Despite all the political pretending, the ALP does not want housing rents and prices to fall.

We know this, because they are choosing not to do the only thing that works – build housing and rent or sell it cheaply.

Instead they are going to write a different number in a meaningless propaganda document. The last number was 1 million. The new number is 1.2 million.

The media is foolishly reporting this as "National cabinet agrees to build 1.2m new homes in bid to tackle housing crisis"

This is not what they agreed to at all!

The only tangible policy is that the federal government will pay states and/or councils for new homes completed.

But how does that translate to actual dwellings and cheaper rents?

We know that you can't push on this string. Councils approve far more homes than get built. The planning system regulates where homes go, not how quickly they are built.

Only private property owners can decide when and how fast to build new homes.

Why will private property owners suddenly change their production plans and build an extra 200,000 dwellings in 5 years because the federal government may start paying councils, something that has nothing to do with them?

So far, the ALP has promised to

1. Spend $10 billion buying non-housing assets rather than building housing assets in the HAFF
   
2. Spend $3 billion paying states to not build homes but rather change zoning, and in the process, offer hugely valuable zoning changes to many property owners.
   
   Just spend the money building homes if that's what you want!
   
   I remember talking to a political staffer in the ACT a few years ago. The territory government had set up an elaborate land rent scheme – a variation on shared equity – to help first home buyers.
   
   I asked the staffer why, since the Territory government had its own property developer, they didn't just flood the market with cheap land and housing to bring down all prices to help renters and homebuyers.
   
   They said "We don't want to devalue people's homes"
   
   The very fact that landlord groups are not kicking and screaming about these policies suggests we all know that they won't work.
   
   If it were true that these policies would decrease rents by 4% or 8%, as Grattan seems to claim, then landlord groups would be panicking!
   
   It makes no sense for them to hate rents being pushed down by regulation but love it if rents are pushed down just as much by other means.
   
   Fixing housing is technically easy but politically tricky.
   
   https://t.co/4fPgLUl5kh