Uncontrolled Immigration Is ‘Sending Australians Into Poverty’: Freelancer CEO

People wearing face masks walk on a street in the central business district of Sydney in Australia, on June 25, 2021. Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images

Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer—the world’s largest online marketplace for freelancers—has lambasted the Albanese Labor government for boosting immigration to record highs.

In a speech at the Sydney 2050 Summit last week, Barrie said the Albanese government’s policy to bring in 700,000 migrants by next year was “not about the economy, but inflating GDP.”

The CEO said Australia’s reliance on immigration as an economic driver was a “big, uncomfortable secret” and would cause “pain for the people over here.”

“In Brisbane, people are living in tents in a park in the city. People are lining up for food and handouts. There are mums begging on Facebook in mum’s groups. It’s really hurting people now,” he said.

A Qantas mascot welcomes people upon arrival at the Sydney International Airport in Sydney, Australia, on February 21, 2022. Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images

He argued that ramping up immigration was the last thing Australia should do, given it was suffering the “highest inflation in decades, sharply declining real wage growth, the worst rental crisis on record, overloaded infrastructure, construction blowouts, bureaucracy, mass insolvencies, the extreme cost of living and the largest destruction in purchasing power in 50 years.”

Barrie also said the policy is “sending the Australian middle and working classes into poverty” and pointed out that 69 percent of immigrants were suffering rental stress—meaning they could barely cover household rent.

A homeless person sits on the pavement in Melbourne's CBD in Victoria, Australia on June 4, 2021. William West/AFP via Getty Images

The comments from Barrie come as across Australia, rents continue to rise at a rate of around 11 percent per annum in major cities, while vacancy rates remain at a near-record low of around one percent (pdf), according to SQM Research.

Labor’s Housing Plan Just Not Enough

However, Labor has claimed it is working to increase the housing supply so the situation does not get worse.

During parliamentary Question Time, Federal Housing Minister Julie Collins outlined the tenuous situation of Australia’s housing crisis.

“We have less homes per 1,000 people in Australia than the OECD average,” she said. “Which is why we need to build more, which is what the National Housing Accord is about.”

But not everyone is convinced the Labor government’s National Housing Accord will do enough.

Leith van Onselen, a former Treasury official and chief economist at the MacroBusiness Fund, said Australia does not have enough homes to house the current population, let alone new migrants.

A welder works on the roof of a new house construction in Karratha. Australia, on June 17, 2008. Greg Wood/AFP via Getty Images

“The centrepiece of the Albanese government’s National Housing Accord is the Housing Australia Future Fund, which intends to help fund 30,000 additional social and affordable rental homes over its first five years,” he wrote in news.com.au.

“Anybody with Year 6 maths skills would be able to work out that the 6,000 new social and affordable homes that are targeted for construction each year pales into insignificance against the projected annual population increase of 400,000 to 500,000 people.”

On the other side of the argument, the Southeast Queensland Union of Renters claims that “politicians and the landlord class have chosen a scapegoat.”

“The media has increasingly begun to argue or imply that foreign migration is a major factor in skyrocketing rents and rental competitiveness,” the group wrote on Facebook.

“The blame lies with politicians, landlords, and the real estate industry,” the union concluded.