Things are changing quickly, and the major parties have been caught flat footed
The ABC’s mysteriously popular Q+A Program did the housing crisis last night, noting that the politics of property is changing.
A fierce battle over housing is set to intensify and define the next federal election as Labor, the Coalition and the Greens target a growing cohort of voters who believe they've been locked out of home ownership for life.
The great Australian dream of owning your own home has been fading for a long time — there's nothing new about this. But the crisis is now baked in — and it has arguably become the big generational disrupter, changing votes and threatening to hurt the government at the next poll.
The Greens have successfully put housing on the mainstream political radar. Now the Liberal Party — who are strategising about how they can become relevant and attractive to the younger voters they've been losing in swathes — are joining the debate after privately acknowledging they've been missing in action on this pivotal issue.
In the middle stands the Albanese government. Burnt and scarred by their crazy-brave promise to reform negative gearing in 2019 — partly leading to them losing that election — they have been running from any suggestion that they might again look at contentious changes to tax on property ownership.
Labor insiders privately acknowledge they are getting politically smashed on housing, with various solutions being floated internally to address it.
Yeah, I have to admit the Greens have played it well on this one. Despite relentlessly opposing higher density development in the most obvious places to put it, they’ve somehow positioned themselves as the champion of renters.
The thing that has changed here is that ‘renter’ has stopped being a phase of life, and has started becoming an identity.
It used to be the case that renting was seen as a half-way house on the road to owning your own home.
Then people started to complain when houses started to get expensive, and the road to home-ownership got longer. But the road still existed. People complained about having to rent for longer, but they never saw themselves as a renter. Just as a home-owner who doesn’t have a house yet.
But with property prices exploding during Covid, we now have a generation of disillusioned renters who never believe that they’re going to be able to buy, especially as rising rents eat into any savings they might have accumulated.
The means “renter” has become an identity. It’s who you are.
Which means that almost overnight there is a political block that is very interested in who is championing renters’ rights.
With Labor and the Liberals jockeying to be the party of home-owners, this has left the field wide open for the Greens.
And the calculus is smart here. About a third of the population currently rents, but ownership rates are falling, which means that renters are a growing political force. By the end of the decade it could be 40%. By the end of the next decade it could be more than half, especially if the corporate build-to-rent model continues to take off.
So the Greens could see that there was a large political block, built around an intense and intimate pain point, completely under-catered to. And they’ve played it well. They are now the party for renters.
(… and affluent arty types who care deeply about what happens to poor people in other suburbs, but don’t want to give up the heritage listed terrace houses in their own back yard.)
But it also means that people who don’t take all that much interest in the environment might suddenly find themselves voting Green, as they’re the only party directly speaking to their economic interests.
If they continue to play it well, this alone could see the Greens vote lift from 10% currently to 30%. It could happen. Don’t go too crazy with the enviro stuff, and continue to sell to renters. It could happen.
But if the rise of the renter as a political block is helping the Greens, who is it hurting?
The coalition.
Typically, if you own your own home you are significantly more likely to vote conservative. This is partly because ownership is correlated with wealth, but also because owning a home makes you very sensitive to how well the economy is being managed and what is happening to interest rates.
So falling ownership rates are going to feed into falling votership for the Coalition.
The post-Covid boom caused a lot of potential buyers to become completely disillusioned with the property market.
For as long as that continues, the Green’s vote will rise.
No wonder they oppose creating more housing options.
JG.