Australia’s growing political demand for lower migration may promise breathing space for the housing market, but the hospitality industry is warning of another consequence: cafés, restaurants and regional tourism businesses could be left without enough workers.
The Australian Restaurant and Café Association has launched its Stop Starving Hospitality campaign, claiming around 61,000 kitchen and front-of-house positions are currently advertised on SEEK.
For the Hawkesbury, with its cafés, pubs, restaurants, wedding venues, farm-gate businesses and visitor economy the question is a practical one. If migration is cut sharply without rebuilding local training, who will cook the meals, staff weekend shifts and serve the morning coffee?
The warning comes as migration and housing affordability become increasingly connected in the national political debate.
One Nation’s support has risen substantially while the party campaigns for unprecedented migration reductions, including net-negative migration during its first three years in office. It argues that reducing population growth would allow housing construction and infrastructure to catch up.
Recent polling has also found that a majority of Australians want migration reduced, while voters rank housing and cost-of-living pressures among their greatest concerns. One Nation is regarded by many voters as the party most likely to reduce immigration.
The federal government and Coalition have responded with their own lower-migration positions, although their policies are considerably less drastic than One Nation’s.
Labor has committed to reducing net overseas migration towards 225,000 a year by 2028. Its permanent migration program remains at 185,000 places for 2026–27, unchanged from the previous year, but it has shifted towards applicants already living in Australia to minimise additional population growth.
New skilled-visa processing priorities introduced in September favour construction, health care, teaching, agriculture, resources, aquaculture and fishing. Hospitality is not included in the highest-priority group.
ARCA argues that this political response risks shifting the cost of the housing crisis onto businesses already struggling to fill rosters.
Jobs and Skills Australia records about 967,200 people employed in accommodation and food services in February 2026, up from approximately 674,000 two decades earlier growth of more than 43 per cent.
ARCA chief executive Wes Lambert said governments could not expect the industry to continue growing while making it harder to recruit internationally.
“For 20 years, hospitality has been growing,” Mr Lambert said.
“We’ve built an industry that employs hundreds of thousands more Australians, supports tourism, creates opportunities for young people and contributes to communities in every corner of the country.
“But the Government appears to have forgotten something fundamental. You cannot keep growing an industry while cutting off its workforce.”
ARCA says modest annual industry growth of two per cent could require more than 25,000 additional workers each year. That calculation does not include replacements for employees retiring or leaving hospitality.
The association has presented scenarios in which advertised vacancies could reach 100,000 within 18 months, 150,000 within three years and 200,000 within five years.
Those figures are illustrative scenarios produced by ARCA, not official government forecasts.
“At 200,000 advertised positions, we would be looking at recruitment demand equivalent to almost two jobs for every food-service business in Australia,” Mr Lambert said.
“Think about what that means for the family restaurant, the suburban café or the regional tourism operator already struggling to fill a roster.”
The potential consequences include shorter opening hours, higher costs, reduced service and business closures.
Migration is not the only possible answer. Hospitality has long provided entry-level employment for young Australians, and stronger vocational education, apprenticeships and employer incentives could create more local cooks, chefs and restaurant managers.
But training takes time. A qualified chef cannot be produced quickly enough to solve an immediate vacancy, while regional employers can find it particularly difficult to attract workers when affordable accommodation and public transport are limited.
ARCA is calling for a five-year National Hospitality Workforce Strategy combining skilled migration with renewed domestic training.
Its proposals include practical visa pathways for chefs, cooks and restaurant managers, regional migration concessions, protection of the working-holidaymaker program, faster visa processing and stronger apprenticeship incentives.
The housing crisis has made the call for lower migration politically powerful. Rapid population growth adds to demand for homes, transport and essential services when construction has failed to keep pace.
But migrants do not only occupy homes. They also build them, care for older people, work in hospitals, harvest food and keep cafés, restaurants and tourism businesses operating. All these business dominate the Hawkesbury economy.
The challenge for the Australian Government is therefore more complicated than simply choosing between high and low migration. It must decide which workers Australia needs, where they are needed and how housing and infrastructure will be provided for them.
For the Hawkesbury, the risk is that a policy intended to ease housing pressure could leave local businesses with fewer people to open the kitchen, take an order or pour the first coffee of the morning.
