Going back over Dutton’s press conference, I just wanted to revisit this question and answer:

Q: You’ve got Harry out here today. Will you be helping the kids up with a home deposit, I know it’s been talked about in the last couple of days, hoping to get clarity.

Dutton:

Like every parent, I despair at the thought about kids not being able to get into housing because they want to replace and young families are putting off having kids was of older Australians parents and grandparents are staying in the workforce longer to provide for the kids with money.

I think your household is 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 but many families in a lot of families, 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, it’s about how we can help millions of Australians across generations realise the dream of home ownership like we did, like our parents and grandparents did so it’s a different proposition today for a young Australians who did not have to a generation ago pay five or $600,000 just for the house let alone for the land and I want to make sure Australians from any walk of life, any background, parents who are well off, parents who are not well off, they can achieve the dream of home ownership through the hard work and saving of deposit and that’s I think at the core of our policy.

We want to make sure they can get home ownership and this will help them with their application to the bank and also will help them with paying the monthly repayments because of the moment young families are going backwards under Anthony Albanese. People who are renting are playing close to 20% more for the rents under this government than they were middle age Australians, Australians, no Australian can afford three more years of this government.

What Dutton is neglecting to mention there is his own role in the housing market being what it is. Peter Dutton was involved in $30m of property transactions across 26 properties.

It is insane to think that someone would ever need to be involved in 26 property transactions across 30 years – unless they were taking advantage of the tax incentives for investors. He became wealthy because of it.

And now his policy is to help people make tax deductions on their homes for the first five years, which will just help people like his son – where the only people who will benefit are people who can afford a home. Like Harry Dutton.

So under his dad’s policy, for the first five years of his loan, Harry Dutton would receive taxpayer concessions for the loan his wealthy parents helped him receive. It doesn’t help people get a deposit. It doesn’t help bring down house prices (it will do the opposite). It doesn’t help with supply. It doesn’t help people on lower incomes save for a deposit.

It only helps people wealthy enough to get into the housing market already, get a tax break. It’s a tax break for the wealthy. That only worsens inequality.

This morning, the Prime Minister proudly declared that he is “pro-Vegemite”. Not just pro-Vegemite, but also “anti-Marmite. That’s my position”. Vegemite is an Aussie icon, but it’s a local take on a British original. According to the National Museum of Australia, vegemite was slow to catch on but became a staple under wartime conditions in the 1940s.

Occasionally Vegemite has figured as a symbol in election campaigns. In 2007, for instance, Kevin Rudd proudly described himself as a “very simple Vegemite-on-toast man”. During the 2013 election, Rudd took a jar of vegemite to a school library and waved it in front of the cameras, warning that an Abbott Government would make vegemite more expensive. Even Rudd’s foreign minister, Bob Carr, thought it looked lame.

More recently, Scott Morrison and his British offsider Boris Johnson tried to make vegemite an icon of free trade. During negotiations with Australia, Johnson explained on social media: “I want a world in which we send you Marmite, you send us Vegemite”.

Politicians have joked that they are chasing the breakfast-eating vote with their vegemite references and stunts. It doesn’t disguise the fact that voters are not exactly happy little vegemites right now.

Australia Institute Executive Director Dr Richard Denniss was busting myths on the ABC’s Q&A program last night.

He dug into the election promises to explain how we can actually help people who are struggling in Australia.

He was on a panel which included Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and Shadow Housing Minister Michael Sukkar, but we have done the hard work so you can avoid the spin and get to the facts here:

Meanwhile, Peter Dutton visited a new housing estate in Bacchus Marsh, northwest of Melbourne, and was trying very hard to keep the focus on his housing policy during his press conference.

Anthony Albanese was in Tasmania today, in the electorate of Lyons, alongside candidate Rebecca White and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher.

Don’t worry you didn’t miss much.

On the upside it was markedly better than the previous Treasurer’s debate last week on Sky News. But that really isn’t saying much.

It started with a slanging match about why we have a deficit. Each side blaming the other. Neither side was willing to actually talk about why we really have a deficit. We’re one of the lowest tax countries in the developed world and Australians expect first class services from their government.

After a detour attacking each other’s tax policies they moved on to housing. This, more than almost any other issue, is what people are most concerned about. This was an opportunity for the Treasurer and shadow Treasurer to talk about their competing plans to help more people into their own home.

What we got instead was a debate that basically boiled down to, claims the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF)* has not finished building any houses since it was established 17 months ago.

Not a debate about how many houses it might build. Not how long it might take to build them.

The Labor Party’s success or failure on housing apparently comes down to completing new homes before an entirely arbitrary time of the 2025 election campaign.

Now I have concerns about how the HAFF works. I think it is needlessly complicated. We could have even discussed that. But instead, we get the gimmick of Angus Taylor claiming that no house has yet been finished, 17 months after the fund was established.

Both sides then avoided questions about how their housing policies will just push up prices because all they do is increase demand for housing.

Let me just pause here. Both sides talk about the despair they say they’re hearing about how people just can’t get into the housing market.

Both sides then put up policies that all the experts say will do nothing to fix the problem. In fact, they will make affordability worse.

Both sides can’t even say that more affordable housing means house prices have to stop rising faster than incomes.

Neither side is willing to take the relatively simple step of cracking down on capital gains tax and negative gearing loopholes, that will help push out investors and make room for first home buyers.

Is it just me or is that really weird?

The debate moved on to nuclear energy. And honestly, you’ve heard it all before. The one policy the opposition seems to have done some work on before the election campaign, and they now don’t want to talk about it. This is because the general public knows it will be more expensive and won’t get built (if ever) for decades to come.

It all wrapped up with some closing arguments.

If the chief Labor and Coalition strategists want to know why the major party vote keeps dropping, they need look no further than this debate. Both sides are more concerned about having policies they can announce, rather than having policies that will actually fix problems that Australian’s are concerned about.

*A $10 billion fund set up by Labor to earn returns on investments. Those investment returns will then be used to build social and affordable housing.

Peter Dutton was asked if he agrees with his housing minister Michael Sukkar that wages should rise faster than housing prices.

This is the key aspect to improve housing affordability, and yet Dutton refuses to answer.

That rather says it about where we are with housing affordability.

No one wants to say out loud that they want house prices to go up slower than wages, because they are worried that will get headline saying they want property values to fall in real terms… and yet unless that happens then housing affordability will continue to fall.

Peter Dutton was pressed on previous comments he made about Donald Trump, and whether he stands by comments he made earlier this year calling him a ‘big thinker’.

Dutton has responded to all these questions by saying the Australian election is a contest between himself and Anthony Albanese (duh).

Most Australians don’t see Trump’s presidency as good for Australia, and our own polling as shown that more Australians consider Trump a greater threat to world peace than Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping.

The housing crisis continues to grip Australia and it’s a central part of this election campaign. Unfortunately, while both major parties have made housing policies key parts of their election platforms their policies mostly tinker around the edges and fail in four key ways.

1. They do not address Australia’s distortionary, expensive, and regressive tax concessions
2. Almost all the policies they have announced would pump up demand, which will only increase house prices
3. There’s some talk about public housing and developers, but not enough
4. Migrants are not to blame for soaring house prices

You can read more about it here: https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/the-four-things-mostly-missing-from-the-major-parties-housing-platforms/

Q: Do you want to see wages rise faster than house prices?

Dutton: I want to make sure that we have a market accessible for young Australians. A generation ago prices were not as high as they are now and the disposable income required to service the loan to pay for the mortgage repayments is nowhere near where it is today. We have to accept the modern reality, and that means that we have to change the system, and that is exactly what we are doing.

We will have some analysis on what it is the opposition – and the government – are (are aren’t) doing on housing soon.