this is a housing demand crisis. Driven by unsustainable immigration. It’s that simple.”

Hastie added that the net overseas migration number, which grew rapidly after years of weak population growth during the pandemic, must be cut. Both Labor and the Coalition pledged steep decreases to the net overseas figure at the last election. Last week, the ABS published figures showing that over the past 12 months, net overseas migration was 315,900, a drop of 19,000 on the annual result to the end of December.

It is down by 177,899 on the March quarter of 2024. Net overseas migration peaked at 555,798 in the September quarter of 2023, around the time migration boffins and the Coalition accused Labor of losing control of the post-COVID surge.

Hastie’s remarks echoed those of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price earlier this month when she argued that “mass migration” was creating and infrastructure and housing crunch. Hastie did not use the term “mass migration” or single out any migrant cohort, as Price did, leading to her demotion from shadow cabinet.

The phrase “strangers in their own country” was popularised by a controversial speech from British conservative MP Enoch Powell in 1968. British Labour MP Keir Starmer, under political pressure over illegal migration, said in June that he regretted delivering a speech in which he said Britain risked becoming an “an island of strangers”.

Opposition home affairs spokesman Andrew Hastie.

Price, speaking on 2GB on Wednesday, said some of Hastie’s colleagues viewed him as “some kind of threat”.

“We don’t have much in the way of policy. We are supposed to be an effective opposition. We do want to be able to do our job, so we’re not going to sit back and be silent until such time as we have our policy positions on a number of issues.”

Polls show Australians believe migration remains too high, but most housing experts, on both the left and right, conclude that the housing shortage is driven far more by a lack of construction than high migration.

Hastie is the spokesman for home affairs and therefore has policy responsibility for immigration, giving Ley no grounds to pull him up for veering outside his lane. However, his dramatic rhetoric will be viewed as provocative inside the party amid speculation over his ambitions to lead the party. Hastie told this masthead the post represented his personal views and largely echoed a speech he delivered in parliament earlier this year.

Ley has been attempting to improve relations with the Indian and Chinese diasporas since the election and has said that migrants were not personally to blame for infrastructure and housing crunches.

“It is not a failing of migrants or any individual migrant community. It is a failure of this government by not getting the balance right between the provision of that important infrastructure and the levels of migration,” she said on September 8.

Quoting grand prix legend Ayrton Senna who died during a race in 1994, Hastie said in the post: “If you no longer go for a gap that exists, you’re no longer a racing driver.”

“What is the point of politics, if you’re not willing to fight for something?”

“The Liberal Party will be in exile for a long time until we act in the interests of Australian people. That means getting immigration to a sustainable level. If we don’t act, we can expect anger and frustration. We might even die as a political movement. So be it.”

Liberal strategists including Redbridge’s Tony Barry, a former Liberal advisor and strategist, have argued that diminishing rates of homeownership would cruel the conservative side of politics because homeowners are more likely to vote for parties of the right.

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