The ABC has produced a great report today on the high degree of investment property ownership by Australia’s federal politicians, which is likely acting as a strong disincentive to them making fundamental reform to fix Australia’s housing woes:
The 226 individuals own 524 properties between them and about half of them own investment properties.
That means many of our politicians have a very personal interest in any changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.
Ninety-six per cent of parliamentarians own a property. Only 10 out of our 224 elected officials aren’t in the game.
Compare that to the rest of Australia, where home ownership is expected to dip below 50 per cent sometime this year…
Almost half of our parliamentarians have an investment property. Among the general population, the rate of investment property ownership is about 10 per cent, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia…
There are 105 government MPs and senators and they own 290 properties between them. About half of these properties, 139, are investments.
The average Coalition politician owns 2.8 properties.
There are 190 properties held by the 95 Labor MPs and senators.
The minority, 72, are investment properties.
The average Labor politician owns two properties…
There are 264 homes listed as residential. If you do the sum like us, you’ll realise that’s more primary residences than politicians.
Many have holiday homes and some do maintain a Canberra home too.
But they also have a lot of investment properties; we found 228 all up. The average number of properties owned by investing politicians is 2.1.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
