@exocrinous @Longmactoppedup I think there's a few big pieces of this puzzle that you guys are missing.

Housing is too expensive.

Why? Australia doesn't have enough housing.

To build more housing, we need skilled tradies, structural engineers, etc.

But there's a problem.

Australia has skills shortages in those areas.

Okay, so we'll bring in more skilled migrants to fill those skills shortages to build more housing.

Those skilled migrants need somewhere to live.

But there's a problem.

Australia doesn't have enough housing.

So we need more houses for the skilled migrants we need to build more houses to fix the problem of not enough houses.

It gets worse.

For around two years during the pandemic, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade needed more staff for things like hotel quarantine and border pass applications.

So DFAT basically took all staff off examining skilled migrant visa applications.

The problem is that when the borders reopened, there was a roughly two-year backlog of skilled migrant applications.

Also, Vlad decided to invade Ukraine, which meant most Western countries blocked Russian exports.

The problem is that a lot of — for example — the timber for the formwork used in concrete came from Russia. So the countries that had domestic supplies were hoarding them, while the rest of the world was scrambling to find alternative supplies.

So developers were waiting weeks or months to hire tradies, the tradies would show up on site, the parts they needed still hadn't shown up because of the supply shortage, so they'd go home. A few weeks later, the parts would show up, but the developer would then need to book the tradies again...

Russia is also a big oil and gas supplier, so as it was shut off from the world market, energy prices surged.

So building projects were being delayed, costs were increasing, new housing supply was delayed.

But wait — what about our higher education system? Why are there skills shortages to begin with? Why aren't our TAFEs and unis producing enough skilled workers?

Well, starting with the Keating government and accelerating under John Howard, the federal government discovered that full fee paying international students are a great way to fund higher education without raising taxes.

So higher education went from primarily training students to fill local skills gaps to exporting education.

Student migration dried up during the pandemic, but it kicked off again just as border restrictions were lifted.

Those students need housing.

At the same time, delays in processing skilled migration visas meant there were massive skills shortages in construction. And supply shortages.

It still gets worse.

In a number of key industries — supermarkets, telcos, banks, airlines, electricity — Australia doesn't have genuine competition.

It gets even worse... (1/2)