Perhaps providing some much-needed cheer for the British Left, Australia’s Labor Party romped home in the nation’s recent federal election.
Seeking a second three-year term, Anthony Albanese unexpectedly routed the conservative Coalition, dominant for most of the post-war period. Having been odds-on to lose only six months previously, ‘Albo’ scored the biggest winning party victory – in seats – in modern history.
And, while it probably didn’t decide the election, housing policy was a fiercely debated central issue during the campaign, with Labor’s pitch (and record) generally landing better with the public.
Such was the importance attached to the topic as a hot button issue, that both major parties chose to reveal major housing initiatives as centrepiece announcements at their official campaign launch events.
Labor’s housing pitch – building on recent initiatives
Before going into these new proposals let’s rewind for a bit of context.
The recent election came at the end of a three-year Parliamentary term after Labor’s win in 2022, ending nine years of Coalition rule.
During that period federal housing policy was largely limited to home ownership initiatives. Previous social and affordable housing programs were terminated, with the federal government arguing that, under a narrow interpretation of Australia’s constitution, housing for lower income groups is the responsibility of the states, rather than the federal government.
Having regained power in 2022, Labor dramatically ramped up federal housing policy action – initiating a social and affordable housing investment program, the ‘Housing Australia Future Fund’; as well as creating a national shared equity home ownership scheme for first home buyers and reforming foreign investor tax settings to encourage build to rent construction.
It also initiated a broader housing affordability push – the ‘National Housing Accord’ – based on the stated belief that this is largely a housing supply problem. Therefore, at least at the level of political rhetoric, the solution is to be found largely through corralling the states into streamlining their planning systems.
Much of the media also buys this argument. It is also, of course, popular with the housebuilding industry as well as with market liberal economists.
Somewhat echoed by UK Labour, the centrepiece of the Accord is the aim, jointly pledged by federal and state governments, to enable construction of 1.2 million homes over five years. Largely thanks to difficult market conditions, however, current industry output is lagging way below what would be needed to achieve that.
Labor’s election 2025 offer
Now back to the election. Federal Labor launched two new policies ahead of polling day, both targeted on first home buyers. The first substantially expanded an existing mortgage guarantee scheme enabling FHBs to secure a housing loan with only a 5% deposit.
No doubt, this will have been electorally resonant, although it was fairly heavily criticised in the media as inflationary. But since it doesn’t involve a ‘tax expenditure’ as such (unlike, say, stamp duty exemption) this might have been a bit excessive.
Albo’s second new housing pledge was a much bigger deal, and more consistent with the overarching ‘supply focus’ mentioned earlier. If re-elected, Labor pledged $10 billion in federal funding to work with the states in directly commissioning 100,000 new homes ring-fenced for first home buyers over 8 years.
By implication, these homes will be sold at ‘cost price’ – likely lower than market price thanks to having no need to factor in developer/builder profits. Over the long term, therefore, the program could be close to cost-neutral from a public accounting perspective. This is reflected in the committed funding, $8 billion of which is for concessional loans rather than grant.
This is big. Although they continued to build public rental housing at some scale until the 1990s, Australian governments have barely operated build to sell programs since the 1960s. Doing so notably challenges neo-liberal presumptions about the proper extent of direct state involvement in supplying a commodity that is (especially in Australia) largely provided through the market.
As a potentially counter-cyclical initiative that expands overall housing production (assuming no crowding out), it could help in slightly moderating prices, market-wide, as well as benefiting the homebuyers directly involved.
The Coalition’s election pitch
Meanwhile, in its election offer, the Coalition pitched its own radical homeownership policy bid: the introduction of mortgage tax relief for first home buyers.
Labor’s initial fear that this could prove to be a game changer in marginal seats soon receded when the policy came under heavy fire from just about every economist in Australia. This criticism mainly highlighted the scheme’s likely inflationary impacts; the prime reason that UK housing experts breathed a sigh of relief when Britain’s MIRAS was finally culled in 2000.
A second Coalition home ownership pledge was to enable first home buyers to dip into their otherwise locked retirement savings accounts to fund mortgage deposits. This was justified on the highly resonant argument that individuals should have freedom to access ‘their own money’.
But again, the initiative was heavily criticised as inflationary – as well as risking a net loss for participants if devalued retirement savings were to outweigh the benefit of accelerated access to home ownership.
In support of its own claim to support increased overall housing supply, the Coalition also promised $5 billion in loans and grants to fund housing-enabling infrastructure. But the emphasis on greenfield sites conflicts with the conventional wisdom that Australia already has too much urban sprawl, so infill development should be encouraged.
What was missing?
Both of the major parties failed to include any new social or affordable housing programs in their 2025 election platforms.
Neither Labor nor Coalition announced any significant new initiative to relieve rental stress at the lower end of the housing market that affects millions of Australians. Measures that might, at least indirectly, help stem the rising tide of homelessness that now sees more than 10,000 newly homeless persons being taken on by support providers every month.
But Labor has a much better excuse for this omission because the Albanese Government’s 2022-25 initiatives were only just getting going at the end of the previous Parliament. While these can be justifiably criticised as very modest in scale by comparison with the level of need, the Coalition made it clear they would be simply scrapped if it won the election. A return to the approach of 2013-22 when the federal government essentially left this field.
Many have also criticised the recent major party offers as ignoring the hugely overdue need for fundamental housing tax reform.
On the Labor side that is the blunt reality. But the Coalition’s big pitch, parachuted into its campaign launch, in fact amounts to a striking proposal for a major property tax re-set.
Unfortunately, though, this would have piled yet another damaging ‘market distortion’ on top of all Australia’s existing property tax breaks. Concessions that have, over decades, contributed to today’s housing affordability problem, as their value is capitalised into higher prices.
What is the UK relevance of any of this?
Perhaps the most UK-relevant ‘housing policy’ aspect of the story relates to the new ‘Build to sell’ scheme which, with the election now decided, we can expect to see beginning to take shape in coming months.
I think this may resemble aspects of the state role in the UK’s post-war New Towns program. Maybe it’s envisaged that such an approach would form an element within the renewed New Towns initiative planned by the Starmer Government.
It may be that Angela Rayner’s department would benefit from finding out more about the way that the Australian Government plans to roll out its own version during the new Parliamentary term.
Where I am, we hope that MHCLG’s promised national housing strategy for England provides some strategic planning inspiration for Australia.