House prices a poll issue Negative gearing battleline
HOUSE prices are going to be a huge battleground for the election.
Labor wants to change the negative gearing system so people can only use it to buy a newly built house, not an existing one.
The idea is to reduce demand in the current market and push prices down, making it easier for people to buy their first home.
But here’s the battlefield. The majority of people already own or are paying off a house in Australia. To be precise, 67.5 per cent of homes are owned or being paid off.
This breaks down to 30.4 per cent of homes that are paid off with 37.1 per cent of places being paid off.
About 30 per cent are renting and 3.5 per cent of properties are public housing.
The politics of getting young people into the housing market seems obvious, but for this to happen prices have to fall.
But why would almost 70 per cent of people want the value of their home to decrease?
The assumption is people are willing to lose a little of the value of their place to make it easier for the kids to buy something.
However, if you are thinking of selling, or planning to do it to pay for your later years, you want as much money as possible. Here is the political opportunity for the government.
The numbers are on their side and as the old saying goes, always back the horse called Self-interest.
The challenge is, can the Liberals get a run in the media to make this point?
Many of the people who work for online news sites are inner-city renters who are hardwired to the argument of “prices must fall”.
But that’s not where the bulk of people in the suburbs are and they are there for the political taking.
Does the Prime Minister and his team have the skills to go around the digital gatekeepers and appeal to people quarter acre by quarter acre?
War of ex-PMs
It seems the first rule of former Prime Ministers’ fight club is to always talk about former Prime Ministers’ fight club.
This week, Malcolm Turnbull called Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd ‘ghosts’ for staying around after they lost the top job.
Then Kevin Rudd was screaming about who owns the newspapers.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Rudd’s popped his head up only weeks out from the release of his second book about his political career where he’ll no doubt settle some scores with Julia Gillard.
And finally, we got Paul Keating smashing Turnbull for doing very little on the job to progress issues like the Republic.
It should be noted that multi-election winners John Howard and Bob Hawke rarely comment and often appear together to offer thoughts on the day’s events, but they don’t bring the brass knuckles and glass jaws.
They are very much the nation’s grandfathers who have more in common about their love of country than love of a vengeful headline.
As for Tony Abbott, he’s putting his heart and soul into working with indigenous Australians with a focus on getting as many as possible to go to school.
I’m not going to pretend this very club of former PMs bashing each other isn’t great fodder for my TV show.
But every time they think they’ve scored a point from beyond the Parliament, they take at least one off themselves.