Everyone knows fixing our housing crisis is by cutting immigration and building more houses.

But a report out of India yesterday asks what if you simply brought more migrants in to build the housing?

The Economic Times of India published a story yesterday under the headline “India in talks to construct 1 million houses worth $500 bn in Australia: Piyush Goyal”.

Piyush Goyal is India’s Minister for Commerce and Industry and he said during a recent speech:

“I am in deep negotiation with my counterpart in Australia to create 1 million homes. 1 million homes. Anybody wants to do the maths? A million homes in Australia would be at least USD 500 billion opportunity.”

According to The Economic Times Goyal went on to say:

India is proposing to allow Indian workers to get trained in Australia on necessary skill sets required to build homes as per local standards and create the housing.

So instead of giving jobs to Australians already here and training Australians already here, the government might be planning to just ship even more workers over to solve the crisis they caused.

The government has not confirmed or denied the report, and he says they are in advance negotiations, which means no decision has evidently been made. But Goyal is a long-term senior Minister in the Modi government, so there is little reason to doubt him.

This news comes on the same day Labor announced there would be no cut to migration levels for the next twelve months, with permanent migration places staying capped at 185,000.

It’s important to remember, though, that that 185,000 number is only permanent migration. It doesn’t account for the temporary residents, like the over 200,000 international students, who also take up housing and jobs.

That’s why despite having a similar cap in 2023/24 Australia’s net migration was actually 446,000 total.

And now we’re looking at who knows how many foreign workers coming to build one million houses.

Anthony Albanese and his government clearly do not take this issue seriously.

The promised cuts are miniscule and they keep being kicked down the road.

There’s no desire to address Australian concerns, all because they want their pretty economic graphs to keep looking good.

It’s a mess, a disgrace, and it needs to change.