At 31 August 2026 there were 2,878,973 people in Australia on temporary visas. Take out New Zealand citizens, visitors and crew, and 1,825,403 remain, looking for somewhere to live in the same market you are. This week renters in Western Australia asked the government to cap how fast rents can rise. They are right that something has to give. But a cap only deals with the price. It leaves the crowd at the inspection exactly where it is.
What happened to Veronica?
Veronica Johnson is a financial counsellor in Broome. Her job is helping people across the Kimberley who are in trouble with money.
Since 2021, the rent on her own unit has climbed to $740 a week.
When her lease ended, the only similar place was the same kind of unit, in the same complex, one floor away. It was advertised at $1,000 a week.
Without help from her employer, she told the ABC, she was facing homelessness. This is someone who manages money for a living.
What are renters asking for?
A group of housing organisations called the Make Renting Fair Alliance wants a cap on rent rises in WA. Its report argues for a limit of 2 per cent this year.
Another group, Everybody's Home, surveyed renters, home owners and people in temporary housing. Two in three said they would struggle with a rent rise of just $20 a week.
The WA government has said no. Commerce Minister Tony Buti says a cap could put investors off renting out homes, and leave fewer places on the market.
Would a rent cap fix it?
It would slow the rent. It would not change how many people want the same home.
Rent goes up when more people are chasing a place than there are places to go around. A cap tells the landlord the most they can charge. It does nothing about the line of people at the inspection, and the landlord still gets to choose among them.
So the price might hold for a while. The competition does not go anywhere.
Who is in that line?
Everyone looking for a place to live, in the same suburbs and the same towns. That includes the 1,825,403 people here on temporary visas.
That is not a criticism of them. They need somewhere to live like anyone else. It just means every decision about the size of the intake lands on renters first, well before it reaches anyone who already owns a home.
Our housing capacity page shows what Australia built last year against how many people it added. In short, the population grew faster than the homes to hold it.
Why is the intake still this high?
The usual answer is that the country is short of workers. That answer is getting weaker every year.
The government's own shortage list, updated this week, found only 27 per cent of the jobs it checked are now short of workers. That is well down on 2023.
Some of the jobs dropping off are the ones software can do. Software testers and automation test engineers are no longer on the list at all. Automated tools now do a lot of that testing work.
So the jobs case for a large intake keeps shrinking, while the line for every rental stays long.
If the intake is cut, will my rent go down next year?
No. Anyone who promises that is not being straight with you.
Rents move with how many people are chasing how many homes, and that shifts over years, not months. What changes first is the competition: fewer people at each inspection, fewer applications for each place, and less room for the landlord to push the next rise. Lower rents can follow, if the cut holds.
That is slower than a cap. But it is the only fix that actually makes the line shorter.
Who is offering to make the line shorter?
One Nation. Its plan would cut the temporary migrant population by 750,000 over three years.
The party says the aim is to ease the pressure on housing and essential services. Not to build faster for a bigger intake, but to have fewer people chasing the homes that already exist.
That is why One Nation should lead the next government, with the Liberals and the Nationals supporting it. The Liberals have moved toward a lower intake. The Nationals see what high rents do to regional towns that need workers to stay. One Nation is the only party that has put a number on shortening the line.
A cap would have slowed Veronica's rent. It would not have given her more than one place to choose from. Fewer people chasing the same homes would.
For the full numbers, see our pages on the temporary visa population and housing capacity.