This week we learned that Sydney doesn’t have a housing affordability problem, because in the words of the Treasurer – the man in charge of the nation’s finances – “if housing were unaffordable in Sydney, no one would be buying it”.
At least Joe Hockey has improved. This time last year he would have said housing affordability isn’t a problem because poor people don’t have houses.
For Hockey, housing affordability is not a big issue because his focus – like most actual landowners is on repayments. He suggested that it is currently “more affordable than ever to borrow money for a first home now than it has ever been”.
But low interest rates are of most help to those who already have a house. Low interest rates don’t lower the deposit amount needed to get a home loan. And they sure as heck don’t lower house prices – in fact they have helped fuel them.
Tony Abbott came to his Treasurer’s defence and thought we should not get too down hearted. After all, he told Alan Jones, one of his daughters “has just managed to get into the housing market – albeit in Canberra, and yes I suppose she has had a couple of lucky breaks along the way”.
She certainly has.
One of the first is keeping her job at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade during a time when the public service in Canberra has seen large redundancies across most departments – including 500 from DFAT that occurred through its subsuming AusAiD.
The other break is that due to those public service cut backs instituted by the Abbott government, house prices in Canberra since September 2013 have grown slower than all other capital cities except Darwin.
While Sydney’s prices have risen over 18% in that time, Canberra house prices, by virtue of the public service cut backs, have risen just 2.4% – well below either inflation or wage growth.
It would appear Tony Abbott’s daughter has taken the advice Joe Hockey gave back in May 2013 when he said, “There is a golden rule for real estate in Canberra – you buy Liberal and you sell Labor.”
Of course you only can buy if you still have a job.
Now sure, we shouldn’t begrudge people owning a home or being successful. But when a politician owns a number of properties – including a $5.4m home and one in Canberra for which he collects a taxpayer funded allowance to stay in – it might behove him and his Prime Minister to show a bit more compassion towards those whom would love to also be a home owner.
This week we also learned that despite an overabundance of evidence showing the contrary, the Prime Minister of this country, agrees with radio talk show host and outspoken anti-wind farm campaigner, Alan Jones, that there was a point about “the potential health impact” of wind turbines.
Tony Abbott went on to say that “when I’ve been up close to these windfarms not only are they visually awful but they make a lot of noise”. He then boasted that due to his efforts to reduce the renewable energy target that one of the things the government had recently done “in the Senate was to reduce, Alan, capital R-E-D-U-C-E, the number of these things that we are going to get in the future.”
Tony Abbott loves to talk about how governments don’t create jobs – the private sector does. Given he also boasts of the number of jobs created by infrastructure built by the public sector, his job creation point is certainly debatable, but it is indisputable he sought to use the government to kill jobs in the renewable sector.
And while sitting across from the nation’s lead right-wing bloviator the Prime Minister made it clear he was not happy he hadn’t been able to destroy more jobs in the sector.
He told Jones that “I frankly would have likely to have reduced the number a lot more but we got the best deal we could out of the Senate and if we hadn’t had a deal, Alan, we would have been stuck with even more of these things.”
Remember that the next time you hear Tony Abbott or any other member of the government trying to blow smoke up the backside of voters by talking about assisting new industries, technology and start-up enterprises.
So we remember that and remember as well that we shouldn’t shake our head in disbelief too greatly, for another week will follow, and given this government’s track record, surely more head shaking will occur.
Share
