Both major parties spruik housing policies, with Anthony Albanese saying critics may not have read all the detail of Labor’s planElection 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaignPolls tracker; election guide; full federal election coverageAnywhere but Canberra; interactive electorates guideListen to the first episode of our new narrative podcast series: GinaGet our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcastPeter Dutton says he will help his son with a housing deposit “at some stage”, a day after dodging questions about whether he would use his family wealth and salary to assist his children to get into the market.Dutton on Monday brought his 20-year-old son, Harry, on the campaign trail to talk about the difficulties of saving for a home. Harry said he and his sister, Rebecca, had both been “saving like mad” to scrape together deposits of their own.Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter Continue reading…Both major parties spruik housing policies, with Anthony Albanese saying critics may not have read all the detail of Labor’s planElection 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaignPolls tracker; election guide; full federal election coverageAnywhere but Canberra; interactive electorates guideListen to the first episode of our new narrative podcast series: GinaGet our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcastPeter Dutton says he will help his son with a housing deposit “at some stage”, a day after dodging questions about whether he would use his family wealth and salary to assist his children to get into the market.Dutton on Monday brought his 20-year-old son, Harry, on the campaign trail to talk about the difficulties of saving for a home. Harry said he and his sister, Rebecca, had both been “saving like mad” to scrape together deposits of their own.Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter Continue reading…
Peter Dutton says he will help his son with a housing deposit “at some stage”, a day after dodging questions about whether he would use his family wealth and salary to assist his children to get into the market.
Dutton on Monday brought his 20-year-old son, Harry, on the campaign trail to talk about the difficulties of saving for a home. Harry said he and his sister, Rebecca, had both been “saving like mad” to scrape together deposits of their own.
The Liberal leader, who has previously talked about wanting to help first home buyers so they do not have to rely on “the bank of Mum and Dad”, would not say on Monday whether he would financially assist his children to buy a home.
On Tuesday, Dutton was joined by Harry again and said he and other parents “despair at the thought of our kids not being able to get into housing”.
“I think our household’s no different to many households where we want our kids to work hard, to save and will help them with a deposit at some stage,” Dutton said.
“Most families across the country, they have not got the luxury, and the prime minister and I might be able to help our kids, but it’s not about us.”
Dutton and Anthony Albanese have both continued to shrug off concerns from experts about the potentially market-distorting effects of their major housing policies, with leading economists alarmed that new promises will see home prices increase and help the wealthier more than the less well-off.
“I’m not sure they’ve looked at all the detail, frankly,” Albanese said in Hobart, when asked about experts’ doubts about Labor’s housing policies.
“The key difference between the two approaches is supply. We have a supply side answer on public housing through the Housing Australia Future Fund, on private rentals through the build-to-rent scheme, on home buying and construction for first home buyers.”
Labor and the Coalition, in their respective campaign launch events on Sunday, pledged billions in housing and tax sweeteners. Albanese promised $10bn in grants and loans to the states to build new homes strictly earmarked for first home buyers, and opened up the successful first home guarantee scheme to all first home buyers to be able to apply for a mortgage with just a 5% deposit.
Dutton pledged that interest payments on mortgages up to $650,000 would be tax-deductible for first home buyers, and also matched Labor’s home guarantee policy.
Both sides pitched their policies at young people struggling to get a foothold in the market, saying they wanted to help Australians buy their first home.
Albanese indicated Labor would not release Treasury modelling on the inflationary or demand effect of the 5% deposit scheme on house prices, saying “we don’t release cabinet papers”. The finance minister, Katy Gallagher, said on Monday the effect on prices “would not significantly impact on house prices”.
But leading economists have raised concerns.
“One is left to wonder, why do parties of both major political persuasions keep doing things that they know will put upward pressure on house prices, and thus exacerbate the problem they say they are trying to solve?” economist Saul Eslake wrote in Guardian Australia.
He said “both sides of politics proposed policies that will put upward pressure on housing prices”, but said the Coalition’s suite of policies would “reignite housing price inflation” more than Labor’s would.
Housing industry groups have welcomed the announcements, but others have raised different concerns that Australia may not have enough tradespeople to build the necessary homes.
In morning TV interviews and a press conference, Albanese downplayed economists’ criticisms, saying Labor’s policies addressed supply and demand.
“I agree that if you just have demand side measures, which is what [the Coalition] have, then you put upward pressure on prices, and you don’t achieve the objective,” he said.
Economist Brendan Coates, from the Grattan Institute, wrote in Guardian Australia that increasing supply “matters, because housing will only get more affordable in Australia if we build more of it”.
Dutton said on Monday he wants house prices to “steadily increase”. He backed that on Tuesday.
“If you’ve got a house that you’ve just bought, and you’ve got a $500,000 mortgage, and your house goes down by $100,000 under Labor, and your mortgage is worth more than the house itself, then that’s not a good situation for you. So, no, we don’t want house prices to plummet,” he told the ABC.
Coates wrote that “no serious economist had been calling for” Dutton’s plan for tax-deductible mortgages, and suggested any such plan should only be accompanied by increasing capital gains tax.
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