Labor’s Housing Nightmare Continues

Labor’s housing nightmare has been further revealed at Senate Estimates.

The Treasury revealed that supply policies have failed. 160,000 dwellings will be built this year despite the massive spending on bureaucracy via Housing Australia. This compares to over 200,000 dwellings in 2018.

The failure was underlined by the Housing Supply and Affordability Council, who conceded that:

“The target is 1.2 million new homes over the period of the Accord which is five years and what other modelling the Council has done and released publicly earlier this year suggest we are looking at 943,000 over that period. So 260,000 short.”

When confronted with these figures, the Minister did not dispute that housing has gone backwards under Labor:

Senator Bragg: “But we're going backwards, gone from over 200,000 to 160,000, right? Or are you disputing those figures?”

Minister Gallagher: “I don't necessarily dispute the fact there is, we have certainly in the last year also seen pressure on the delivery of supply.”

To rub salt in the wound, Treasury told the Senate they hadn’t modelled the impact of Labor’s massive migration program on housing. The Treasury said:

“We have not done an exercise modelling with direct channels.”

Having failed on supply, the government is out of ideas for first-home buyers.

Minister Gallagher told the committee the government’s only demand-side policy, ‘Help to Buy’, is destined never to see the light of day:

Senator Bragg: “So, there's not a lot of options, is there, on the demand side, Minister?”

Minister Gallagher: “Well, we have a range of, um, measures.”

Senator Bragg: “You've got two? One you inherited, and one that's stalled.”

After two years, Labor has presided over a failure in housing supply and is clearly out of ideas to help first-home buyers.

We need to get the Australian Dream back on track.

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