August 25, 2025 • 17 mins
If you’re in your 20s or 30s, or have someone in your life who’s in that age bracket, you know that the struggle to buy a home is real.
So, what to make of the federal government's announcement that it will launch its newly expanded scheme to help first home buyers purchase a property earlier than expected?
Today, senior economics correspondent Shane Wright, on whether this will help fix our housing crisis.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:02):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Tuesday,
August 26th. If you're in your 20s or 30s or
have someone in your life who's in that age bracket,
you know that the struggle to buy a home is real.
(00:22):
So what to make of the federal government's announcement that
it will launch its newly expanded scheme to help first
home buyers purchase a property earlier than expected? Today, senior
economics correspondent Shane Wright on whether this will help to
fix our housing crisis. So, Shane, let's start with the basics.
(00:45):
How does this scheme actually work?
S2 (00:48):
Right. Imagine for a moment, Sam, that you're a first
home buyer.
S1 (00:51):
I will.
S2 (00:52):
And ordinarily the bank would say, Sam, we want to
see 20% of the deposit of this house. If not,
we'll give it to you. But you're going to have
to take out lender mortgage insurance LMI, which is going
to cost you an absolute bomb and will we'll roll
it into the cost of the mortgage, but we'll look
(01:13):
after you. And what we've seen over the last 20
years is that the starting deposit for first home buyers
has just gone beyond crazy, beyond silly. And so this
was a policy that was introduced by Scott Morrison, uh,
back in 2019. So if you can get to the 5%
mark for a deposit, the government says, okay, we will
(01:36):
effectively guarantee that gap between 5 and 20%. So you
will not have to take out LMI. And so that
was the policy that was introduced. This government has gone further.
And today they've gone stuff it. It's open slather here.
Every first home buyer will be able to qualify for
(01:57):
this scheme.
S1 (01:58):
And so tell us about the eligibility requirements. Like is
it means tested? How do people actually get this?
S2 (02:05):
If you're a first time buyer, you've qualified. That's it.
That's it.
S1 (02:08):
Okay.
S2 (02:09):
So there had been restrictions previously particularly about income. But
the only restriction now is actually caps on the value
of the home because it many of these will be
apartments on the home that you want to buy. And
there are different levels for each easily definable property market
(02:30):
in the country. And those are also changing. And some
of them are being changed dramatically as well.
S1 (02:36):
But what does that mean? Does that mean that if
you can afford some ridiculously expensive home, you don't have
access to it? Like, what's the bar?
S2 (02:43):
Right. So in, let's say in Sydney or Newcastle or Wollongong,
if the maximum value of the house that you can
qualify for is going to go from $900,000, which it
is presently to $1.5 million in Melbourne or Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong.
It's going from 800,000 to $950,000. Now that is a
(03:09):
big increase. Of course, you actually have to. And this
is the key part to this whole thing is. Yep. Okay.
We will if you get a 5 to 10% deposit,
say on a $1.5 million home, that 5% deposit is $300,000.
And that's okay. That means you're not having to pay
(03:30):
the LMI. However, you still have to pay back the loan.
So the mortgage repayments on that are the things that
are going to kill people. If you think that this
is going to mean all these 25 or 30 year
old people going in and buying, slapping down one and
1.5 million for an apartment in Bondi, uh, you're going
(03:50):
to be a bit disappointed because they actually have to
have the income to pay for the mortgage of 1.4
million over 30 years.
S1 (03:59):
And so tell us, you mentioned, you know, a little
bit about the history of the scheme, but can you
tell us a little bit more about it? What has
the uptake been like? Are people have they been using it?
S2 (04:09):
Yeah they have like and this is one of the
reasons they've actually uncapped the number of people who can
go for it. Because when it was first started it
was about a 10,000 applicants a year. They would fill
that within months. Like for 12 months. They would fill
it probably by October. So let's see, last financial year,
(04:30):
the last 12 months, there were 116,001st home buyers who
bought a home. Uh, the peak was during when interest
rates fell to 0.1. That was 155,000. So you think
about it. If you're only giving 10,000, there's 120, 130,000
(04:50):
a year. There's a lot of unmet demand that would
easily like, given the qualification is never have owned a
home before. You get there pretty quickly.
S1 (05:01):
And so what does the government actually trying to achieve
with a scheme like this.
S2 (05:06):
Look like they care. Oh, did I say that out loud?
S1 (05:09):
I'm so glad you did.
S2 (05:11):
Like, this is all part of a whole suite of
housing policies. For all the criticism that this government has copped,
the amount of money they've thrown at housing is like
you are looking at, you actually have to go back
to the 50s and 60s to see anything of a
comparable level. Whether it's working is a completely different story,
and it goes to the fact that most first time
(05:35):
buyers are finding we can't afford the mortgage, but we
can't get to the deposit. Like the national median, median
home price is 844,000. So that's being pushed up by
what's gone on in Sydney and Brisbane and Melbourne and Canberra,
for instance. So the 20% deposit is just shy of
(05:58):
$169,000 and to save $169,000. And if you're a Boomer
or a Gen X and you're listening, saying, in my day, no,
in your day, it was much easier to qualify for
these to get to the deposit level, because the price
of the home was not nearly. It was not like
(06:21):
even in 1991 92, it required about six times median
median income to get into a home in Sydney. And
it was about four and a half in Melbourne. And
now in Sydney it's about 13, and in Melbourne it's
about nine. Like the quantum of the amount of income
(06:43):
needed to get into a median priced home has just exploded.
S1 (06:48):
You've mentioned before you think the government, one of the
reasons that it's announced this is to look like it cares.
But presumably it's also, of course, to make home ownership
more accessible. So my question is, is this going to help?
Like is this going to make any difference in our
housing crisis.
S2 (07:03):
At the margins. For some people, if it doesn't push
up house prices too far and like ultimately supply and
demand is the big driver and what's going on with
interest rates. So it is of no surprise that since
the reserve Bank started cutting interest rates in February, house
values have gone up every month. They're not out of
(07:27):
control at this point, and there hasn't been an acceleration,
but they have definitely picked up. So the government, they're
offering the states huge amounts of money to sort of
release land, get planning regulations changed so builders can get
building quicker. The stuff that's come out that came out
of last week's economic roundtable around, say, the National Construction
(07:49):
Code and trying to simplify that. All elements of let's
build a shedload more homes to deal with the population
that we've got, because ultimately it comes down to that,
like there are all these other factors, but if they're
just not enough homes. And there are people saying, I
want to live in one. Then you supply the laws
(08:09):
of supply and demand. Don't get suspended all that often.
And they haven't here in the Australian housing market.
S1 (08:22):
We'll be right back. Okay. Well, let's talk about this 5%
deposit scheme. Obviously now that it's eligible to I mean,
if not exactly everyone obviously to a huge amount of people.
I mean, isn't it going to displace more pressure on
the housing market? Isn't it going to just push up prices?
S2 (08:39):
It has to. At the edge. And we actually saw
parts of this during Covid when every government was throwing
money at first home buyers to build or buy. And
coupled with ultra low interest rates like the handouts were extraordinary.
Like in the NT, the concessions for a first home
(09:00):
buyer all equated almost $90,000. And unsurprisingly, we saw the
biggest increase in house prices in more than a generation.
Like in Sydney, you saw like a 30% increase, but
you can see if you get a lot of construction underway,
then you can mitigate some elements of this, and this
policy doesn't help in that space. So Canberra and Melbourne
(09:24):
are interesting property markets because they have actually thrown up
a lot of units over the last three, four, five years.
And you can see people people focus a lot on
Melbourne saying the economy is soft and it is, but
you have but you've also seen a lot of construction,
and anyone living in Melbourne would understand that. There's a
(09:47):
lot going on underway in Canberra. The the economy is
not soft, it's still relatively strong, but it is hard
not to wander around the suburbs of Canberra and not
see apartment blocks going up. And you can see that
this has mitigated some of the price increases that you've
seen in other capitals. Perth and Brisbane are the big outliers.
(10:08):
They just haven't been able to build nearly enough for
the population growth that's going on there. So again, everything
else being equal, this puts more people into the market
to buy a home. So there's more buyers. Unless there's
a huge increase in sellers it has to have an
impact on prices. It just has to.
S1 (10:27):
So Shane, I'm going to read between the lines here
and ask you a question. Like when push comes to
shove the government maybe wants some credit, like, hey, we
really care. We're the caring, feeling government of choice now,
but actually we shouldn't be giving them too much credit
and we really need to just keep barracking for more homes,
is that it? Like until there's just an exponential number
(10:47):
of homes being built?
S2 (10:49):
I don't know if.
S1 (10:49):
We want.
S2 (10:49):
An exponential number of homes. I don't know if we've
got enough space for that.
S1 (10:53):
But it's a big country, Shane.
S2 (10:55):
It is a big country. The government is doing a
lot in that space through there.
S1 (10:58):
Are they doing enough?
S2 (11:00):
You can't do enough. You just can't do enough because
we this has been building for a long time, and
we haven't touched on what's going on with the investment
side of things, whether like developers have a vested interest
in not developing green like greenfield projects because it might
undermine the profit level of those projects. And there are
(11:22):
problems within the housing construction sector. We've had this whole,
like the roundtable last week all about productivity and housing productivity.
Housing construction productivity in Australia has fallen and it's fallen
everywhere around the world.
S1 (11:38):
Okay. But I have a question on behalf of those
listeners out there who are wondering, like, what should they
be pushing their local government to do or their state government,
or who they should be writing to the federal MPs?
You know, you're sitting there in the seat of power.
You're recording in Parliament House this morning. Like, what should
people be asking of the government that might actually improve
the housing crisis?
S2 (11:55):
You've suggested that there are people want a solution. And
this is the really interesting bit, because about a third
of Australians own their home outright. And there's a third buying.
Do they want the value of their home to come
down or not go up? And this this is why
housing has become such a problem. Because the vested interests,
(12:16):
everyone has a vested interest. Think of the the real
estate agent, for instance. Are they trying to get the
best price for the vendor, or are they trying to
get the lowest price for the buyer? Like everywhere you
look in this space. So we're seeing it, uh, say
the development project that got, uh, ticked off by the
(12:37):
federal government last week. Uh, next to the Queen Victoria markets, uh,
in Melbourne. There's a whole community there that don't want
that to go ahead for 2200 homes.
S1 (12:49):
Okay, but a third of Australians are in the market
to buy, right? That's a massive portion of Australians.
S3 (12:55):
It is.
S1 (12:55):
Empower them. Shane. What should they be demanding.
S2 (12:58):
Just make it easier to build more homes like you're
seeing it with. I've just talked about what's going on
in Melbourne, the men's government, this contentious proposal to finally
finish off the Woollahra train station.
S1 (13:11):
In New South Wales.
S2 (13:11):
In New South Wales, in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.
You can see now, like there are very well-heeled people
in the eastern suburbs of Sydney who will fight this
tooth and nail. And you go rightio. Chris Minns has
to actually really push this ahead if he wants to
plonk up to 10,000 people just three kilometres from the
CBD of Sydney.
S1 (13:32):
Okay, so I'm going to read between the lines and
what I'm now doing.
S3 (13:34):
A lot of lying in between.
S2 (13:36):
Reading here.
S3 (13:36):
Sam.
S1 (13:37):
What I'm now hearing is all the people who are
listening now, when they're at their next family function, they
basically have to speak to their parents and to their grandparents,
all those people who already own their houses and just say,
please do not fight against all these new building proposals.
Is that what it is? This is going to come
down to family stashes. I'm seeing it.
S2 (13:56):
It will come down to family stashes. Like at the moment,
the bank of Mum and dad is the fifth or
sixth largest bank in the country. So the.
S3 (14:04):
Kids.
S2 (14:05):
The kids are already going, mum, dad, give me your
money right now. And it's because Mum and Dad and
their mums and dads had benefited from the system that
had been in place, which had enabled all these house
prices to go up. We have huge sprawl across the
Cumberland Plain in Sydney, all across Melbourne, across Brisbane, like Perth,
(14:28):
lengthwise is almost the size of Los Angeles and has
about a 10th of the population. We love a bit
of sprawl. And it's partly because of the housing choices
we are making. Let alone the tax incentives that help
us to get to these positions. As much as like
this 5% deposit will have a marginal effect. There are
(14:49):
so many other things going on that have led us
to balls up the entire property market in this country.
S1 (14:55):
Okay, so just to wrap up, Shane, do you have
any suggestions for those listeners in their 20s and 30s
who now have to have a very uncomfortable conversation with
their parents and grandparents at, uh, at Sunday lunch this weekend?
How can they get them to support?
S2 (15:09):
Well, it depends how hard you want to go if
you want grandkids. And we've we are seeing this like
this is an issue that that we have. Part of
the drop off in fertility is partly because people can't
afford to they can't form couples because they don't have
the income and they can't move in as a couple
because they can't buy a house. And it flows onto
(15:32):
fertility like we're we are. That's one of the reasons
don't hold me to saying that's the only reason. But
it depends how much of a guilt trip you want
to put your parents on.
S1 (15:40):
Oh, ultimate. Ultimate. Let's just go to the ultimate. Let's
go to the. Let's go to the nuclear. Come on.
But that's that's compelling, right? Imagine if people started saying, listen,
if you don't support this high density housing near your home,
no grandkids for you.
S3 (15:53):
Yeah.
S2 (15:54):
There you go. You nailed it. I'm sure it's going
to go really well. Absolute positive policy on that one.
S1 (16:01):
Well, uncomfortable conversations coming ahead. Not sure if they're happening
in your household this weekend, Shane, but as always.
S3 (16:07):
It's a pleasure to.
S2 (16:08):
See you, Samantha.
S1 (16:10):
Thanks for your time, Shane.
S3 (16:11):
Cheers.
S1 (16:22):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Josh towers.
Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our
head of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon
as they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered
by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism, visit The Age
(16:44):
or smh.com.au. Subscribe and to stay up to date, sign
up to our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a summary
of the day's most important news in your inbox every morning.
Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris.
Thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Tuesday,
August 26th. If you're in your 20s or 30s or
have someone in your life who's in that age bracket,
you know that the struggle to buy a home is real.
(00:22):
So what to make of the federal government's announcement that
it will launch its newly expanded scheme to help first
home buyers purchase a property earlier than expected? Today, senior
economics correspondent Shane Wright on whether this will help to
fix our housing crisis. So, Shane, let's start with the basics.
(00:45):
How does this scheme actually work?
S2 (00:48):
Right. Imagine for a moment, Sam, that you're a first
home buyer.
S1 (00:51):
I will.
S2 (00:52):
And ordinarily the bank would say, Sam, we want to
see 20% of the deposit of this house. If not,
we'll give it to you. But you're going to have
to take out lender mortgage insurance LMI, which is going
to cost you an absolute bomb and will we'll roll
it into the cost of the mortgage, but we'll look
(01:13):
after you. And what we've seen over the last 20
years is that the starting deposit for first home buyers
has just gone beyond crazy, beyond silly. And so this
was a policy that was introduced by Scott Morrison, uh,
back in 2019. So if you can get to the 5%
mark for a deposit, the government says, okay, we will
(01:36):
effectively guarantee that gap between 5 and 20%. So you
will not have to take out LMI. And so that
was the policy that was introduced. This government has gone further.
And today they've gone stuff it. It's open slather here.
Every first home buyer will be able to qualify for
(01:57):
this scheme.
S1 (01:58):
And so tell us about the eligibility requirements. Like is
it means tested? How do people actually get this?
S2 (02:05):
If you're a first time buyer, you've qualified. That's it.
That's it.
S1 (02:08):
Okay.
S2 (02:09):
So there had been restrictions previously particularly about income. But
the only restriction now is actually caps on the value
of the home because it many of these will be
apartments on the home that you want to buy. And
there are different levels for each easily definable property market
(02:30):
in the country. And those are also changing. And some
of them are being changed dramatically as well.
S1 (02:36):
But what does that mean? Does that mean that if
you can afford some ridiculously expensive home, you don't have
access to it? Like, what's the bar?
S2 (02:43):
Right. So in, let's say in Sydney or Newcastle or Wollongong,
if the maximum value of the house that you can
qualify for is going to go from $900,000, which it
is presently to $1.5 million in Melbourne or Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong.
It's going from 800,000 to $950,000. Now that is a
(03:09):
big increase. Of course, you actually have to. And this
is the key part to this whole thing is. Yep. Okay.
We will if you get a 5 to 10% deposit,
say on a $1.5 million home, that 5% deposit is $300,000.
And that's okay. That means you're not having to pay
(03:30):
the LMI. However, you still have to pay back the loan.
So the mortgage repayments on that are the things that
are going to kill people. If you think that this
is going to mean all these 25 or 30 year
old people going in and buying, slapping down one and
1.5 million for an apartment in Bondi, uh, you're going
(03:50):
to be a bit disappointed because they actually have to
have the income to pay for the mortgage of 1.4
million over 30 years.
S1 (03:59):
And so tell us, you mentioned, you know, a little
bit about the history of the scheme, but can you
tell us a little bit more about it? What has
the uptake been like? Are people have they been using it?
S2 (04:09):
Yeah they have like and this is one of the
reasons they've actually uncapped the number of people who can
go for it. Because when it was first started it
was about a 10,000 applicants a year. They would fill
that within months. Like for 12 months. They would fill
it probably by October. So let's see, last financial year,
(04:30):
the last 12 months, there were 116,001st home buyers who
bought a home. Uh, the peak was during when interest
rates fell to 0.1. That was 155,000. So you think
about it. If you're only giving 10,000, there's 120, 130,000
(04:50):
a year. There's a lot of unmet demand that would
easily like, given the qualification is never have owned a
home before. You get there pretty quickly.
S1 (05:01):
And so what does the government actually trying to achieve
with a scheme like this.
S2 (05:06):
Look like they care. Oh, did I say that out loud?
S1 (05:09):
I'm so glad you did.
S2 (05:11):
Like, this is all part of a whole suite of
housing policies. For all the criticism that this government has copped,
the amount of money they've thrown at housing is like
you are looking at, you actually have to go back
to the 50s and 60s to see anything of a
comparable level. Whether it's working is a completely different story,
and it goes to the fact that most first time
(05:35):
buyers are finding we can't afford the mortgage, but we
can't get to the deposit. Like the national median, median
home price is 844,000. So that's being pushed up by
what's gone on in Sydney and Brisbane and Melbourne and Canberra,
for instance. So the 20% deposit is just shy of
(05:58):
$169,000 and to save $169,000. And if you're a Boomer
or a Gen X and you're listening, saying, in my day, no,
in your day, it was much easier to qualify for
these to get to the deposit level, because the price
of the home was not nearly. It was not like
(06:21):
even in 1991 92, it required about six times median
median income to get into a home in Sydney. And
it was about four and a half in Melbourne. And
now in Sydney it's about 13, and in Melbourne it's
about nine. Like the quantum of the amount of income
(06:43):
needed to get into a median priced home has just exploded.
S1 (06:48):
You've mentioned before you think the government, one of the
reasons that it's announced this is to look like it cares.
But presumably it's also, of course, to make home ownership
more accessible. So my question is, is this going to help?
Like is this going to make any difference in our
housing crisis.
S2 (07:03):
At the margins. For some people, if it doesn't push
up house prices too far and like ultimately supply and
demand is the big driver and what's going on with
interest rates. So it is of no surprise that since
the reserve Bank started cutting interest rates in February, house
values have gone up every month. They're not out of
(07:27):
control at this point, and there hasn't been an acceleration,
but they have definitely picked up. So the government, they're
offering the states huge amounts of money to sort of
release land, get planning regulations changed so builders can get
building quicker. The stuff that's come out that came out
of last week's economic roundtable around, say, the National Construction
(07:49):
Code and trying to simplify that. All elements of let's
build a shedload more homes to deal with the population
that we've got, because ultimately it comes down to that,
like there are all these other factors, but if they're
just not enough homes. And there are people saying, I
want to live in one. Then you supply the laws
(08:09):
of supply and demand. Don't get suspended all that often.
And they haven't here in the Australian housing market.
S1 (08:22):
We'll be right back. Okay. Well, let's talk about this 5%
deposit scheme. Obviously now that it's eligible to I mean,
if not exactly everyone obviously to a huge amount of people.
I mean, isn't it going to displace more pressure on
the housing market? Isn't it going to just push up prices?
S2 (08:39):
It has to. At the edge. And we actually saw
parts of this during Covid when every government was throwing
money at first home buyers to build or buy. And
coupled with ultra low interest rates like the handouts were extraordinary.
Like in the NT, the concessions for a first home
(09:00):
buyer all equated almost $90,000. And unsurprisingly, we saw the
biggest increase in house prices in more than a generation.
Like in Sydney, you saw like a 30% increase, but
you can see if you get a lot of construction underway,
then you can mitigate some elements of this, and this
policy doesn't help in that space. So Canberra and Melbourne
(09:24):
are interesting property markets because they have actually thrown up
a lot of units over the last three, four, five years.
And you can see people people focus a lot on
Melbourne saying the economy is soft and it is, but
you have but you've also seen a lot of construction,
and anyone living in Melbourne would understand that. There's a
(09:47):
lot going on underway in Canberra. The the economy is
not soft, it's still relatively strong, but it is hard
not to wander around the suburbs of Canberra and not
see apartment blocks going up. And you can see that
this has mitigated some of the price increases that you've
seen in other capitals. Perth and Brisbane are the big outliers.
(10:08):
They just haven't been able to build nearly enough for
the population growth that's going on there. So again, everything
else being equal, this puts more people into the market
to buy a home. So there's more buyers. Unless there's
a huge increase in sellers it has to have an
impact on prices. It just has to.
S1 (10:27):
So Shane, I'm going to read between the lines here
and ask you a question. Like when push comes to
shove the government maybe wants some credit, like, hey, we
really care. We're the caring, feeling government of choice now,
but actually we shouldn't be giving them too much credit
and we really need to just keep barracking for more homes,
is that it? Like until there's just an exponential number
(10:47):
of homes being built?
S2 (10:49):
I don't know if.
S1 (10:49):
We want.
S2 (10:49):
An exponential number of homes. I don't know if we've
got enough space for that.
S1 (10:53):
But it's a big country, Shane.
S2 (10:55):
It is a big country. The government is doing a
lot in that space through there.
S1 (10:58):
Are they doing enough?
S2 (11:00):
You can't do enough. You just can't do enough because
we this has been building for a long time, and
we haven't touched on what's going on with the investment
side of things, whether like developers have a vested interest
in not developing green like greenfield projects because it might
undermine the profit level of those projects. And there are
(11:22):
problems within the housing construction sector. We've had this whole,
like the roundtable last week all about productivity and housing productivity.
Housing construction productivity in Australia has fallen and it's fallen
everywhere around the world.
S1 (11:38):
Okay. But I have a question on behalf of those
listeners out there who are wondering, like, what should they
be pushing their local government to do or their state government,
or who they should be writing to the federal MPs?
You know, you're sitting there in the seat of power.
You're recording in Parliament House this morning. Like, what should
people be asking of the government that might actually improve
the housing crisis?
S2 (11:55):
You've suggested that there are people want a solution. And
this is the really interesting bit, because about a third
of Australians own their home outright. And there's a third buying.
Do they want the value of their home to come
down or not go up? And this this is why
housing has become such a problem. Because the vested interests,
(12:16):
everyone has a vested interest. Think of the the real
estate agent, for instance. Are they trying to get the
best price for the vendor, or are they trying to
get the lowest price for the buyer? Like everywhere you
look in this space. So we're seeing it, uh, say
the development project that got, uh, ticked off by the
(12:37):
federal government last week. Uh, next to the Queen Victoria markets, uh,
in Melbourne. There's a whole community there that don't want
that to go ahead for 2200 homes.
S1 (12:49):
Okay, but a third of Australians are in the market
to buy, right? That's a massive portion of Australians.
S3 (12:55):
It is.
S1 (12:55):
Empower them. Shane. What should they be demanding.
S2 (12:58):
Just make it easier to build more homes like you're
seeing it with. I've just talked about what's going on
in Melbourne, the men's government, this contentious proposal to finally
finish off the Woollahra train station.
S1 (13:11):
In New South Wales.
S2 (13:11):
In New South Wales, in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.
You can see now, like there are very well-heeled people
in the eastern suburbs of Sydney who will fight this
tooth and nail. And you go rightio. Chris Minns has
to actually really push this ahead if he wants to
plonk up to 10,000 people just three kilometres from the
CBD of Sydney.
S1 (13:32):
Okay, so I'm going to read between the lines and
what I'm now doing.
S3 (13:34):
A lot of lying in between.
S2 (13:36):
Reading here.
S3 (13:36):
Sam.
S1 (13:37):
What I'm now hearing is all the people who are
listening now, when they're at their next family function, they
basically have to speak to their parents and to their grandparents,
all those people who already own their houses and just say,
please do not fight against all these new building proposals.
Is that what it is? This is going to come
down to family stashes. I'm seeing it.
S2 (13:56):
It will come down to family stashes. Like at the moment,
the bank of Mum and dad is the fifth or
sixth largest bank in the country. So the.
S3 (14:04):
Kids.
S2 (14:05):
The kids are already going, mum, dad, give me your
money right now. And it's because Mum and Dad and
their mums and dads had benefited from the system that
had been in place, which had enabled all these house
prices to go up. We have huge sprawl across the
Cumberland Plain in Sydney, all across Melbourne, across Brisbane, like Perth,
(14:28):
lengthwise is almost the size of Los Angeles and has
about a 10th of the population. We love a bit
of sprawl. And it's partly because of the housing choices
we are making. Let alone the tax incentives that help
us to get to these positions. As much as like
this 5% deposit will have a marginal effect. There are
(14:49):
so many other things going on that have led us
to balls up the entire property market in this country.
S1 (14:55):
Okay, so just to wrap up, Shane, do you have
any suggestions for those listeners in their 20s and 30s
who now have to have a very uncomfortable conversation with
their parents and grandparents at, uh, at Sunday lunch this weekend?
How can they get them to support?
S2 (15:09):
Well, it depends how hard you want to go if
you want grandkids. And we've we are seeing this like
this is an issue that that we have. Part of
the drop off in fertility is partly because people can't
afford to they can't form couples because they don't have
the income and they can't move in as a couple
because they can't buy a house. And it flows onto
(15:32):
fertility like we're we are. That's one of the reasons
don't hold me to saying that's the only reason. But
it depends how much of a guilt trip you want
to put your parents on.
S1 (15:40):
Oh, ultimate. Ultimate. Let's just go to the ultimate. Let's
go to the. Let's go to the nuclear. Come on.
But that's that's compelling, right? Imagine if people started saying, listen,
if you don't support this high density housing near your home,
no grandkids for you.
S3 (15:53):
Yeah.
S2 (15:54):
There you go. You nailed it. I'm sure it's going
to go really well. Absolute positive policy on that one.
S1 (16:01):
Well, uncomfortable conversations coming ahead. Not sure if they're happening
in your household this weekend, Shane, but as always.
S3 (16:07):
It's a pleasure to.
S2 (16:08):
See you, Samantha.
S1 (16:10):
Thanks for your time, Shane.
S3 (16:11):
Cheers.
S1 (16:22):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Josh towers.
Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our
head of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon
as they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered
by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism, visit The Age
(16:44):
or smh.com.au. Subscribe and to stay up to date, sign
up to our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a summary
of the day's most important news in your inbox every morning.
Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris.
Thanks for listening.
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