The current rental crisis is frequently dismissed as a simple failure of the construction industry to ‘build more’. It is not. It is the Labor government obviously deciding that large-scale immigration will lock in a Labor vote.

Recent analysis by Leith van Onselen (March 2026) reveals a troubling reality. Australia has, in fact, just completed its most productive decade of residential construction in history. In the ten years to September 2026, 1,914,300 dwellings were completed – a massive 22 per cent increase over the previous decade.

Our construction rate remains among the highest in the OECD, yet we are falling behind. As van Onselen notes, citing data from the Commonwealth Bank (CBA), there is a ‘particularly strong relationship’ between high-density housing supply and rent growth. Because apartments make up 60 per cent of the rental market, the ‘ratio of population change to higher-density completions’ has become the primary driver of the crisis. Simply put: the numerator (immigration) is moving far faster than the denominator (supply) can ever hope to.

The 2029 shortfall: a deliberate collision

The collision course is set. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC) warns that Australia is on track to fall roughly 262,000 homes short of its 2029 housing target. While the government aims for 1.2 million new homes, the reality of labour shortages means we are likely to deliver fewer than 940,000.

When you contrast this with a population that grew by 440,861 in 2025 alone, the result is a ‘structural vice’ on the rental market. Advertised rents have soared by 47 per cent since 2019, adding nearly $11,500 to the annual cost of renting for the median tenant. As IFM Investors chief economist Alex Joiner points out, while supply is slow-moving, the ‘numerator’ of demand is a policy lever the federal government can move quickly – should it desire to do so.

The Snowy Mountains template vs. modern paralysis

Australia once knew how to solve this. The Snowy Mountains Scheme (1949-74) remains our greatest example of nation-building. Launched by the Chifley Labor government and completed with bipartisan support by the Menzies government, the project employed over 100,000 people. At its peak in 1959, the workforce reached 7,300, with 65 per cent to 70 per cent being immigrants.

The difference? Those ‘New Australians’ weren’t brought in to compete for existing flats in overcrowded suburbs; they were brought in to build new capacity. They were creating the water and power infrastructure that would decentralise the nation.

The federal straitjacket and the ‘no dams’ dogma

Today, that vision is dead, buried by the 1983 High Court decision in the Tasmanian Dam Case. By allowing the Commonwealth to use ‘external affairs’ powers to stop a state-sanctioned dam, the High Court effectively broke the spirit of state-led development. It signalled that the states no longer had the sovereign right to manage their own land and water without Canberra’s permission.

Since then, an ideological ‘No Dams’ dogma has been used to block the Bradfield Plan in its modern vision – the vision to capture monsoonal rains in North Queensland and divert them into the Thompson River and the Murray-Darling system. If we adopted the Bradfield Plan – or similar schemes in Western Australia currently championed by One Nation – we would solve the geographic mismatch of our continent. Instead of forcing migrants to bid up rents in Sydney, we could create a massive, irrigated ‘breadbasket’ in the interior that would require new regional cities. The building of the Bradfield Plan would itself require a large number of immigrant workers, probably even more than the Snowy.

A new national coordination?

As van Onselen highlights, Canada has already shown the way out by cutting migration to save the rental market. Australia could easily follow suit. But we won’t, at least not before the election. The Labor government has opened the immigration gates, I believe, purely for electoral purposes. They appear to be under the impression that immigrants will be grateful and vote for Labor. That could be why there are rushed naturalisation ceremonies. The trouble is they are rushing immigration so recklessly that they are obviously not checking whether some may be bringing in ancient hatreds.

The question for the next election is whether our major parties can break free from the ‘No Dams’ orthodoxy, or if the drive for a new era of coordinated, large-scale infrastructure – led by the persistence of One Nation – will be the only force capable of moving the water to where the people can actually live. Until we either slash the numerator or expand the denominator through vision rather than just density, the mathematical trap of the Albanese government’s making, will continue to crush a whole generation of Australian renters.

Nation-building vs. capacity crushing: a statistical comparison