Election 2025: Super housing wars erupt, as construction firms fold

The Coalition accuses super funds of pouring ‘more than $4.4bn’ into residential housing while spending millions campaigning against Peter Dutton’s super for housing policy.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and son Harry tours a house under construction in the Labor-held Melbourne seat of Hawke. Picture: Richard Dobson/Newswire

The Coalition has stoked a war with the $4.2 trillion super­annuation industry, accusing cashed-up retirement funds of pouring “more than $4.4bn” into residential housing while spending millions campaigning against Peter Dutton’s “super for housing” policy.

As Anthony Albanese and the Opposition Leader ramp-up their May 3 election campaign fight over housing, March quarter figures reveal construction firms continue to dominate the record 30,327 businesses that have collapsed since the 2022 election.

Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor on Tuesday seized on new ASIC insolvency figures highlighting the “worst start of any year on record for business failures”.

Australian Securities & Investments Commission data shows 3306 firms collapsed in the March quarter, including 809 construction businesses. Since Labor won the 2022 election, 7990 construction firms have become insolvent, ahead of 4715 hospitality businesses, 1983 retailers and 1530 manufacturers.

With Labor and the Coalition spraying tens of billions of dollars in funding promises to help first-home buyers, NSW Liberal senator Andrew Bragg attacked the big super funds for being “hypocrites” because they oppose Australians accessing super for housing while being major residential housing investors.

Coalition analysis based on residential property being 7.5 per cent within the property port­folios of 10 large super funds claimed they were investing “more than $4.4bn” into homes.

Senator Bragg, the opposition assistant housing affordability spokesman, said the super funds had also funnelled more than $25m into advocacy payments in 2024 to bankroll “lobbying to stop Australians from investing into homes which could be their own”.

Super Members Council chief executive Misha Schubert, whose members include Australian­Super, Cbus, Hostplus, HESTA, Australian Retirement Trust and UniSuper, hit back at Senator Bragg for claiming funds were buying up and leasing flats, apartments, townhouses and freestanding homes.

“It is fanciful to claim profit-to-member funds are turning up at Saturday auctions to outbid first-home buyers for the family home,” Ms Schubert said.

“Serious policy debates should be based on facts; what the evidence tells us is that policies that let people drain their super for a house deposit will only push home ownership further out of reach, driving up house prices by more than 10 per cent and leaving Australians poorer at retirement.

“That’s why a long list of credible economists all agree that super for housing will make the housing affordability crisis worse, not better.”

Senator Bragg said “big super will say and spend anything to muddy the waters on the ­Coalition’s super for housing plan”, which gives first-home buyers the choice to access up to $50,000 from their superannuation to buy a house. Under the policy, funds withdrawn from super would have to be returned when the house was sold to support retirement.

“Funds like AustralianSuper and Cbus have Australian property portfolios worth hundreds of millions each. Meanwhile they drop millions on advocacy payments to Super Members Council and Industry Super, which are directly campaigning against super for housing,” Senator Bragg said.

“At the very least the super funds should be consistent. Either investment in Australian housing is good or bad. It can’t be both.

“Under Labor, your super can invest in any home except your own. It is wrong. Australians should have the choice to use their own money to support their own home, not someone else’s.”

Ms Schubert said super funds were helping “solve the housing supply crisis by investing in the supply of housing, building more homes for Australians and generating returns for their retirement”. She said super funds typically invested in “large scale property developments including for social and affordable housing, and for build-to-rent-own”.

Ahead of Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and opposition housing spokesman Michael Sukkar clashing in an election debate on Wednesday, CoreLogic’s Quarterly Review showed nat­ional rents had climbed 38.4 per cent over five years – the equivalent of an extra $182 a week or $9442 annually.

CoreLogic economist Kaytlin Ezzy said the March quarter increase of 1.7 per cent signalled an easing in rental pressures.

“Rental growth is still tracking above the pre-Covid-19 decade annual average of 2 per cent, but the rate of change has slowed considerably. At 3.8 per cent, the 12-month change is now less than half the recent 8.3 per cent peak recorded over the year to March 2024,” Ms Ezzy said.

The increase in rent had prompted many households to adapt by forming larger households, particularly in capital cities.

“The further increase in the average household size due to worsening affordability, along with slowing in population growth, continues to put downward pressure on rental demand and … on rental value growth.”

The Albanese government says the level of corporate insolvencies as a proportion of all companies remains historically low and that recent increased activity is linked to Covid-19 settings being unwound.

After a record number of firms collapsed last year, Ms Ley said “three years of Labor’s economic vandalism … has hit housing hard”.