Dick Smith issues a dire warning to Australia as he calls for immigration to be slashed

Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith claims high immigration is to blame for the country’s soaring house prices and wants numbers slashed to just 75,000 a year.

Mr Smith made the bold demand during a Sky News debate on Monday night. 

A record 500,000 migrants moved to Australia in 2022-2023, with the population officially reaching more than 27 million last month.

Australia’s population is estimated to double in the next 50 years.  

‘We can [continue on that immigration trajectory], but it won’t be good for normal people,’ Mr Smith said.

Dick Smith (pictured) said he was ‘pro-immigration’ but argued the massive influx of immigrants was the ‘prime reason’ for Australia’s housing crisis and called for the government to cap immigration at 75,000 people

‘It will be great for the wealthy; they will make even more money. Our billionaires have doubled their wealth in five years, they’ll keep being wealthier.

‘The figures are actually worse — at the present growth rate, from the huge immigration, we’re going to end up at 100 million people in Australia when our grandkids will still be alive at the end of this century.

‘No one believes 100 million is sensible for an arid country like Australia.’

Mr Smith said that the number should be around 75,000 per year, which is similar to the average amount of people who were allowed in until the 1990s.

‘I am pro-immigration, I think it’s really fantastic, but 75,000 a year will round off our population at about 30 million, and that sounds a pretty sensible number to me,’ he said. 

‘Having more people normally means you’re spreading the wealth and that with more people, everyone gets less.’

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He explained Australia was not a manufacturing country like China and created most of its wealth from exporting minerals and primary industry.

Mr Smith said Australia didn’t need ‘a lot more people to do that’ and claimed that doubling the population would result in people being ‘worth half as much’.

He also rejected the idea that immigration was needed due to a skills shortage, claiming the country should be able to train 500,000 people out of work.

‘Every Australian family has a population plan. They don’t have 20 kids; they have the number of kids they can give a good life to,’ Mr Smith said.

‘Our politicians should have the number of people in Australia we can give a good life to.

‘That’s not happening at the moment — young people can’t afford a house, you’re in traffic gridlock, things are getting worse and worse.’

Emilie Dye, a policy analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies think tank hit back at Mr Smith’s claims.

She said blaming immigrants for the housing crisis was a ‘political ploy’ to distract Australian voters from the government’s poor housing policy.

Policy analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) think tank Emilie Dye argued blaming immigrants for the housing crisis was a 'political ploy' used by the government to distract from poor housing policy

Policy analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) think tank Emilie Dye argued blaming immigrants for the housing crisis was a ‘political ploy’ used by the government to distract from poor housing policy 

‘It’s easy to blame immigrants for policy failures, for issues like housing affordability, but when it comes down to it, in general, immigrants are just adding to our society and making us richer — making us all richer, not just the people at the top,’ she said.

‘We have people, we should be providing for those people, and we’re just blaming the victim if we’re saying, “our population’s too high, that’s why we can’t house people”. 

‘That’s a political ploy to take the heat off of the politicians that have decades of poor housing policy, have restricted the supply of housing.’

Mr Smith said he was not blaming one group of people for the housing crisis but added the ‘prime reason’ for soaring property prices was the ‘huge population increase’. 

‘We’re not blaming anyone, it’s just a fact that if in a marketplace you bring in an incredible amount of people wanting to purchase houses, you’re going to put the price up, and that’s what’s happened,’ Mr Smith said. 

‘I’ve benefited from growth, without any doubt, but what I’m concerned about is my grandchildren.’  

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