Dutton pledges to cut migration to address housing crisis
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is defending his plan to fix the housing crisis through cuts to migration. Outlined in his official reply to the budget as coalition government would offer fewer visas for skilled workers, refugees and family reunions. Labor has criticised the lack of detail on both the coalition's migration policy and its plan to introduce nuclear energy.
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00:00 Whether it's buying or renting, getting into a home right now is a challenge.
00:09 Peter Dutton believes a big cut to migration will take the pressure off the housing market.
00:14 You can't bring almost a million people into the country in a two year period where only
00:19 265,000 homes are being built.
00:22 Currently there are 185,000 people a year who become permanent migrants.
00:27 The Coalition is proposing to cut that by 25% to 140,000 a year for the next two years.
00:36 The refugee intake would go from 20,000 to 13,750 and the rest would come from cuts to
00:43 skilled workers and family reunions.
00:47 Peter Dutton is also committing to capping the number of foreign students and banning
00:51 foreigners from buying existing homes for two years.
00:55 We create under our program about 40,000 homes in the first year.
01:00 He has come up with a number, plucked a number out of the air.
01:04 Labor's plan includes capping foreign student numbers too as it focuses on limiting new
01:09 arrivals on temporary visas unlike the Coalition's focus on permanent migration.
01:15 Roughly two thirds of all permanent visas go to those that are already in Australia
01:20 on a temporary visa.
01:21 Peter Dutton also recommitted to introducing nuclear power to Australia's electricity grid
01:27 but he didn't offer any details of exactly where they'd go or how they'd be funded.
01:32 He's trying to keep secret his nuclear reactor plan because he's having trouble even within
01:41 his own party.
01:42 The opposition leader saying he wasn't announcing it because he didn't want to draw attention
01:46 away from the Immigration Minister's handling of detainees.
01:51 He's out there making a fool of himself and why would we bump him off the front page.
01:56 It's a rare admission for a politician to make, albeit an unsurprising one, that important
02:02 policy is being put second to political advantage.
02:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]