Demand is driving the housing crisis

Some might think that supply and demand are different ways of looking at the problem. In this case they aren't. If Australia didn't have an extremely high rate of immigration there would be no demand for additional housing, and so there would be no supply problem.

Many experts argue that immigration is necessary to meet labour shortages. It isn't: immigration causes labour shortages. Immigrants certainly supply labour, but they provide that labour steadily over several decades. However, they also bring a demand for labour, including an extremely high immediate demand. This is because immigrants immediately need housing, and all its accompanying infrastructure: roads, offices, shops, factories, schools, universities, hospitals, electricity power plants, water storage, and so on.

I moved to Canberra about 40 years ago. All of Gungahlin, and all of Molonglo, and much of Tuggeranong have been built since then, and all of it was built to satisfy a demand created by immigration. Immigration is a Ponzi scheme: it is required to meet demand caused by immigration.

The obvious solution is to reduce net immigration to zero until supply catches up with demand.

Steve Ellis (Letters, April 7) reminds me that about 1970 I was fortunate to spend a couple of hours in conversation with Margaret Cameron, the widow of Archie Cameron (speaker of the House of Representatives 1950-56).

I expressed a view that we should have a national education system. Mrs Cameron told me that she had once held forth along those lines while in the company of Sir Robert Menzies and that he politely but firmly disagreed.

As I recall her telling it, Sir Robert said that if we had a national system and a new method of teaching or some new prescribed subject matter was introduced and it turned out to be bad, then it would be detrimental to the whole nation.

The alternative being that with fear of such failure, a national system would stagnate with different but equally detrimental effects. He considered that the state/territory and public/private systems should remain entirely separate and be encouraged to experiment and learn from one another.

I don't think Sir Robert's intervention in the state aid issue detracts from the need to let the different systems do their own thing.

I essentially agree with your editorial "Our teachers deserve better than this" (canberratimes.com.au, April 7) although I would add that the community should demand better value for our money spent by the ACT government.

The ACT government spends about 20 per cent more per capita on education than the average of the other states and territories according to the independent Grants Commission.

The commission assesses that the cost of delivering education in the ACT is lower than average. Despite the extra spending, education outcomes in the ACT are not above average after adjustment is made for its higher average socio-economic ranking.

The situation outlined above is not isolated to education. Looking at expenditure in total, the ACT government spends about 25 per cent more per capita, even though the assessed cost of delivering services is slightly lower than average.

It is unlikely an ACT Labor/Greens government will ever grapple with the above. Labor is too close to UnionsACT to ever critically examine if the broader community is getting value for our money, while the Greens mantra for government spending is essentially "the higher the better".

The only good thing to come out of the war is that Pink Floyd is back together. That should crack Putin's wall and send him to the dark side.