While fascists scapegoat migrants, it’s the landlords and politicians hoarding wealth who are fuelling the housing crisis, writes Dr Martin Hirst.
IN THE WEEK since the disgraceful and shocking racist “anti-immigration” marches on Sunday 31 August, it seems that some mainstream journalists have finally discovered the National Socialist Network might actually pose a threat to Prime Minister Albanese’s oft-repeated “social cohesion” rhetoric.
The headlines exposing and even condemning Thomas Sewell’s criminal gang have been explicit in the liberal and so-called “progressive” media. But dig a little deeper, and the racist messaging of “March for Australia” is front and centre.
Often, the racism is hidden behind the “concerns” of ordinary families facing cost-of-living pressures, or the very real problem of the lack of affordable homes for people to live in. The racist and frankly completely wrong argument that the problem is too many migrants is always lurking in these news items and commentary.
These sloppy, simplistic and mistaken arguments are easily refuted by a simple review of the causes of homelessness and the reasons for the housing supply shortage.
The most pressing reason is housing affordability and the financial stress on individuals and families from high rents and low incomes. More than half the people who access homeless services do so because of financial issues. Seventy per cent of low-income working households spend more than 43% of their income on rent or mortgage payments.
The private rental market is a nightmare for renters. Tenants are facing skyrocketing rents and no-grounds evictions are all too common. Landlords are one of the major causes of homelessness and the housing crisis.
The second highest cause of homelessness is family and domestic violence. This particularly affects women and children and perpetuates cycles of intergenerational poverty.
Health and disability issues and substance abuse are also in the top ten causes of homelessness. Young people face real issues if they are forced out of the family home or the family is experiencing a housing crisis. What’s not in the top ten causes of homelessness is immigration.
And, you know what, despite the anti-immigration rhetoric allegedly being a response to the housing crisis, immigration is not one of the top ten causes of the housing shortage either.
The major issue is lack of supply: Australia is simply not building enough homes for people. But this is also linked to affordability.
According to the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC), servicing a mortgage can consume as much as half of a family’s income and rent costs about one-third of median household income. The concentration of population in the major urban centres is putting a strain on the housing sector, along with slow approvals for new builds and cost pressures in the construction industry.
Low or stagnant wage growth is also a factor. Housing prices have outpaced income growth, putting pressure on both homeowners and renters.
It's not migrants who are the cause of the housing shortage. Alongside the factors listed above, we have to add property speculation. Reliable estimates based on Census records show that approximately 10% of the current housing stock is unoccupied, well over one million properties nationwide.
In Melbourne, vacant homes are equivalent to 2.5 years of new builds. This empty housing stock could easily provide homes for everybody on the public housing waitlist.
Land banking and the profit motive under current tax and planning schemes – such as negative gearing – undermine affordability and restrict housing supply. Speculation and land banking are rewarded by government policy.
So, it’s important to be armed with arguments to push back on the anti-migrant racists. First and foremost, the Nazis among them do not care about housing issues or the cost-of-living crisis.
As one comrade pointed out to me, among the red ensigns and Nazi regalia, there was not one protest sign about the housing crisis. The racist chanting and violence against people of colour was not a protest about the cost-of-living crisis. It was just racism and it was racism that tended towards the exclusionist idea of a White Australia.
The misnamed “March for Australia” was in every way a racist march against Black, Brown and Asian migration. In that sense, it is in line with this nation’s long history of White racism against everybody else, beginning with First Nations people.
This is so clearly shown by the Nazis’ final despicable act of the day, an unprovoked and violent attack on Camp Sovereignty in King’s Domain on the edge of the Melbourne CBD.
The footage of NSN members charging into the camp, destroying property and hospitalising several Indigenous women with violent kicks to the chest has been rightly condemned by everyone. If you claim to be concerned about the impact of immigration on ordinary people, why attack an Indigenous encampment on sacred land?
The housing crisis is a policy failure, not a problem of demographics. Deliberate cuts to public housing and market deregulation fed by neoliberal ideology are the real problem. Scapegoating migrants is a tactic to deflect responsibility from capitalists and governments who profit from treating housing as a commodity, not a human right. Capitalism manufactures scarcity to ensure profitability and shifting the blame to immigration lets them off the hook.
This is why the mainstream news – a tool of capitalist propaganda – will argue that it was “bad” that the Nazis showed up, but the legitimate concerns of the protesters must be addressed. Shamefully, even the once-progressive Anthony Albanese made this racist argument, as did many other members of his Government.
It is shocking that leading figures in the Labor Party would spout such racist garbage. But it is not really shocking. Far from being the cause of the problems, migrant communities – particularly refugees – are victims of the housing and cost-of-living crises. Migrants, particularly newer arrivals, often work in low-paying and precarious work.
But this is a deliberate strategy of the bosses, not sneaky immigrants stealing “Aussie” jobs. Migrants make a disproportionate contribution to economic and social life in Australia. Many essential jobs are filled by migrants.
On the other hand, restricting immigration can be a cause of labour shortages and slowing the economy. Migrant and refugee communities are often forced into poor-quality housing because of their insecure employment.
Instead of blaming them, Albanese should be encouraging the union movement to fight for protections and pay rises for migrants and all workers.
The dangerous rhetoric that somehow the “good” participants in the March for Australia hatefests have legitimate concerns and are not themselves hardened racists must also be challenged.
Racism is a tool of division. The capitalist press is not a friend of the working class and it pushes the narrative that immigration is the root cause of the problem as a way of breaking workers’ solidarity. A united and militant working class that can fight for better wages and conditions for all workers is the solution.
We can also make an argument that it is politicians who are also landlords, who are the real class enemy. Federally, more than half of all MPs and senators own two or more properties. Seventy of them own three or more, and 31 own four or more; and this is across all the major parties. It is these same politicians who ensure that the legal and policy framework benefits property speculators.
The biggest corporate speculators who hold large tracts of land in the outer suburbs of Australia’s major cities are also squarely in the frame. These capitalist land hoarders, between them, control $81 billion in land assets in the growth belts of urban centres.
According to expert analysis, this is a pool of 200,000 housing lots and equivalent to 13 years of new housing supply. The speculators hang on to their land parcels and release them slowly in order to maintain high prices.
The main enemy is always at home, or in this case, sitting in their mansions and penthouse apartments, telling us that a migrant is going to steal from us. This is just a distraction; it is the speculators who are robbing us blind.
Dr Martin Hirst is a journalist, author and academic. You can follow him on Twitter @ethicalmartini.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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