Next government must prioritize long term housing policy at election
Housing crisis was building for decades and will take decades to solve if it can be solved, a senior policy expert tells Australian Conveyancer Quarterly.
BOTH Labor and the coalition must urgently move beyond election-cycle focused policy on property in order to secure a long-term solution to Australia’s housing crunch.
That’s the message from Paul Burton, director of the Cities Research Institute at Griffith University, who said there was no quick fix to solve the problem in the short term.
Burton, a veteran academic in urban research, policy and practice, said with the current housing crisis a long time in the making and accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, there was little either side of politics could meaningfully achieve in a single term of government.
The crisis was “building for decades and it will take decades to solve if it can be solved,” he told Australian Conveyancer. “It’s not something that can be sorted out overnight, and sometimes that seems to drive the political debate.”
He said a major stumbling block to traction on housing in Australia was that political parties “weaponized” it in the lead up to elections, undermining real action to tackle the issue.
The comments come after the government pledged to place a two-year ban on the purchase of existing Australian homes by foreign investors, adopting a coalition policy. The move has been labelled a tactic to neutralize the issue months out from an election.
“What would be good would be if there is long term relatively consistent policy making,” Burton, an emeritus professor, said, referring to the major parties.
The last thing we need is “‘I come into power I bring in my pet thing I’m there for a few years you say it’s rubbish because that’s what your job is to do and promise that when you get in you’ll over turn it.’”
“Flip flopping around, bringing things in then cutting them out, is the last thing we need but it’s what we get and there’s no reason that that’s going to ease up,” he added.
“It doesn’t matter if Labor hold on or if the collation comes to power, whoever forms the next government they are still going to confront rising land prices, tradie shortages, and construction material cost inflation – that won’t disappear.”
Less than two months out from the election, minimal detail is known about the housing policies the major parties will take to the poll.
Labor’s multi-billion Homes for Australia plan involves a promise of more tradies and construction workers, faster approvals and new incentives for getting builds underway. The coalition, meanwhile, has pledged to provide “shovel-ready infrastructure” via a $5 billion housing infrastructure program to unlock construction of up to 500,000 homes. It says the builds will be fast-tracked through grants and concessional loans.
Burton said he was positive about the Liberal-National plan as being supportive of more housing and a change from the major parties’ fixation with “scapegoats and silver bullets”.
The policy was “enabling” of more housing supply “and that’s important”, he said.
