Bill Shorten

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EXPERT OBSERVER
As this year’s federal election fast approaches and Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten campaign throughout the nation, the state of the national property market continues to be a key matter of contention. 
The Labor Party has pledged to make sweeping changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax whilst the Liberals have suggested they will be relying on the Reserve Bank of Australia to cut interest rates – which could come as early as this week - in a bid to regenerate market activity. 
But what both parties have yet to fundamentally address is just how much the property industry serves the economy, and the policies that are required to ensure the market can continue to be an important driver for the economy as it once was, and help fund the major infrastructure projects that both parties have pledged to deliver should they be elected come May. 
Take for example Labor’s planned changes to negative gearing, which on the surface look to be a win for first home buyers – albeit at the expense of investors who play a vital role in providing rental stock and therefore are critical to the economy - and, according to ALP calculations, would save $2.9b in tax concessions over four years. 
Alternative projections however, paint a different picture. Labor’s proposed changes will be grandfathered, so current investment properties will not be affected by the changes – no savings to the country’s purse pocket to be had there. Meanwhile both the state and federal governments’ ‘anti-investment’ sentiment has all but eradicated investors from the market altogether since sweeping regulatory changes took effect in 2017. 
Tighter lending restrictions coupled with declining construction rates mean first home buyers are unlikely to produce the same momentum that investors once did, so it’s doubtful this activity will generate the economic impact that is required over the long-term. 
In fact, if former Liberal treasurer Joe Hockey is to be believed, a similar play in the early 1980s under the Hawke Government led to rent increases that impacted household earnings, therefore affecting buyers’ ability to enter the market altogether, which ultimately led to negative gearing being reinstated in 1985. 
But why should this worry the voters? Without the significant cashflow generated from the property market, infrastructure projects become difficult to fund, carrying a heightened risk of a budget deficit blow out or new taxes to cover the costs. Layer that on top of already declining consumer confidence and a languishing property market, we will see sentiment plummet even further, quickly – carrying with it all the markers of a major recession. 
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Instead of focusing on handouts and short-term strategies in an effort to lure voters, what we need is a long-term outlook and a set of bold policies to encourage cash inflow into Australia at an international level. 
A plan to support first home buyers while cutting off investors or vice versa, all the while turning our backs to capital injections from international markets, will no longer cut it - without addressing the bigger picture, the mounting bill for major infrastructure projects both planned and underway, will soon become too big to ignore. 
Ever since the property boom peaked in 2017 and sweeping federal regulatory changes were introduced, ‘international investment’ has become a dirty word. So much so that both major parties have completely backed away from any policies that would relax these restrictions and once again entice foreign capital, for fear of incurring the wrath of voters. 
It’s the elephant in the room that neither party has addressed. 
But what many fail to realise is that this same foreign capital led to sustained development activity, providing much-needed cashflow into the country – which has subsequently helped to fund many of the projects that are currently underway - as well as generating countless construction jobs and economic prosperity, all of which are now steeply on the decline. 
When Canada enforced similar restrictions to overseas cashflow in 2018 after a sustained property boom where prices rose over 300 per cent1 in 15 years, the effects on their housing market were swift, causing a significant chain of reactions that are still, painfully, at play. 
House prices in Vancouver have decreased close to 8 per cent on the previous year, while sales volumes have slowed to the lowest rates in 30 years. Housing analysts first speculated that this would encourage an uptake of first home buyers finally getting their foot in the door, however the stringent lending restrictions at a local level means these buyers are still unable to get into the market despite the price correction.2 
Sound familiar? 
In fact property prices in Vancouver are on the decline so quickly, analysts are forecasting that soon home owners in high-risk pockets could owe more on their mortgages than there is value in their homes, creating a catastrophic negative equity environment, the likes of which we last experienced in the lead up to the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. And that’s where things start to get very scary. 
A controlled reintroduction of foreign capital in Australia is not to say there should not be stringent prudential regulations in place to safe-guard the way in which this investment flows and where it is directed. The days of large-scale high rise developments selling overwhelmingly to foreign investors are behind us, and so should they remain.
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If managed correctly, there are a myriad of ways offshore capital can be encouraged into the economy. This would avoid placing such upward pressure on residential property prices, thus allowing our local home buyers the opportunity to gain a foothold into the market while protecting our economic outlook into the future. 
What we need is a policy that relaxes restrictions enough for local buyers to access the market and allows Australia to once again court overseas investment while supporting the economy as we spend up big funding infrastructure upgrades across the country. We need strong leadership in this space where decisions should be made to drive our economy forward, rather than what appeals to a small contingent of voters in the short-term. 
Without a robust policy to encourage local sales and open the doors to international capital, what our major political parties will gain in the short-term, the everyday Australian will lose out in the long-term.
Leonard Teplin is the director of projects at the <a href="https://www.marshallwhite.com.au/agent/leonard-teplin/" target="_blank">Melbourne-based Marshall White</a>.
 
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What each party has failed to address regarding the property market

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Bill Shorten, in his budget reply speech last night, reaffirmed Labor’s commitment to restrict negative gearing to investors who purchased new housing if elected.
He claimed the current system gives investors "loaded dice" putting younger generations at a disadvantage.
It's a “bias” in the tax system that is shutting young people out of the housing market, Mr Shorten said.
“Getting together a 20 per cent deposit plus stamp duty is so much, much harder than it was 20 or 25 years ago,” the opposition leader said.
“It is even more difficult when your government uses your taxpayer money to subsidise the property investors bidding against you.”
Mr Shorten said his negative gearing rule changes were part of Labor’s plan to “stop intergenerational unfairness in our tax system”.
“A government must be brave enough and decent enough to stop the bias against first home buyers and young Australians and we will be that government,” Mr Shorten said.
He added “lectures about cutting back on smashed avo” were patronising to young people.
“You cannot have property investors playing with loaded dice against our young people, Generation Y and the Millennials,” Mr Shorten said.
However, according to recent HIA research, only 34 percent of Australians are aware of the proposed changes and understand it at some level, while others have no understanding.
While 52 percent of people believe rents will rise as a consequence of the changes. 
HIA Managing Director, Graham Wolfe said, "with 92 percent of all renters aspiring to buy their own home, Labor’s proposed changes will weigh heavily on their savings’ plans.“
"If these changes are made, rents will rise as supply dries up due to a lack of investment in new housing. This will make renting a home less affordable."
“If rents rise, renters saving for a deposit for their own home will take a backward step."
“We can’t solve the housing affordability challenge by taxing housing. This policy seeks to do just that,“ he concluded.
But Bill Shorten's 2019-20 Federal Budget reply headlines the overarching support of future housing in the previously announced National Housing Supply Council, national Housing Ministerial and National Housing Strategy, Nicholas Proud, CEO of PowerHousing Australia said.
It represents 32 of Australia’s largest Tier One and scale-growth Community Housing Providers.
Mr Proud said, “The Federal Opposition has shown a real commitment here to seeing the jobs, economic multipliers and adequate supply of housing become a national priority if they come to Government at the next election. 
"A commitment to delivering a massive 250,000 affordable rentals over a 10-year period with 20,000 to be built in the first three years with Community Housing Providers proponents of the task is a challenge CHPs are ready to take on.
“This 10-year subsidy combined with other elements such as build-to-rent, a Housing Minister, National Housing Strategy and reinstatement of a National Housing Supply Council, as promised, will tackle a housing downturn to preserve jobs, support state economies and deliver more dwellings.
“A focus on delivering expediting new NDIS investment is welcomed to capitalise on the recent momentum gained by the Agency if this shadow budget is eventually delivered.
“Whilst there is much to praise, there are tens of thousands of families in non-CHP properties who, over the next five years, are set to see the loss of the NRAS One incentives which started to lapse in December 2018.
"A response to support these non-CHP managed NRAS homes is critical and our CHP members will look to take up this challenge to seek a pragmatic solution here," Mr Proud concluded. 
Mr Shorten’s budget reply speech also mentioned plans to support build-to-rent schemes.
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Bill Shorten

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