With just weeks until the country heads to the polls, Australians have made it clear that housing is one of the defining issues of this election.
Over the weekend, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton launched their campaigns with duelling policies aimed at first-time home buyers.
Labor announced it would allow first home buyers to purchase homes with a 5 per cent deposit. It also pledged $10 billion to go towards building 100,000 new homes over eight years — exclusively available to first-time buyers — by way of grants to states and territories, and zero-interest loans or equity investments.
The Coalition's policy would see interest payments on mortgages taken out by first-time buyers on newly built homes be tax deductible for five years.
Economists have been quick to give scathing assessments of some of the latest policies, which they argue will drive up demand, and in turn, housing prices. Chris Richardson labelled the major parties' platforms a "dumpster fire of dumb stuff", while Saul Eslake called the Coalition's planned tax deduction "candidate for dumbest policy decision of the 21st century".
But housing experts say the policies are missing the crucial issue driving the housing shortage.
New policies adding 'fuel on the fire' of housing shortage
While both the Coalition and Labor's latest plans claim to make it easier for first time buyers to buy homes, housing experts say the issue at the heart of the housing crisis remains the same: a lack of affordable supply.
And in that regard, neither of the major parties' newest announcements for first home buyers fully address the issue.
"One of the reasons we have a broken housing system in Australia is we've focused, over a number of decades now, far too much on measures that increase demand for housing, and not enough on supply side measures," says Michael Fotheringham, Managing Director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).
In particular, Dr Fotheringham was critical of the Coalition's claim its proposed policy would boost housing supply by offering a tax incentive on new construction.
"It might demand more new supply, but it is not an intervention to create new supply," Dr Fotheringham said.
"It's actually putting fuel on the fire."
He said that Labor's 5 per cent deposit scheme would also have an inflationary impact on prices, but was at least paired with a policy that sought to address housing supply.
Joey Moloney, the Deputy Program Director of Housing and Economic Security at the Grattan Institute, said one of the biggest challenges with building more homes at a federal level was the need for cooperation with state governments and local councils, in relation to planning approvals and land supply.
"It's tricky for the federal government, because they don't have a lot of levers on the supply side,"
Mr Moloney said.
"A lot of these really detailed and laborious policy levers need to be pulled at the state level."
Mr Moloney said a key piece of the housing supply puzzle was building more homes in established suburbs to ensure residents have access to infrastructure.
He pointed to the New South Wales Government's Transport Oriented Development program in Sydney, and the Victorian Government's Activity Centres program in Melbourne, but said the politics of targeting demand, rather than supply, were "simpler and easier".
"Inevitably, you're going to upset someone, because, inevitably, it's going to involve building an apartment building next to someone who doesn't want apartments next to them," Mr Moloney said.
"Then you're going to have local members getting confronted by people angry about what the government is doing in their neighbourhood — and there's a political cost associated with that."
Workforce, building material and land shortages pose barriers
Labour shortages were also repeatedly raised by experts as a key challenge for building more homes.
Dr Fotheringham said there needed to be a "genuine" workforce strategy from both major parties, beyond providing extra cash for apprentices.
"This is a problem in North America, in Europe and elsewhere. We need to be developing a new workforce," Dr Fotheringham said.
Katrina Raynor, Director of the Centre for Equitable Housing at think tank Per Capita, said the cost of building materials, while starting to ease, also posed problems.
She additionally raised concerns about the impact of land banking by big developers.
"There is a degree to which landowners and developers will strategically not develop land to wait until prices increase," Dr Raynor said.
"So you can move all the planning barriers in the world, and it still may not eventuate in rapid construction of housing."
The elephant in the room remains the lack of policies by the major parties for renters, who make up almost a third of all households.
Dr Raynor said she was supportive, in principle, of targeting first home buyers and new builds, but questioned the approach of getting more Australians into the housing market "at all costs".
"We continue to allow more people to get into a cooked system, without fixing it," Dr Raynor said.
"What are the implications of continuing on the same trajectory five or ten years into the future?"
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