16/02/2026
Farrer By-Election: Immigration Distraction or Housing Reality?
By Tony Underhill, Regional Reporter
As the looming Farrer by-election approaches, immigration has emerged as the predictable political lightning rod. Candidates and commentators alike are framing the debate around population pressures, border controls, and the perceived strain of newcomers on regional communities.
But on the ground in Griffith and across the Riverina, the lived reality tells a very different story.
The real crisis is not immigration. It is housing.
Because without housing, there are no workers — local or foreign.
And without workers, regional Australia stalls.
The Hanwood example: a case study in paralysis
Nowhere is this more evident than the stalled Hanwood residential expansion, a planning proposal first initiated in 2023 specifically to address Griffith’s worsening housing shortage.
The facts are stark.
Despite council assurances that sufficient residential land exists, independent analysis told another story. Strategic housing analysis conducted by economic consultants identified a clear undersupply of residential land. Even after peer review by council’s own consultant, the conclusion ultimately aligned: Griffith does not have enough housing.
This is not theoretical.
Rental vacancy rates are understood to be below one percent — effectively zero in functional terms.
Local businesses cannot attract or retain staff because those workers have nowhere to live.
Short-term accommodation facilities remain permanently occupied by essential workers unable to secure permanent homes. Couch surfing and temporary arrangements are becoming normalised, even among employed professionals.
And yet, despite comprehensive planning studies covering flood modelling, infrastructure servicing, environmental impacts and traffic, the Hanwood proposal has been stalled — not rejected on technical merit, but constrained by bureaucratic staging preferences and procedural delays.
Land capable of delivering immediate housing supply sits idle.
Opportunity sits idle.
Workers remain absent.
Immigration is not the cause — housing scarcity is
This raises an uncomfortable truth largely absent from the by-election rhetoric.
Regional Australia does not suffer from “too much immigration.” It suffers from too little housing and too much red tape.
Griffith’s agricultural, food processing and industrial sectors depend heavily on skilled and semi-skilled workers. Many of these roles cannot be filled locally due to workforce shortages, demographics, and specialised skill requirements.
Qualified foreign workers are not displacing locals.
They are filling essential gaps that allow local businesses to expand, invest, and employ more Australians.
But exorbitant visa fees, excessive bureaucracy, and rigid planning systems are choking the pipeline on both ends — restricting the arrival of needed workers while simultaneously preventing the construction of homes those workers would occupy.
It is a self-inflicted bottleneck.
The policy contradiction
The current national conversation often conflates immigration with housing stress. But in regional communities like Griffith, the sequence is reversed.
Housing supply has been constrained first.
Immigration is then blamed second.
Yet cutting immigration indiscriminately does nothing to resolve the fundamental constraint: lack of available housing stock.
In fact, poorly targeted immigration cuts risk making matters worse by starving regional industries of the very workers needed to build homes, harvest crops, and sustain economic growth.
What regional Australia needs is not blanket immigration reduction, but smarter, regionally targeted migration policy.
That means:
• Prioritising visas for workers willing to live and work in regional areas
• Reducing excessive visa costs for qualified essential workers
• Removing bureaucratic delays preventing housing development
• Fast-tracking shovel-ready housing projects like Hanwood
• Cutting migration to already-oversupplied metropolitan labour markets
Regional communities should not be competing with capital cities for both workers and housing supply.
A test for Farrer’s next representative
The Hanwood planning proposal is now before the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure for Gateway assessment — a decision that will directly affect Griffith’s housing future.
But beyond Hanwood lies a broader question.
Will the Farrer by-election focus on political slogans about immigration?
Or will it confront the structural failures preventing housing from being built in the first place?
Because the solution is not complicated.
Build homes.
Free up land.
Cut red tape.
Enable qualified regional workers to live where they are needed.
Immigration is not the enemy of regional Australia.
Bureaucratic stagnation is.
Until that reality is acknowledged, housing shortages will continue, businesses will struggle, and regional growth will remain constrained — not by population, but by policy.
And voters in Farrer may soon decide which future they prefer.
