Whether prices are rising or falling, you can rely on the headlines to scream housing crisis. Michael Pascoe argues opportunity is knocking if there were a government with vision and ticker prepared to listen to the Mirvac former CEO.
Memo Canberra. It’s the housing, stupid. Has been for decades. Will be for decades, the way you’re going. It’s the core of the “cost of living” problem. It’s the core of growing inequality. It’s the core of the voter disaffection blamed for the rise of One Hanson. And you are not doing anything to improve the outlook.
Another week, another clutch of headlines and housing stories ranging the standard “let developers do what they want” to an unfortunately rare effort to expose the failure of “affordable” housing, courtesy of Four Corners.
Amidst the dross, one person stood out: former Mirvac CEO Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz. She featured in the Four Corners story, belling the nonsense of sweetheart deals for developers building “affordable” housing that is only “affordable” temporarily and pegging “affordable” rents to market rates.
“If you live in Sydney, something that’s 25 per cent below market rent isn’t affordable to very many people at all,” she said.
But Four Corners pulled up short on the wisdom on offer from Ms Lloyd-Hurwitz and the government advisory body she now chairs, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC).As previously opined here and elsewhere, for all its talk and annoucements and budget controversy, the Albanese Government is only
aspiring to maintain Australia’s present housing crisis, not solve it.
The Opposition proposes to make it worse. Such is the low ebb of Australian politics.
It’s the social housing
Two years ago Ms Lloyd-Hurwitz spelt out seven barriers to improved housing affordability and offered five steps to do more than maintain our housing crisis. The key point of difference between her steps and the numerous petshop galahs who dominate housing discussion was in her third barrier:
“We have under invested in social housing. Social housing as a proportion of all housing has fallen over recent decades, while demand has soared – wait lists for greatest need households are up 52 per cent since 2018. Given Australia’s remarkable and unparalleled record of 31 years of economic growth with only one short COVID induced recession, how can that be a fair and just outcome for our country?”
And that resulted in her nominated first step:
“Investing in social and affordable housing, whether that’s by government directly, or by the for purpose and private sectors, makes good economic sense, especially where it offers good access to employment and amenity.
“The Council believes that a firm target for social and affordable housing as a proportion of total stock should be established. An initial target of 6 per cent would be closer to estimated demand and consistent with the current OECD average of around 7 per cent.”
Labor fail, Coalition AWOL
This is where Labor fails and the Opposition doesn’t even start. Three decades ago, public housing made up six per cent of Australia’s housing stock. Now the combination of public and community social housing is on track to fall to close to three per cent.
State governments have steadily outsourced public housing responsibilities to community groups – effectively to charities, not all of them particularly charitable. More public housing has been demolished or sold by governments than built.
But the growth in community housing hasn’t done much more than maintain the overall number of homes while our population has risen.
Source: NHSAC 2025 State of the Housing System
The Albanese Government doesn’t aspire to do much more. Its HAFF stunt to eventually facilitate 50,000 community housing units won’t stop the erosion of the percentage of affordable housing, where our real housing crisis resides amongst the millions of Australians who will never make it to home ownership and can’t afford the broken private rental market.
Flapping of chops
Watching Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and NSW Planning Minister Paul Scully flap their chops on Four Corners could only make me wonder if they didn’t have a clue about the problem or simply didn’t care.
Yet this is where opportunity is knocking hard for a government that had a little vision and ticker.
There is a downturn in private construction just as there is a softening in the broader economy.
The opportunity is to fill that gap with public housing.
It’s been done before. The Rudd/Gillard Government successfully ramped up public housing construction as a generally overlooked part of its GFC stimulus package. That was the last time any government was serious about it.
The Albanese Government established the NHSAC and appointed an extremely able chair – but now ignores the solution she is offering.
Opportunity begging
The two million people at the bottom of the housing pile, the homeless and those renting in the dregs of the private market, those who will never scrape together a deposit or service a mortgage, are only paid lip-service. They are not seen as an important voting block.
They don’t get the sympathy offered first home buyers.
We taxpayers are handing over $7.4 billion in Commonwealth Rent Assistance, effectively subsidising private landlords for those offered no future beyond their uncertainty of tenure.
Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz has explained it simply, if any politicians cared. She is no bleeding-heart leftie. While she is known best for being a former Mirvac CEO, there is nothing “ex” about her. She is a non-executive director of Macquarie Group and Rio Tinto, among other things.
Opportunity is knocking Albo, if you care. As I’ve written before, Albanese is proud of his public housing log cabin story. Too bad he’s doing so little to give other children the same opportunity.
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.