James Morrow: Labor and Liberal housing policies reveal deep philosophical divide

The major parties’ housing affordability plans ask an age-old question about the role we should accept – or demand – governments play in our lives, writes James Morrow.

It is a shame that Scott Morrison released his housing policy so late in the election because, more than any other issue of the campaign, this debate has been the one where the deep bone marrow differences between the parties have really been revealed.

Think about it: Richard Marles aside, Labor has been at great pains to sound tough on national security and even attacked the Prime Minister from the right after the Solomon ­Islands-China deal was inked.

Labor is definitely more green than the Coalition but, with both signed up to Net Zero, it’s really only a matter of timelines (though if Anthony Albanese wins, a lot of his plans will very quickly smack hard up against global realities).

Even on hot-button culture issues like transgender participation in sport, Mr Albanese has sailed a line very close to the prime minister’s, ­rejecting 2+2=5 lunacy and declaring firmly that no, sorry, men can’t have babies.

But how to get young people into homes of their own?

When it comes to housing policy, PM Scott Morrison's is the only one that makes sense.

This is where the chasm really opens up – and it is a shame Australians have not had more time to ­explore not just the debate on the issue but the wider philosophical difference it reveals.

Because you don’t really get much starker than the gap between the Labor plan (essentially, the government becomes a part-owner of your house, with a lot of complex rules around who wins if you do up the kitchen) and the Coalition’s (use some of your super to get a place and put back the profits when you sell).

This was obvious even before the Coalition’s policy dropped when, in one of the debates, Mr Albanese said his solution to housing affordability and getting young people into a home of their own was to build more public housing units.

Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations: There’s nothing wrong with living in public housing, which Mr Albanese has spoken movingly of growing up in. But for ambitious young people looking to build wealth, a life with the state as their landlord or co-owner is not the ticket.

Nor should we accept that any ­policy that pushes up demand for housing and therefore prices must automatically be rejected, otherwise we would never take another immigrant again. Nor is it the way to a happy and prosperous old age, with all available evidence finding that property ownership is the best guarantee of a secure retirement.

And all of this is an analogy for the age-old question about how much of a role we should accept – or demand – in our lives.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison takes questions from journalists at a press conference during a visit to a housing site in Geelong. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images

In this way the debate is a bit of a mirror image of the debate over how we handled and continue to handle the pandemic.

While it is clear the Morrison government wants as much credit as it can for getting Australia through the pandemic as well as it did, more than a few conservatives found it a bit off when, at his campaign launch last Sunday, the “greatest hits” highlights reel trumpeted his closing of the borders – not just to people coming in but Australians trying to get out.

For them, the federal government’s backing in, or at least failing to protest, the most ridiculous excesses of the states while also forcing Australians to apply for exit visas to leave represents everything wrong with how the pandemic was handled and that bitterness has pushed many to flirt with more minor parties.

The housing debate would seem, then, to return politics to its more normal order where the Coalition is broadly speaking about the rights of the individual and Labor looks for centralised, statist solutions dressed up in buzzwords like care and ­inclusion.

Of course, with Mr Albanese now measuring the drapes at the Lodge – or at least perusing the “book the cook” options for the VIP jet flight he hopes to take to a Quad meeting in Tokyo next week – we may also start to see a push, this time from the feds, to revive pandemic restrictions.

Will Anthony Albanese revive pandemic restrictions if elected? Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Already the Opposition leader has said he wants to see a return of Covid-19 ads to push booster shots.

The Australian Medical Association, sensing opportunity, is again agitating for masks to return despite the community clearly deciding that ordinary Australians sense the level of risk and are happy to live with it.

Covid, like the debate over the role of the state and where do we put all these people, is not going away.

The best time to have had this ­debate over not just housing but how we relate to government was at the start of the campaign.

The second best time is now.