The only chart that matters in the endless housing debate is the following:
As house prices rise, the media’s hypocrisy rises with it.
The media, and especially Nine, employer of Ross Gittins, has a vested interest in house prices via its ownership of Domain.
That is why there is no concerted pressure placed upon any government to fix it.
Instead, there is an endless drone of fake whinging as journos collect a paycheck for not tackling the problem.
Ross Gittins wrote yesterday:
The cost of home ownership took off – that is, began rising faster than household incomes – about the time I became a journo 50 years ago, and is still going. Even the (unlikely) achievement of Anthony Albanese’s target of building 1.2 million new homes by 2034 probably wouldn’t do more than slow the rate of worsening affordability for a while.
You’d think there must be some kind of limit to how much harder it becomes to afford a home of your own, but considering how long it’s been running, it’s difficult to see just how it will come to an end.
There is a limit. But is defined by Ross Gittins and his cohort of hypocrites.
He went on:
The state governments – NSW in particular – are making genuine efforts to overcome the long-standing NIMBY resistance to higher-density housing.
Great. But if you think fixing the density problem will stop housing prices rising faster than household incomes, you’re deluding yourself. Just as fixing negative gearing wasn’t a magic answer, nor is fixing density.
No problem as big and long-lasting as declining home ownership could be anything other than multi-faceted. Yes, we need to fix the supply side. But yes, we need to fix the demand side as well. And there’s more to the supply side than density, just as there’s more to the demand side than negative gearing.
Yes, there is. In fact, Australian housing supply is far too high already.
But having raised demand as the issue, Ross didn’t even discuss it. And that comes down to one word: immigration.
Sure, he and others occasionally mention immigration so they do not appear entirely compromised, but what is needed to fix housing is a long and relentless campaign that pressures the government into cutting people inflows.
So long as Gittins’s hypocrites won’t mention the demand elephant in the room, the problem will only get worse.
It is no more complex than that.
