James Morrow: Albo’s plan to turn us into a nation of renters will make us poorer

Peter Dutton has an opportunity to take up the cause of people priced out of homes by Big Australia policies, writes James Morrow.

Australia has been in the grips of an on-and-off housing crisis for at least a decade.

And now, God help us, the government might actually do something about it.

To listen to the popular narrative, the problem is one of decrepit Baby Boomers cornering the market on mouldy terraces and charging everyone else a king’s ransom in rent.

At the same time “NIMBY” (Not In My Backyard) councils block selfless and benevolent developers from building us the high rise utopias we just don’t realise we want to live in yet.

As with any narrative, this is partly truth and partly fiction.

Either way, it is one that is defining the battle for both sides of politics, at all levels of government.

Australians have been told to get over their obsession with the quarter acre block and embrace high density living. Meanwhile Jake, 8, and his brother Ethan, 12, enjoy playing sports in the their big backyard. Picture: David Caird

And Labor thinks it is on a winner, seeing the issue of housing as a way to lock in young voters, create a left-leaning class of permanent and protected renters, and finally bury the old Australian dream of the quarter acre block and its white picket fence.

NSW Premier Chris Minns has naturally thrown his lot in against the NIMBYs. His housing minister, Rose Jackson, has told councils to “get out of the way” of development goals.

An artist impression shows what a precinct in Ingleburn could look like with potential high-density residential housing.

But it is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who is really trying to make his mark here, deploying his increasingly standard MO of talking a quiet game while making big changes under the surface.

A child of public housing himself (who knew?), the PM has also put together a tidy little property portfolio himself (and, frankly, good for him).

In April the PM quietly pushed through tax changes to encourage big contractors and investment trusts — not mum-and-dad players — to develop “build to rent” unit complexes with security of tenure for renters and a long tail of profit for the backers.

It’s not hard to see this as a cynical play to turn Australians from aspirational homeowners to long-term renters.

Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has a chance to make political headway with the housing crisis. Picture: NCA NewsWire

But there are a few big problems with this idea, not the least of which being that a push to take property investment off the table as a way for ordinary Australians — even those now struggling to get on the ladder — could leave us all poorer.

The New York Times recently wrote about Vienna, Austria, describing it as a leaseholder’s paradise where social housing is the norm and two-thirds of the city’s rentals have their prices capped.

“Vienna has succeeded in curbing the craving to own,” it enthused.

But in doing so, and by pushing more and more citizens into government and limited profit association-run rentals, the Viennese have also curbed the ability of Austrians to acquire not only homes of their own but the wealth that goes with that.

According to Credit Suisse’s 2022 Global Wealth Databook, adult Austrians have on average a median wealth of around US$75,000.

By contrast, Australians are three times wealthier, enjoying a median wealth of US$273,000.

And, contrary to what one might imagine, Austria is still less better off when it comes to wealth inequality than supposedly avaricious Australia.

The point of all this is that we should be careful whenever we hear the word crisis and take a good hard look at who any proposed solutions will benefit.

And there are signs that voters are starting to cotton on.

Scape international student housing accommodation building is seen in Redfern, Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire

While there is a great deal of official hostility to the idea that migration should be slowed or that universities should be first and foremost for educating Australians rather than importing students to charge them a motza for degrees of dubious value, polls suggest there is an opportunity for the Coalition to run a counter campaign.

The latest Essential Report found that a majority of voters backed in not only rent freezes but also migration caps and restrictions on foreign ownership to deal with the housing crisis.

They also appear to back in the Coalition’s plan to let Australians invest their super in a roof over their head.

Peter Dutton has a golden opportunity here to run a counter-narrative that sets him up against Labor and the various lobbies it is courting in its attempt to remake Australia.

They key is to remind voters that while developers will always win whether they are selling their units or putting them up as part of build to rent schemes, ordinary Australians also win when they can have a piece of the action.

By all means, any sane policy means opening up more land for development and encouraging more mid-rise medium density housing.

But at the same time, the Coalition should push back against claims that the Australian dream is not only no longer possible but no longer palatable, and challenge powerful business and education lobbies that would rather see us become a dormitory nation.