Editorial: Premier must act on housing crisis

The Premier insists she understands how important it is for people to have a roof over their heads. Why then is she persisting with a stupid tax grab?

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk – a recent but welcome convert to the need for action on Queensland’s housing crisis – has been talking a lot since her Road to Damascus moment this week about how her grandfather would often share with her “the importance for everyone to have a roof over their heads, regardless of their circumstances”.

As the Premier tells it: “He migrated to Queensland from Europe as a skilled migrant, living at the Wacol migrant camp before securing social housing. His stories have had a lasting impression on me. I understand that a roof over your head provides security for families. As the proud Member for Inala, representing the community I grew up in, I understand how fundamentally important this issue is. It’s issues like this of economic justice and equality that drive me every day as Premier. I know there are too many people doing it tough at the moment when it comes to finding affordable housing.”

Why then is this caring Premier persisting with a plan – hatched last year and legislated with the budget – to tax property investors not just on properties they own here, but also on their land holdings anywhere else in the nation?

It is a new tax grab that every single expert, with the notable exception of Treasurer Cameron Dick, warns will inevitably lead to higher rents – and so more people being forced to live in hostels, to couch surf, or to sleep rough.

It is an illogical move by a Labor government led by a Premier who claims to be personally driven by issues like housing affordability – justified by the most illogical of arguments from the Treasurer.

Asked last week about the tax grab, the Treasurer said: “I mean, look, when interest rates were at record lows. Did anyone see rents go down in Queensland? Of course they didn’t. That’s just an absolute furphy there’s no substance to that at all.” Um, OK. But rents sure as heck went up quickly when interest rates recently rose – as is logical, seeing as the owners of rental properties consequently had higher funding costs that they of course always pass on to their tenants. Property investment is not a charity.

It follows that when owners of any properties in Queensland who also own properties interstate are from next June hit with their bigger land tax bill they will pass it direct to their tenants. A case study example from the government itself reveals that if an investor owns a property in Queensland valued at $745,000 as well as $1,565,000 worth of land in Sydney (pretty average in that city these days) their land tax bill on their rented property here will overnight be lifted from $1950 to $8422 – $124 extra a week. Who do you think will be paying that extra?

As columnist Peter Gleeson wrote on Monday, this must be “the most hare-brained, stupid, appalling decision” that the Palaszczuk government has ever made.

And this tax grab will not just have a direct overnight impact on rents. A broader consequence will be to make Queensland a less attractive investment market – not only putting a brake on the broader economy, but potentially making proposed new developments unviable and in turn leading to fewer new properties on the market.

Treasurer Dick says this is all about “making our tax system fairer”. But it will force working Queenslanders to move out of their homes. Where’s the fairness in that?

Constitutional lawyers say the tax is not unconstitutional. But it is stupid. And dumping it is the easiest thing the Premier could do today to prove that she actually does care about the very people who have put their trust in her as a Labor leader.

MILES A MINISTER OF ACTION

In yesterday’s final instalment of The Courier-Mail’s much-talked about Power List, we urged Deputy Premier Steven Miles to put his natural nice-guy inclinations aside and muscle up a bit more to deliver genuine reform to the biggest issue facing Queensland (and one that is in his ministerial wheelhouse) – the housing affordability crisis.

We therefore welcome his move to yesterday take over the housing supply strategy of the Redland City Council, vowing to “remove regulatory impediments that prevent a variety of housing”.

It is a bold move that shows that in Mr Miles, state cabinet has at least one minister who actually understands the need to help.

In the same spirit, he should consider using his call-in powers to circumvent delays to developments across the region that have already been council-approved but are now unnecessarily stuck in the courts.

Originally published as Editorial: Premier must act on housing crisis