DUMB AND DUMBER, BUT WHICH IS WHICH?

AT last we have one – just a single one – bipartisan policy that will be delivered irrespective of whether it’s Bill or Scott who ends up sleeping with the prime minister’s wife in The Lodge after Saturday.

Depressingly, that’s the full extent of the “good news”. For, unfortunately, the policy’s a stinker.

It is some combination of just embarrassingly awful, ineffective and tokenistic, and seriously and dangerously damaging – to the very people it is, to use a word loosely, “designed” to help; as well as, damaging to the broader general public.

I refer of course to Scott and Josh’s “good idea immediately ahead of a campaign launch and just one week out from an election, so there’s not too

much time for critical analysis” – that is actually a “(very) bad idea in every one of the other 359 days in the year”.

This is Sco-Jo’s proposal to tackle the problem of having two categories of home-loan borrowers – investors who can advantage themselves by negatively gearing, and first-home buyers (FHBs) who can’t – by creating a third and even more disadvantaged tier to sit beneath these two.

Thanks to Sco-Jo, there will now be – up to – 10,000 FHBs every year who will be better able to compete at auctions and private sales by either getting a bigger home loan than they would otherwise have got, or just getting a loan that they would otherwise not have got.

But that means the other

90,000 or so FHBs every year will be further – but thankfully, hopefully(?), only marginally – disadvantaged because they won’t get the government handout and yet they will find they are competing now against not just investors but this new cohort of privileged firsttime buyers.

Hmm, I’m not sure about the political smarts. Did Sco-Jo really think they could fool all of the 100,000 potential FHB-borrowers (and, presumably, recently enfranchised voters) some of the time (at least, through Saturday) that they’re all going to be winners of their Home Loan Lotto?

Well, it would appear the opposing team, Bi-Chri

certainly thought that, given the alacrity with which they pivoted 180-degrees to announce Labor would deliver the same policy.

This made it the only policy that is exactly and completely bipartisan and so absolutely guaranteed to whip through the Senate without touching the sides, or especially the crossbenches.

There were the opposition leader and shadow treasurer saying in effect: We don’t know exactly what Sco-Jo propose, but we agree with whatever they said.

Hmm, where have we heard that before?

Oh yes, the ultra-loyal minister Shorten saying he didn’t know what his leader, then-prime minister Julia Gillard had said, but he absolutely agreed with it in its entirety. At least he’s, for want of a better word, “consistent”.

I’m not sure which was worse. Sco-Jo coming up with the dumb scheme? Or Bi-Chri so promptly adopting it?

ON the one hand, but for the first duo’s genius of invention, it would not have seen the light of day. At least, that is, not in the fervid heat of especially the last week of an election campaign.

Yes, there are similar schemes that operate in other places, notably New Zealand.

At least, outside a campaign, any such proposal could be subject to at least half-reasoned analysis from Treasury, RBA and APRA “inside the tent” and a whole range of players outside it.

But on the other, how dumb – and indeed unhelpful to good (insert laughter here) governance were Bi-Chri – for not only seizing a policy they have absolutely no idea about, but in adding it to Labor’s existing attack on negative gearing?

THERE are two parallel series of problems with the idea.

How would it actually work – both in itself and in actually being integrated to mortgage lending?

And how it would further distort the property market and further disadvantage the 90 per cent of FHBs who will be excluded.

Just a couple of a multitude of questions.

Do the first 10,000 who rock up each year get ticked through, say, all in January? Then, tough titty for all the other FHBs for the next 11 months?

Would the loans be rationed across the months and also borrowing income tiers?

How would it be integrated into bank responsible lending obligations? I could go on, but the editor said we needed to leave some space for the sports pages.

It has the singular genius of being at the same time pretty marginal but potentially extraordinarily damaging.

Now, the politics aside, I fully accept that FHBs are getting a raw deal with the escalation – even after the recent correction – in property prices.

Indeed, getting people into their first home is every bit as desirable as getting them into their first job.

But, the road to hell is paved with good intentions – and the “gooder” the intentions, the better the paving.

There should be a thoroughly bipartisan U-turn. Like a nuclear disarmament treaty.