G'day from the twilight zone of property speculation, where the national pastime isn't cricket or footy but watching a generation weep into their overpriced avocado toast. The housing crisis in Oz has hit such fever pitch that even the politicians have noticed, which is like waking up to find your cat has suddenly become a competent accountant. The latest round of fisticuffs centres on scrapping the capital gains tax discount, a sacred cow that has done more for inequality than the entire British aristocracy.
And wouldn't you know it, the same shrieking that accompanied the UK's stamp duty reforms is now echoing through the halls of Canberra, where our 'leaders' are having a spirited debate about whether to ease the pain of young renters or continue to subsidise the second home of a property mogul who probably owns a helicopter. The parallels are as clear as a glass of tepid gin: in both countries, the housing market has become a casino where the house always wins, and the chandeliers are made from the bones of first-home buyers. The Australian debate, much like the British one, is a masterclass in missing the point.
Instead of building houses like they're going out of fashion, our politicians would rather argue about tinkering with tax breaks that will save the average punter enough for a single night's rent. It's like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, only the deck chairs are made of gold and the iceberg is a massive, unaffordable flat in Surry Hills. In the UK, the stamp duty holiday was a brief, glorious moment of fiscal madness that sent house prices into the stratosphere.
In Australia, the capital gains discount has been a slow-acting poison that has turned every suburban semi-detached into a speculative asset. The solution? Simple.
Build more houses. But apparently that's harder than finding a decent bottle of wine under twenty quid. So instead, we get to watch a pantomime of vested interests and ideological bagmen pretending that the future of our children is negotiable.
Splendid.
