One of Anthony Albanese’s closest political friends has blamed a key U-turn in Labor policy for fueling Australia’s housing crisis by giving homeowners lucrative tax breaks.
Doug Cameron, a former New South Wales Labor senator, said negative tax breaks for homeowners and the 50 per cent discount on capital gains tax had made housing unaffordable.
“Negative gearing and capital gains tax are part of the problem; it’s a complex issue,” he told WhatsNew2Day Australia.
“It is politically difficult, but the test of political parties is whether they are prepared to address difficult political issues.”
In 2019, Albanese abandoned his predecessor Bill Shorten’s plan to remove negative gearing for future property purchases and halve the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount.
He became prime minister three years later, having abandoned policies that Labor adopted unsuccessfully in the 2016 and 2019 elections.
Cameron is so concerned about unaffordable housing that he will co-chair a two-day ‘People’s Commission on the Housing Crisis’ in May with Everybody’s Home, a homeless advocacy group, and Professor Nicole Gurran, an expert in Sydney University housing.
In a statement, the former union leader blamed policies that lead to real estate speculation for driving up prices.
“The dominance of neoliberal policy has resulted in housing being treated as an instrument of individual wealth creation and the ‘market’ rather than a human right that facilitates effective participation in a good society and economy,” he said.
One of Anthony Albanese’s closest friends in politics has blamed Labor’s homeowner-friendly policies for Australia’s housing crisis (the Labor leader is pictured in an April 2019 photo hugging former senator Doug Cameron).
Anthony Albanese abandoned his predecessor Bill Shorten’s plan in 2019 to eliminate negative gearing for future property purchases and halve the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount (pictured, far left and far right, in 2022 with Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth, and then Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott)
“The commission will hear from many of the victims of a system that does not provide a fair and equitable approach to housing.”
Now in government, the Labor Party has a $10 billion Australian Housing Future Fund, which aims to build 30,000 social housing units over five years.
But Cameron, who is still a member of the Labor Party, said Labor policy lacked ambition and had not embraced technological advances to build more homes.
‘Yeah. I think there will be a need for governments to constantly evaluate their approach to housing,” he told WhatsNew2Day Australia.
‘It is one of the biggest social and economic problems we have.
‘I think, from my experience, that the more homes we can offer, the better.
“Some of the problems we have is that we are not adopting some of the new technologies that are being adopted abroad, such as modular housing, which is cheaper and faster to build and costs less in terms of heating and cooling.”
House prices in the capital rose 10.6 percent in the year to March to $956,782, which is out of reach for an average-income borrower on a salary of $98,218 who can only afford a $639,000 home. dollars with a 20 percent mortgage deposit.
Property prices rose for the 14th consecutive month across Australia, CoreLogic data released this week showed, despite the Reserve Bank raising interest rates for the 13th time in 18 months in November to a high of 12 years of 4.35 percent.
But Cameron was reluctant to blame the housing shortage on a record immigration influx of 548,800 in the year to September, despite only 170,215 homes being built during the same period.
“Population growth is a problem, it always has been, but I don’t think it’s the only problem,” he said.
“It is a much more complex problem that requires a more sophisticated political and social analysis.”
Cameron blamed negative gearing and the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount for turning real estate into an “instrument of wealth” (pictured is a Bondi rental queue in Sydney)
Albanese was photographed hugging Cameron in April 2019 when he gave his final speech in the Senate.
Albanese was photographed hugging Cameron in April 2019 when he gave his final speech in the Senate.
“After the farewell speech of my dear comrade and friend Doug Cameron,” he said on Facebook of the member of the left-wing Labor faction.
‘Thank you for everything you have done in this place.’
Former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard’s government introduced the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount in 1999.
Bob Hawke, one of his Labor predecessors, reinstated negative gearing in 1987, just two years after abolishing it.
WhatsNew2Day Australia contacted Mr Albanese’s office on Wednesday to request the right of reply.