Anthony Albanese has made big and bold promises to solve Australia’s generational housing and rental crisis, headlined by key performance indicators that if not achieved spells trouble for Labor.
Under pressure from the Greens and Coalition on his left and right flanks, the Prime Minister has made a virtue in government of setting clear targets on everything from housing and emissions to domestic violence and renewables.
Ahead of his coronation as “king of the Australian Labor Party” at national conference in Brisbane – where he will be welcomed by thousands of CFMEU protesters – Albanese on Wednesday pledged to build 1.2 million well-located homes in five years.
After a brief meeting with premiers and chief ministers, the former local government minister declared that national cabinet’s package delivers the “most significant reforms to housing policy in a generation”.
Federal Labor is showing leadership on planning, zoning, land use, community infrastructure and migration reforms that should have happened decades ago.
But by doing so, it takes ownership of what is traditionally in the remit of local, state and territory governments.
At a time when Australian employers are crying out for skilled workers, the nation is gripped by a crippling housing supply shortage. It’s a shortage that cannot be reversed quickly and requires more than lip service from politicians.
It requires courage from politicians who seem more interested in placating the concerns of NIMBYs and green activists ahead of the wider community, national economy and those desperate to crack the property market.
Rent freezes and punishing landlords are also temporary fixes that do nothing but spook the market.
Albanese’s marquee $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund, which remains stalled in the Senate, has become a distraction that must be resolved quickly to give investors and developers certainty.
It is one piece of a very complicated puzzle that premiers and chief ministers seem incapable of working out.
With one-third of Australians renting, Greens leader Adam Bandt is playing politics to pick them off from Labor ahead of the 2025 election.
On the other side, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is targeting hundreds of thousands of Australian households under mortgage stress who have fallen off fixed interest rates.
The politics of housing is becoming brutal and frightening.
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