The economic environment is likely to keep favouring One Nation's message

Hanson and One Nation are on a roll and getting the sort of cut-through that the Coalition and Labor can only dream about. (ABC News: Matt Roberts) Link copiedShareShare articlePauline Hanson began her National Press Club speech last week by saying the key issues were immigration and housing. To support the idea of linking them, Hanson quoted the Housing Industry Association (HIA): "The underlying problem we have is trying to fit 11 million households into 10 million homes." But that's not true. The latest count from the ABS is that there are 11,495,200 homes in Australia, while the number of households is 10.9 million. The actual quote from the HIA's chief economist, Tim Reardon, was: "Australia is essentially trying to fit 11 million households into 10 million homes." The word "essentially" is important. "You have to remember that every piece of data is lying to you, and we have to understand how it's lying," Reardon told me. Or as Mark Twain put it: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". All three tend to flourish in this debate because everyone has a barrow to push, especially politicians, so the truth needs to be pursued and cornered wherever possible. Even if housing becomes more affordable, most people who own a house don't want it to stop increasing in value. ( ABC News: Ian Cutmore ) Reardon's truth is that those numbers are "not intended as a literal count of households and dwellings". "Rather," he said, "it is a simple way of describing a housing market where underlying demand for housing exceeds the number of homes available in the locations, types and price points that people wish to occupy". OK, fair enough. That's partly because the rental vacancy rate needs to be 3 to 5 per cent to address the balance of power between tenants and landlords. Currently, it's less than 1.5 per cent. In the press release that contained the quote Hanson used, the HIA also said: "Australia needed to build more than 250,000 homes last year just to keep pace with demand growth and begin reducing the housing shortage. Instead, we commenced construction of just 196,000 homes." That's not a statistical truth either, but nor is it a lie. Last week, the ABS reported that population growth in 2025 was 412,500, of which 301,000 was net overseas migration. Using the current average occupancy of 2.4 people per house, that implies extra housing demand of 171,875 — 24,000 less than the commencements of 195,979. It was also a bit less than housing completions in 2025 of 172,796. But the HIA's point is that there's more to housing demand than population growth. In a big report published last Wednesday titled "Beyond Population ÷ 2.5: Understanding Housing Demand in Australia", the HIA said: "Housing demand is not generated solely by population growth. It is influenced by household formation, demographic change, migration, ageing, relationship formation and breakdown, changing housing preferences, replacement of existing dwellings and broader economic conditions." In fact, Reardon says one of the key reasons for a persistent shortage of housing leading to a crisis of affordability is that governments and local councils have tended to make housing supply decisions based purely on population growth data. Reardon says that the figure of 250,000 is an estimate of how many houses need to be built each year to improve affordability — that is, to generate a surplus that keeps prices down. A banner interrupted the senator’s first address at the National Press Club in 30 years, in which she laid out a vision for an Australian "monoculture". Where Hanson was on very solid ground in her speech was when she complained about what happened with immigration between 2022 and 2024. "Net overseas migration in the first three years under this Albanese Labor government has totalled 1.27 million people," she said. That figure is both correct and an indictment. Even if you use what Reardon calls the over-simplistic demand assumption of 2.5 people per dwelling, you get housing demand over those three years of 530,000 versus a net increase in supply of 471,000 — a shortage of 59,000. And if we use Reardon's true demand number of 250,000 a year, you get a shortage of nearly 280,000, which would take 12 years to clear using last year's statistical surplus of 24,000. Reardon and the HIA are actually in favour of immigration, and slightly uncomfortable with being recruited by Hanson to support her anti-immigration, monocultural stance. But Hanson and One Nation are on a roll and getting the sort of cut-through that Angus Taylor and the Coalition, as well as Anthony Albanese and Labor, can only dream about. And the problem for both the Coalition and Labor is that things are only going to get more difficult for ordinary families in the years ahead, and the economic environment is likely to keep favouring One Nation's message. For a start, as discussed, the housing shortage, mainly caused by the surge in

The economic environment is likely to keep favouring One Nation's message

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