Housing dilemma also about taking personal responsibility

Young people are suffering from years of inaction on housing affordability, but they have a role to play too. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

In 1973, when I was just six months old, my folks bought a modest home in a suburb of Perth called City Beach. Back then, it was nothing special. Neither the house, which was a glorified beach shack, nor the location. I remember that house for so many reasons. Growing up, I was freezing cold in winter and, when the Freo Doctor didn’t show, stiflingly hot in summer.

The house had no insulation, no heating, save an aspirational yet disappointing open fire, and no cooling. I also remember our neighbours had a pet kangaroo. It was a tad wild, back then.

Dad worked as a bank teller, Mum was at home with me and my then three-year-old brother. Nobody was living their #BestLife. Dad would go work as a brickie’s labourer during his holidays from the bank so they could get ahead. My Nonno famously raged at Mum and Dad that they had “bought in a slum!” As luck would have it, City Beach did not turn out to be a slum. Quite the opposite.

It’s stories like these that I was raised on which have helped shape my attitude to many things, and that I’ve reflected on during the ongoing discussion about the crisis in housing affordability.

You’re probably expecting me to say something like – well, if my parents sacrificed to get a house on one meagre income when they were young parents as poor as church mice, then anyone can, end of story. But it’s not the end of the story about housing affordability. It’s just one thread, and I’ll come back to it in a moment.

Both sides of politics have been promising to “fix” housing affordability. As if it were a wonky leg on a cafe chair, or a chipped tooth. In truth, this issue is the largest intergenerational, socio-economic challenge of our time. It is complex and it is fraught, and it is certainly not easily remedied. It will take more than the government’s planned National Housing Supply and Affordability Council. More bureaucracy isn’t the answer. It will take brave, significant, and deliberate reform. This is the reckoning.

There are legacy issues, poor policy and decision making, the likes of which have been kicked down the road by both sides of politics for decades.

The squeeze on the availability of land. A historic over-reliance on stimulus packages and subsidies. A focus on demand-side over supply-side issues. Over-regulation with green tape, red tape and every other kind of tape. All these issues need to be tackled hard and tackled together, and the lion’s share of it can only be addressed by government in the sense that its responsibility is to fix what’s broken, not to keep applying gaffer tape and hope for the best.

Which brings me back to the story of my folks and their beach shack in Perth in the early 1970s. To buy that place was a stretch for them, and I could wax lyrical about what my dad was earning as a teller (bugger-all) and the fact that my mum stayed at home with us kids, but that would be unfair because it doesn’t give full context.

As if anyone needed reminding, wage growth has been as still as the sea after a storm for the better part of two decades, while the cost of getting into the housing market has increased by something to the tune of 70 per cent. It’s almost as if there are some who treat this truth as some sort of betrayal of their own sacrifice. It’s not. It’s just a fact.

Auctioneer Jake Moore in action in Coogee. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Monique Harmer

That aside, the concept of sacrifice and personal responsibility is an unpopular but important thread to this conversation. Budgeting. Prioritising. Responsibility. Decidedly unsexy but important concepts. Living within our means. Delaying gratification.

This isn’t a trite observation about smashed avocado and soy lattes. It’s a real paradigm I’ve lived. In my own story, I didn’t take an overseas holiday from the age of 21 to 35, not even to Bali and I lived in Perth. Other things were more important to me. Getting established. Paying down a mortgage. Starting my company and not wanting to go to a bank to do it. Generally, avoiding debt as much as possible like any good ethnic kid does.

I realise that some of this is a ­reflection on my own values and priorities, but that is my point. Governments are responsible for policy; we are responsible for our behaviours and how we spend our money. What we prioritise and sacrifice for.

But for any plan to succeed, all the elements must work in alignment, and in this case the most critical element lay firmly in the lap of government.

You can’t have real wages growth without increased productivity. And you can’t have increased productivity under the burden of unnecessary regulation. Monetary policy can’t be the hero of all and the saviour of none.

I’m not suggesting where we are today is the fault of the Albanese government. They are, however, the ones with the opportunity to do something about it. Imagine if they did.