Mark Bouris calling with a warning about Labor

Home loan king and self-made millionaire Mark Bouris has ­entered the election housing battle.

Mark Bouris is doing 200,000 robocalls across Australia telling voters that Labor's housing policy will destroy the property market. Picture: Hollie Adams,

Home loan king and self-made millionaire Mark Bouris has ­entered the election housing battle by placing 200,000 automated phone calls into marginal electorates warning that Labor’s negative gearing and capital gains policies would wreck the housing market.

The mortgage broker’s foray sparked a social media firestorm yesterday and an intervention by the Australian Elect­oral Commission after complaints that he had breached electoral laws.

The former host of The Apprentice, who is more famous for starting Wizard Home Loans in competition with the big four banks, said he had ­decided to fund his third-party campaign on his own initiative and had not been put up to it by a political party.

He said the AEC had called him yesterday to advise that his automated message was a technical breach because it failed to have proper authorisation such as disclosing where he was from.

Mr Bouris’s robo-message began with: “This is Mark Bouris.” To satisfy the AEC, he was forced to change it to: “This is Mark Bouris from Sydney.”

It is understood the message went into the Queensland marginal seats of Forde and Petrie; the South Australian seat of Boothby; Wentworth, Reid and Warringah in Sydney; and Swan and Stirling in Western Australia.

Mr Bouris came under attack on Twitter for the message, which contained an explicit warning about Labor’s negative gearing policy but stopped short of urging recipients to not vote Labor.

“What we don’t need after this Saturday’s election is a government that brings further pressure on the property prices in Aust­ralia by eliminating negative ­gearing and changing the capital gains tax regime for property,” Mr Bouris says.

“My view is this: if Labor wins, if they bring in negative gearing changes and the capital gains tax changes, house prices will fall. They’ll continue to fall at a very rapid rate. And what’s worse is our kids are gonna have to pay more rent because investors are going to have to put the rent up to recoup the losses they would normally get as a tax deduction. So this Saturday when you’re voting, please think very carefully, consider who you vote for, because it could affect the future of us and our children.”

Mr Bouris said he had been shocked by the abuse he had received on Twitter, claiming he was exercising his democratic right.

The Yellow Brick Road founder was yesterday attacked by ­opposition Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen, suggesting he was in cahoots with the Liberal Party.

“I know that Mr Bouris is also engaged in some robocalls which are unauthorised,” Mr Bowen said. “But what we don’t know is who paid for those robocalls: was it Mr Bouris or the Liberal Party?”