New Parliamentary Inquiry: Housing affordability and supply in Australia

THE House of Representatives Standing Committee on Tax and Revenue has commenced an inquiry into housing affordability and supply in Australia.

The chair of the committee, Jason Falinski MP said, “As data provided by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), the Treasury and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows, home ownership, one of the building blocks of Australian society, has been falling for the last 30 years. In my view, this represents an urgent moral call for action by governments of all levels to restore the Australian dream for this generation and the ones that follow.

“Arguments about the impact of increased subsidies and tax concessions on housing have continued for some time. There is ample evidence that points to the small effect such measures have on supply, indeed the research points to limitations on land and restrictive planning laws as the major causes of shortages in supply. As consistently noted by the RBA and others, regulatory settings are directly responsible for the unresponsive nature of housing supply in Australia.

“The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducted an analysis of Australia’s housing market, particular its very high ratio of housing prices to household incomes. The OECD concluded that Australia’s unusually high level of inelasticity in housing is the major driver of this ratio. This has resulted in our country having the fourth-fastest house price growth out of the world’s advanced economies over the past 20 years.

“This is best demonstrated by the following fact: total residential private building approvals decreasing 44 percent across the nation from 2016 to 2020 compared to the previous five-year period according to the ABS. While market supply has collapsed with new home listings down to record lows according to Core Logic using the most recent five-year average," Mr Falinski said.

“It is with this context that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Tax and Revenue will investigate the impact of tax and regulatory regimes on price, affordability, and supply of housing in Australia today as well as into the future.”

Submissions from interested individuals and organisations are invited by Monday, September 13, 2021. The preferred method of receiving submissions is by electronic format lodged online using a My Parliament account.

Further information about the inquiry including the terms of reference is available on the committee’s website.

 

Public hearing details

Public hearings for the inquiry will be held in due course and notified through the committee’s website.