Barefoot Investor Scott Pape addresses critics of immigration comments

The best-selling author has responded to recent criticism of his comments about immigration and the property market as debate continues to rage.

Barefoot Investor Scott Pape has addressed criticism over his comments about how Australia’s immigration intake was impacting the housing market.

Writing in his weekly News Corp Australia column, Pape expanded on his thoughts about the country’s housing crisis by directly responding to one of his detractors.

Last week, the author of bestsellers such as The Barefoot Investor: The Only Money Guide You’ll Ever Need questioned why the country was bringing in so many migrants amid a “broken” rental market and record house prices.

He used a metaphor of trying to cram too many “sheep” into a paddock on his family farm.

“Why are we currently bringing in 2000 new migrants a day – 659,800 in the last year – when the rental market is in crisis?” he wrote last weekend.

Barefoot Investor Scott Pape has responded to criticism in his latest column. Picture: Jason Edwards

This week, Pape published a letter from a woman named Yvonne under the title “You’re A Racist Bigot, Barefoot”.

In the letter, Yvonne described Pape’s last column as “claptrap” and raised the economic benefits new migrants could contribute to the country.

“You’ve taken a complex and highly emotive issue and boiled it down to one simplistic factor: housing,” she wrote.

In reply on Sunday, Pape wrote that there were “hundreds of people” who shared Yvonne’s sentiments, adding: “I think you nailed me the best (or worst).”

But he largely stuck to his convictions, saying the country was “in a hole” and it was time to “stop digging”.

“The truth is I am a very simple person,” he wrote.

Crowds queuing up to inspect rental properties have become a common sight. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Flavio Brancaleone

“When you’re looking at something as complex as the economy, and how we govern for 26 million people, I think you need to come back to first principles.

“And for me it’s this: I strongly believe that secure affordable housing is a basic human right, especially given we live in the richest country on Earth. It all begins at home. And right now there are practically zero rentals available for people in the bottom 30% of income earners, who are the people who traditionally rent.

“That’s a crisis many years in the making, and one that hasn’t been caused by hardworking immigrants.

“As I said in the column, the solution is, to use your word ‘nuanced’ and multifaceted: expand the supply of new homes, end tax breaks that favour investors, and build a lot more social and community housing.

“We’re in a hole. It’s time to stop digging.”

Recent data shows Australia’s rental market is at its tightest levels on record. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Immigration has become a hot-button political issue in Australia as governments and citizens grapple with how to ease the housing dilemma.

In another column published on Sunday, economist Leith van Onselen wrote that immigration intakes were “simply too high, overwhelming the supply side of the economy”.

“According to the ABS, Australia added only 155,600 homes (net of demolitions) to the nation’s dwelling stock in the year to September 2023, against a population increase of 660,000,” he said.

“Therefore, Australia added only one new home for every 4.24 new residents. This explains why the nation’s rental vacancy rate has collapsed to a record low of around one per cent.

Domain reported a record-low national rental vacancy rate of 0.7 per cent this month, while PropTrack also reported a mark of 1 per cent.

Former NSW premier and foreign minister Bob Carr has repeatedly spoken out against migration levels. Picture: AAP Image/Joel Carrett

Former NSW premier Bob Carr has long rallied against the nation’s migration intake and told Sky News it was a “lazy way of running the economy”.

“I’ve been trying to get Australians to understand that we do not need to have the highest rate of immigration, in proportion to our population, in the world,” Mr Carr said.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released figures showing net overseas migration in the September quarter was 21,800 higher than the previous quarter at 145,200 arrivals, the second-highest quarterly increase in history.

Net overseas migration increased by 60.3 per cent on the previous year and drove 83 per cent of Australia’s annual population growth.

Including natural increase, Australia’s population grew by 2.5 per cent to 26.8 million people in the year.

Economic policy director at the Grattan Institute Brendan Coates recently told news.com.au that while immigration was a driver of rental pressures, cuts to the intake would make the country “significantly poorer”.

“Skilled migrants contribute much more in taxes than they (use) in services, so they provide a really big boost to the federal budget,” he said.

“If you cut 10,000 places in that program, it would cost federal and state government budgets between $68 billion and $125 billion over the next 30 years.”

Originally published as Barefoot Investor Scott Pape addresses critics of immigration comments