Remark shows Scott Morrison is living on another planet

Australia is still a special country that has a key point of difference from many nations on earth. But there is one big issue holding it back.

Australia was once looked upon as a haven for working people – an egalitarian society set apart from the old norms of European civilisation where society was structured by rigid class systems.

These were systems that kept those who often did the hardest work trapped in circumstances where they dared not aspire to the comfortable lives of those born into wealth. These issues plague many countries around the world to this day.

Australia however, did things differently and it was one of the things that made this nation great. I know this because of my own experience of Australia and how it shaped the person I am today.

When I arrived here almost a decade ago, I was dejected from the experiences of trying to find a decent job in the UK – where it was clear your accent, who you knew was more important than the skills or the passion you brought to the table.

In Australia, we sometimes banter about these divides when it comes to things like the State of Origin, but the reality is they really don’t matter that much.

Within weeks of landing in Australia, I had secured a well-paid job that suited my skills and my ambitions after years of failure in the UK.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: Gary Ramage/NCA NewsWire

It turned out Australia’s reputation as a fairer nation was not just a myth.

Manual labourers, cleaners, aged care workers and tradies all have a higher standard of living than professionals in many nations across the world. People who want to work hard can very often find well-paid work.

However, Australia’s reputation as the land of the fair go is under threat – with an ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots becoming clearer by the day.

Key to this divide is the issue of home ownership.

Owning the place where you live is sold to us as the “Australian dream”. In reality it should be an attainable reality for people who work hard for years on end and are sensible with their money.

However, this is not the case and it is a problem we have all known about for years, yet nobody in the political establishment seems to give a damn. After all it’s the money-spinner that keeps on giving, so why rock the boat?

This week, the Prime Minister gave an interview to the Today show in which his attitude towards home ownership was on full display.

He was asked by host Ally Langdon on Wednesday why the budget was being touted as a cost-of-living budget that would help all Australians despite not including anything to help people struggling to keep up with rising renting prices.

“(The) best way to support people who are renting a house is to help them buy a house,” he replied, before explaining how his government had helped more than 300,000 people into their first home.

It didn’t seem to cross his mind that one of the main reasons people can’t afford their own home is because almost all their money goes towards rent and the skyrocketing cost of living.

The dream of home ownership remains a tough nut to crack for many.

Lettuces now cost $5.50 and filling up your car costs almost $100 – but we’re not seeing an increase in wages.

A predicted interest rate rise will also have a flow-on effect to renters who will undoubtedly be forced to pay more once their landlords’ repayments increase.

The Prime Minister’s solution to this? Just buy a house, you bunch of muppets.

He later claimed the quote was taken out of context, and he was merely talking about how the government is “helping people buy their own home”.

But if you look at the policies he’s talking about, and that were expanded upon in this week’s budget, you’ll see that they are not even a Band-Aid solution – in fact experts believe they are just making the problem even worse.

The flagship policy that will affect the most Australians looking to buy a first home is the First Home Guarantee, which will be expanded to 50,000 places a year for the next three years.

This means tens of thousands more aspiring homeowners will be able to buy a property without having to save a 20 per cent deposit. Instead they will be able to buy a home with a deposit worth just 5 per cent of the property’s value.

Single parents can buy with an even smaller amount of savings. They will need just a tiny 2 per cent deposit if they are lucky enough to get on the government’s expanded Family Home Guarantee.

In other words, the government’s solution to an over-inflated property market, that is quite clearly being driven up by excessive demand and a shortfall in supply, is to encourage low income earners to saddle themselves with even larger amounts of debt.

This appears to be an almost irresponsible move considering we are facing interest rate rises.

People with higher levels of debt – for example those who bought their homes with a ridiculously low 5 per cent deposit – could be crippled by even the smallest increase.

Experts say the government’s policies will push prices up even further.

To top it all off, experts say that giving people extra money to buy a home just makes all houses more expensive while failing to address structural issues such as building the half a million homes needed to meet the chronic shortage of supply in the country.

In other words, it is doing the exact opposite of what is needed to help the vast majority of people looking to buy their first home.

RMIT University’s emeritus professor of environment and planning Michael Buxton said that when buyers have a larger budget to spend, they can bring forward purchases that would have eventually happened anyway – while leaving behind those for whom homeownership has slipped out of reach.

“Every time the government announces assistance packages for home buyers it just goes on to the price of housing because developers simply raise the price of the house and land packages they are selling,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald this week.

“All these homebuyer grants do is stimulate demand, which increases pressure on the supply of houses and prices of housing products.

“Governments know this. But they get a free kick just before the election, so they keep on making the same mistake and adding significantly to the price of housing in the longer term.”

So instead of coming up with a plan to build more homes or a real incentive to give first home buyers a level playing field against greedy investors looking for their third or fourth rental house, the government is encouraging people to take on ridiculous levels of debt at a time of major economic uncertainty and artificially inflating the prices of homes even further.

All this does is to increase the divide between those who can’t get their foot in the door and those who have amassed a portfolio of properties to bolster their wealth.

It’s a mindset that pushes Australia towards a state where people who are born into disadvantage stay there and those who have the keys to the castle have bolted the door.

That is something I thought Australia was better than.