Billionaire Meriton Apartments founder, “Highrise” Harry Triguboff, has published a self-serving article in The Australian calling for lower interest rates, alongside tax changes and subsidies for developers, banks and foreign buyers, to ease the nation’s housing shortage:
“The rise in interest rates… was completely the wrong call”…
“If they raise interest rates, the housing production drops and prices rise”…
“So far, the production has gone down every year and prices have gone up and people can’t afford to buy”…
“People need housing, which is constantly going down in production”…
“[The banks] must be easier on lending. If needed, the government must cover some of the banks’ risks”….
“Excessive tax is another risk. The foreign buyers have to be spared the high extra charges”…
Let’s be real here. If Highrise Harry genuinely cared about solving the nation’s housing shortage, he would lobby for Australia’s net overseas migration to be lowered to historical levels:
Everybody can see that Australia will never build enough homes to keep pace with such rapid population growth:
Lowering immigration would also relieve inflation, most obviously via lowering rental growth, which would enable the RBA to cut rates sooner.
Of course, vested interests like Highrise Harry never argue for less immigration, only more.
Because they know that if immigration levels were sharply cut, then property prices and rental growth would fall, reducing their profits.
So instead of advocating for the only real solution to the housing crisis, they instead talk their book by arguing for tax changes and subsidies that benefit them and the buyers of their product.
There should be a simple rule in policy making: when Highrise Harry tells politicians to do something, they should do the opposite.
Because Highrise Harry is nearly always backing his own financial self-interest over Australians’.
