Hypocrisy, thy name is politics. Sanctimonious lies, spin and obfuscation are already thick upon the ground in Parliament, with a field too crowded to select a Hypocrite of the Week. Still, Michael Pascoe is judging the midweek title.
According to the Gallup World Poll, housing is the issue that concerns Australians most – more than healthcare, more than the environment, more than education. And that means all sides of politics are fighting to be seen as the most concerned about that concern.
In the process, none escapes the charge of hypocrisy. As the Pope has advised American voters, it’s a matter of selecting the lesser evil.
With housing policy established as key electioneering battleground, two Labor housing policies before the Senate inevitably mean trench warfare, the LNP and Greens coalescing to block the bills, Labor in high dudgeon and wanting to make the most of the theatre.
Max Chandler-Mather
The most obvious nomination for Hypocrite of Week is the Greens housing spokesman, Max Chandler-Mather, as he reinforced the Greens’ motto perfectio sit inimica bonorum – let perfection be the enemy of the good.
To the Greens’ record of killing the “Malaysian solution” and Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, add Help to Buy – Labor’s co-equity program aimed at helping lower income people get into 40,000 homes over the next four years.
Mr Chandler-Mather claims the scheme wouldn’t help enough people to be worthwhile and would push up housing prices – but he’s prepared to accept that if Labor gives him some political face by doing a deal on the Greens’ demands for rental regulation change, the regulations that are matters for the individual states.
Yet under Help to Buy, a lucky couple with joint income of up to $120,000 and a two percent deposit could score the Federal Government as their “bank of mum and dad,” taking up to 40% equity of a modest new dwelling or up to 30% of a second-hand home. The means testing and price cap should tilt the scheme to favour people who otherwise could not get a toe on the first rung of the property ladder.
Labor could suggest the co-equity amounts to a sort of partial social housing – the stuff the nation is desperately short of – but it doesn’t.
The LNP is opposed to the scheme primarily because it is the LNP and secondly because the modern Liberal Party has a visceral dislike of anything that smacks of “houso”, even partially, being only interested in people who can own their own homes and therefore have more chance of voting conservative.
Officially, the LNP says people don’t want to share their breakfast table with Albo, and the housing crisis will be solved if people are allowed to access their superannuation savings for a deposit.
By implication, if you haven’t amassed a big enough super pile, you don’t deserve to own a home.
Andrew Bragg
The Coalition’s “assistant homeownership spokesman” (when your homeownership spokesman is Michael Sukkar, you need all the assistance you can get), Andrew Bragg, was out and about on Tuesday, earning his entry in Hypocrite of the Week by torturing Parliamentary Budget Office data to claim the super idea would save the government $1 billion in its first four years by reducing Commonwealth Rent Assistance and $2.8 billion over a decade.
As the SMAge reported ($), Senator Bragg seemed to somewhat overlook the PBO’s numerous qualifications that made those figures look, shall we say, somewhat fanciful. In other words, bullshit.
Most obviously, the sort of people with $50,000 or $90,000 in super generally don’t qualify for CRA – you have to be poor for that.
(And plenty of people are. Labor likes to boast about increasing CRA payments – CRA is budgeted to cost more than $32 billion over five years – when the existence and size of the scheme effectively subsidising landlords stands as a condemnation of our lack of public housing.)
Among other things, Senator Bragg also didn’t bother to consider the cost down the track of higher pension payments caused by people having used their super. Ever since he was a paid shill for the private super funds and banks, Andy’s had a bit of a thing about attacking industry super, in particular, at any opportunity.
While addressing the Real Estate Institute, he also slagged off Labor’s other stymied housing bill, Build to Rent, which would encourage the construction of long-term rental accommodation by corporate landlords, calling it “Labor’s rent-forever plan” and, in keeping with LNP policy, ignoring the reality of our broken housing market meaning a large percentage of Australians will, in fact, have no choice but to rent forever.
After all, the LNP is pledged to scrapping the Housing Australia Future Fund and the 30,000 social housing dwellings it will pay for. Bloody houseos again.
Claire O’Neil
Meanwhile, there is newbie Housing Minister Claire O’Neil, who has hit the ground running with nothing new to say but saying it anyway. On last week’s Q&A program, she did a credible job of criticising the LNP’s super-for-deposit over its main weakness. Like all the various first-home buyer schemes, it adds to demand but does nothing to increase supply, thus adding to pressure on prices and making the overall crisis worse.
Which is true, just like Labor’s Help to Buy program she was out selling this week.
Whether it’s accessing super or co-equity, such demand-increasing policies only have merit if the government is also supplying supply – ensuring there is adequate housing to absorb the increased demand. Neither do.
Jane Hume
So all three housing players are in the running for the Hypocrite of the Week title – but for mine, they are beaten by the shadow finance minister, Jane Hume.
While never losing her set smile on Sunday’s ABC Insider program, Senator Hume busily attacked Labor’s industrial relations changes that were causing inflation, making labour more expensive and worsening our productivity problem.
A casual viewer might have received the impression from Senator Hume that productivity is improved by cheaper labour and worsened by dearer labour when the opposite is the case.
Labour productivity is the amount produced divided by the number of hours worked – the price of the labour is irrelevant.
And in the real world, more expensive labour drives greater productivity-enhancing investment, while cheap labour is used as a substitute for capital.
As the shadow finance minister would surely know that, she gets my vote as Hypocrite of the Week.
Well, she would know that, wouldn’t she? With Angus Taylor as shadow treasurer, you couldn’t risk having an economically ignorant finance spokesperson – could you?
Crisis, what (housing) crisis? Dutton to scrap 30,000 homes.
Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.