Donald Trump’s shadow finally shifts off the federal campaign

This is investigations editor Nick Ralston, filling in for Bevan Shields while he takes a break.

After a dreary couple of weeks to start the election campaign, the Donald Trump-sized shadow that has hung over it shifted this week to allow more focus on domestic issues. It felt almost refreshing, even if the dominant topic was yet another instalment in the long-running debate on how to fix Australia’s housing problems.

When both parties launched their campaigns on Sunday, they put first home affordability front and centre of their pitch to voters.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen, James Brickwood

Since the start of the campaign, we’ve watched Anthony Albanese in countless healthcare facilities clutching his Medicare card and Peter Dutton pumping fuel into yet another outer suburban motorist’s car.

For the Herald reporters and photographers on the campaign buses, it’s been like Groundhog Day, but replace the film’s Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, with a marginal seat in an outer suburb.

“The Dutton campaign has adopted a routine. Drive to a marginal seat, inspect a housing development, speak to vetted punters, round up the journalists for a 40-minute press conference, leave,” says our federal politics reporter Olivia Ireland, who has spent this past week on the Dutton campaign bus.

“The afternoon is all about pictures. Dutton usually drops by a petrol station or manufacturing site, and the day then finishes. Days right now are well-oiled machines.”

Senior economics correspondent, Shane Wright, covering his 10th election campaign and this week riding with Albanese, likens the bus trips to being on “the biggest school excursion you can imagine”.

“Couple that with complete exhaustion, intense competition among the assembled journalists for any news break, and an amplified examination of every word and policy coming out of the major political parties,” Wright says.

For much of the first two weeks, the focus of the leaders’ daily press conferences was hijacked by the US president’s reckless upending of the global economy and financial markets.

But now, as we have a moment to breathe during Trump’s 90-day pause on his most damaging “reciprocal” tariffs and wait to see what chaos he unleashes next, we have also been able to put the focus firmly back on local issues.

And there is arguably no bigger issue affecting people across Sydney than the housing crisis. So when both sides launched their campaigns on Sunday and put affordability for first home buyers front and centre of their pitch to voters, we were always going to subject their words to the utmost scrutiny.

Labor pledged a government loan guarantee to allow first home buyers to purchase with a 5 per cent deposit. The Coalition is promising to first-time buyers who purchase new homes that they can claim loan repayments as a tax deduction (on the first $650,000 of a mortgage for five years).

And what’s the verdict from the experts? According to Wright, the combined $24 billion pledges from both sides have “little regard to recent economic history, the state of the budget, or what their plans will mean for future taxpayers and future governments”.

Economics editor Ross Gittins warned that there’s “no quick and easy solution to our housing affordability crisis. And almost all the schemes the two sides are waving about are just for show”.

Earlier this year, our Herald trainees produced the outstanding series Saving Sydney, which examined the crisis in our city, particularly for Gen Z, and asked young experts to come up with solutions on how to fix it. This week we went back to those experts and found they aren’t convinced of either party’s plan.

“Across the board, with each of these pitches that’s been put forward, undoubtedly they will be beneficial for a number of individuals, but I don’t think any of them are really going to do much for the system or the broader problem,” said 23-year-old senior urbanist at Ethos Urban, Matthew Thrum.

With the campaign now just past the halfway mark, and two more leaders’ debates – and countless service station and medical clinic visits – to go, who knows what the next two weeks will bring? What seems certain is that Sydney’s housing crisis will remain long after both candidates have left office.

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