Do-nothing Malcolm kills housing affordability inquiry

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From Peter Martin comes the truth about this real estate captured government:

The government is sitting on hundreds of pages of evidence and scores of submissions about housing affordability it is unable to use because it let its inquiry into the subject lapse.

News of the quashed inquiry emerged as Treasurer Scott Morrison delivered a speech in which he declared housing affordability to be an “important policy focus” of the Turnbull government in the new parliamentary term.

The inquiry was initiated by Morrison’s predecessor, Joe Hockey, in April last year. Undertaken by the House of Representatives economics committee and chaired by Liberal backbencher John Alexander, it took evidence from the Treasury, the Reserve Bank, ANZ Bank, the Law Society and housing economists.

Mr Alexander said at the time it painted a picture of a nation turning from a “commonwealth”, with huge home ownership, into a “kingdom” made up of landlords and serfs. One of the ideas considered by the committee was a winding back of capital gains submissions.

He was replaced as chairman by Liberal MP Craig Laundy shortly after hearings concluded in September. Mr Laundy has told Fairfax Media he had worked on a draft report with the committee secretariat but wasn’t able to put it to the committee before he was promoted to the ministry and replaced with backbencher David Coleman shortly before the election.

Under the rules governing committees, the inquiry “lapsed” with the election, meaning Mr Coleman is unable to restart or conclude it without a fresh referral from Treasurer Scott Morrison.

A Labor member of the committee, Pat Conroy, believes the inquiry was allowed to lapse because its conclusions would not have suited the government.

“There were incredibly strong arguments for reform to the current system of incentives to make housing more affordable,” he said. “We got lots of good evidence out of the Reserve Bank and Treasury to that effect, so any balanced report would have had to reflect that testimony.”

There it is in black and white. Crocodile tears for first home buyers and full-blown policy corruption for specufestors.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.