Few Australian politicians – of either political persuasion – have been able to resist the tantalising idea of allowing young people to tap into their superannuation savings to achieve the worthy ambition of home ownership., the key architect of the country’s compulsory super system, was briefly seduced. During the 1993 election campaign, he proposed allowing people to withdraw up to $10,000 – or 75 per cent of their vested benefits – from their super savings.
repeated the line when she appeared before a parliamentary inquiry into housing affordability last September.“You don’t increase affordability by giving people more money to spend on housing,” she explained. “This is a record high for the series, and has increased from 6.8 since the onset of COVID-19,” it said.
Still, it put pressure on Labor to come up with a counter bid to woo first home buyers, and it obliged with a new scheme that effectively involves the government providing an interest-free loan to new home buyers. And that created an obvious opportunity for the Coalition to trump Labor’s bid, with a policy that allows people to use their super savings to buy their first homes, with no limits either on income or on the value of the property purchased.
Indeed, the quick fixes proposed by both sides of politics give the illusion that governments are trying to tackle the serious problem of housing affordability. But without requiring any tough decisions.