Plans to solve Australia’s housing crisis are to the Greens what plans for nuclear power are to the Coalition – not “plans” but policies designed to win headlines and attract susceptible voters.
There is more chance of the Coalition overturning all the Commonwealth and state legislation necessary to allow the building of yet-to-exist small nuclear reactors than the states surrendering their powers over price setting and property rights to a Greens-controlled federal government.
That’s just the immediate practical issue. There’s also the matter of the policies not working in practice, of doing more economic harm than good.
The policy the Greens announced this week is an appeal to the third of Australians who rent, tapping into the deep and understandable frustration with a broken property market but not practically solving the crisis.
In fairness to the Greens, at least they have housing policy, parts of which head in the right direction.
Eight months out from an election, with housing rated Australian voters’ greatest source of dissatisfaction, the Coalition is still promising to cobble together something out of existing disparate and contradictory elements.
Labor, stymied in the Senate by the Greens and the Coalition, is pushing a grab bag of housing initiatives it hopes will be seen as at least holding the fort. As previously reported on these pages, Labor’s efforts add up to not much more than maintaining the status quo – but that’s a big improvement on the disastrous policies that preceded it over most of the past three decades.
The Greens’ attack on the landlord class could only begin to be sustainable if the most positive aspect of their platform had already come to fruition: affordable and social housing for rent and purchase built on a massive scale by government.
Various polls indicate Labor is getting no credit for that. Last month’s Resolve poll asked which party would perform best in 18 areas ranging from economic management and education to handling natural disasters and healthcare.
The Liberals came out on top in 15 of the categories. Labor was preferred in only two – “Welfare and benefits” (33 to 27 per cent) and “Issues affecting Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders” (25 to 20 per cent). It drew 29 per cent on “Healthcare and aged care”.
On crucial “Housing affordability and rent”, the poll had 30 per cent selecting Liberal, 24 per cent for Labor, 18 per cent for “someone else” and 28 per cent undecided.
The men and decisions behind Australia’s housing crisis
Mike Seccombe Although there are now no simple solutions, the housing crisis in Australia can be traced back to a handful of catastrophic policy choices made by John Howard and recommended by his friends.
Both Labor and the Coalition are talking about reducing immigration, though are yet to explain who, other than some students, will be denied entry.
The first of only two clear Liberal policies is to allow first home buyers to use money from their superannuation fund towards a purchase. There was to be a $50,000 limit – if young people are fortunate enough to have that much in their fund – but the shadow assistant minister for home ownership, Andrew Bragg, flagged last weekend that the limit would be increased.
Like every other government policy to provide more money for bidding at auction, the result would be higher prices. It increases demand but does nothing for supply.
The second Coalition policy is to scrap Albanese’s Housing Australia Future Fund, allegedly to save the interest bill on the $10 billion borrowed to establish it. In practice, it is a move to kill Labor’s housing centrepiece: increasing supply by helping build 30,000 new social and affordable homes over the next five years.
Along with another 10,000 units proposed under the Housing Accord with the states, the HAFF is the only federal effort to increase housing supply worth mentioning in three decades, other than a brief and successful scheme that was part of the Rudd–Gillard stimulus package during the global financial crisis.
With the percentage of social housing continuing to shrink, homelessness rising, waiting lists blowing out and the “working poor” joining those on social security in being unable to afford the private market, wiping out the HAFF’s 30,000 dwellings simply reeks of Liberal contempt for social housing and all who live in it.
Senator Bragg also floated a woolly idea of punishing states and councils that failed to get developers to build more housing, trotting out the usual development lobby line of the housing crisis being purely about planning and zoning red tape. Albanese is offering the carrot of extra cash to the same ends. It is not that simple.
isisius on
“That’s just the immediate practical issue. There’s also the matter of the policies not working in practice, of doing more economic harm than good.”
I don’t like that this line is used and then they don’t actually talk about the policies that do more economic harm than goodi can only imagine they are talking about the rent controls? Because the benefits of public housing owned by the government we have data in our own historical records of how good that is. Albanese is only where is he today because he had one to grow up in.
As for rent controls,
Germany has 53% of its country seemingly happy with renting.
They also have rent controls at a federal level, have had since 2015, and this year just extended it out to 2029.
They also have rental rights heavily in favour of the tenants.
This is why I find the argument around things like “rent controls are bad, greens dumb” to be frustrating
becuase the people making that argument obviously haven’t taken 20 seconds to google it.
There are mixed results across europe depending on how they enact them and what supporting legislation there is.
Although to be fair, when Albanese used the example of Berlin and rent controls as an example of why the policy is bad, the greens failed to point out that the Berlin stats were from a policy that was up for less than 2 years in Berlin before the courts removed it due to the federal level one already existing. And that the overall and longer rent controls had been a success for the renters.
And shockingly the rental market didn’t collapse. I know guys, I’m as shocked as you all.
But greens were dumb for not pointing that out.
SpiritualDiamond5487 on
the other thing to note is that at a state level, Greens do not engage in good-faith discussions about planning. They pander to NIMBYs by arguing for better heritage and neighbourhood character considerations in future development.
Considering the headline, “The Greens’ housing policy failures” , the article barely talks to the subject and certainly doesn’t make a case for it. The original headline “House guess” probably makes more sense.
4 Comments
Plans to solve Australia’s housing crisis are to the Greens what plans for nuclear power are to the Coalition – not “plans” but policies designed to win headlines and attract susceptible voters.
There is more chance of the Coalition overturning all the Commonwealth and state legislation necessary to allow the building of yet-to-exist small nuclear reactors than the states surrendering their powers over price setting and property rights to a Greens-controlled federal government.
That’s just the immediate practical issue. There’s also the matter of the policies not working in practice, of doing more economic harm than good.
The policy the Greens announced this week is an appeal to the third of Australians who rent, tapping into the deep and understandable frustration with a broken property market but not practically solving the crisis.
In fairness to the Greens, at least they have housing policy, parts of which head in the right direction.
Eight months out from an election, with housing rated Australian voters’ greatest source of dissatisfaction, the Coalition is still promising to cobble together something out of existing disparate and contradictory elements.
Labor, stymied in the Senate by the Greens and the Coalition, is pushing a grab bag of housing initiatives it hopes will be seen as at least holding the fort. As previously reported on these pages, Labor’s efforts add up to not much more than maintaining the status quo – but that’s a big improvement on the disastrous policies that preceded it over most of the past three decades.
The Greens’ attack on the landlord class could only begin to be sustainable if the most positive aspect of their platform had already come to fruition: affordable and social housing for rent and purchase built on a massive scale by government.
Various polls indicate Labor is getting no credit for that. Last month’s Resolve poll asked which party would perform best in 18 areas ranging from economic management and education to handling natural disasters and healthcare.
The Liberals came out on top in 15 of the categories. Labor was preferred in only two – “Welfare and benefits” (33 to 27 per cent) and “Issues affecting Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders” (25 to 20 per cent). It drew 29 per cent on “Healthcare and aged care”.
On crucial “Housing affordability and rent”, the poll had 30 per cent selecting Liberal, 24 per cent for Labor, 18 per cent for “someone else” and 28 per cent undecided.
The men and decisions behind Australia’s housing crisis
Mike Seccombe Although there are now no simple solutions, the housing crisis in Australia can be traced back to a handful of catastrophic policy choices made by John Howard and recommended by his friends.
Both Labor and the Coalition are talking about reducing immigration, though are yet to explain who, other than some students, will be denied entry.
The first of only two clear Liberal policies is to allow first home buyers to use money from their superannuation fund towards a purchase. There was to be a $50,000 limit – if young people are fortunate enough to have that much in their fund – but the shadow assistant minister for home ownership, Andrew Bragg, flagged last weekend that the limit would be increased.
Like every other government policy to provide more money for bidding at auction, the result would be higher prices. It increases demand but does nothing for supply.
The second Coalition policy is to scrap Albanese’s Housing Australia Future Fund, allegedly to save the interest bill on the $10 billion borrowed to establish it. In practice, it is a move to kill Labor’s housing centrepiece: increasing supply by helping build 30,000 new social and affordable homes over the next five years.
Along with another 10,000 units proposed under the Housing Accord with the states, the HAFF is the only federal effort to increase housing supply worth mentioning in three decades, other than a brief and successful scheme that was part of the Rudd–Gillard stimulus package during the global financial crisis.
With the percentage of social housing continuing to shrink, homelessness rising, waiting lists blowing out and the “working poor” joining those on social security in being unable to afford the private market, wiping out the HAFF’s 30,000 dwellings simply reeks of Liberal contempt for social housing and all who live in it.
Senator Bragg also floated a woolly idea of punishing states and councils that failed to get developers to build more housing, trotting out the usual development lobby line of the housing crisis being purely about planning and zoning red tape. Albanese is offering the carrot of extra cash to the same ends. It is not that simple.
“That’s just the immediate practical issue. There’s also the matter of the policies not working in practice, of doing more economic harm than good.”
I don’t like that this line is used and then they don’t actually talk about the policies that do more economic harm than goodi can only imagine they are talking about the rent controls? Because the benefits of public housing owned by the government we have data in our own historical records of how good that is. Albanese is only where is he today because he had one to grow up in.
As for rent controls,
Germany has 53% of its country seemingly happy with renting.
They also have rent controls at a federal level, have had since 2015, and this year just extended it out to 2029.
They also have rental rights heavily in favour of the tenants.
This is why I find the argument around things like “rent controls are bad, greens dumb” to be frustrating
becuase the people making that argument obviously haven’t taken 20 seconds to google it.
There are mixed results across europe depending on how they enact them and what supporting legislation there is.
Although to be fair, when Albanese used the example of Berlin and rent controls as an example of why the policy is bad, the greens failed to point out that the Berlin stats were from a policy that was up for less than 2 years in Berlin before the courts removed it due to the federal level one already existing. And that the overall and longer rent controls had been a success for the renters.
And shockingly the rental market didn’t collapse. I know guys, I’m as shocked as you all.
But greens were dumb for not pointing that out.
the other thing to note is that at a state level, Greens do not engage in good-faith discussions about planning. They pander to NIMBYs by arguing for better heritage and neighbourhood character considerations in future development.
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/la/papers/Pages/tabled-paper-details.aspx?pk=188665
Considering the headline, “The Greens’ housing policy failures” , the article barely talks to the subject and certainly doesn’t make a case for it. The original headline “House guess” probably makes more sense.