LAST week, Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe drew the ire of many thousands of young Australians when fronting a Senate estimates committee.
The housing crisis in this country is well known, but Dr Lowe had a pretty simple solution: get a housemate or stay at home longer.
‘Wow, why didn’t I think of that’ was the sarcastic response.
As most pointed out, it’s a tone deaf piece of advice from someone who is sitting pretty on a $1m base salary and living in a lavish five-bedroom home in one of Sydney’s most expensive suburbs.
That’s not a shot at Dr Lowe though, he has worked hard to get to where he is, and you can’t begrudge him for that.
But it does highlight the absolute mess Australia’s housing industry is in, and the complete lack of an answer of how to get out of it.
It is all well and good to suggest that getting into a share home is a sound solution in the short term, but that’s if you can even get into one in the first place.
Rents are astronomical, competition is fierce and the supply is low. It’s like the wild, wild west out there.
And that’s not even mentioning soaring inflation adding even more hurt to the hip pocket.
What is needed is more supply at an affordable level.
The Federal Government is attempting to address that with a $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund, the centrepiece of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s first year in office.
That includes building 30,000 new social and affordable housing properties in the first five years of the fund being enacted. However, politics are getting in the way of that.
Labor needs the support of The Greens, but that won’t come unless the Government meets their demands – an immediate rent freeze and $2.5 billion per year to purchase existing properties for social housing.
So far that has been flatly refused by Housing Minister Julie Collins, who said it wasn’t backed by “evidence”.
While politicians argue over the finer details, the housing crisis gets worse.
Perhaps they should focus on getting on with the job.
