Federal election 2025: What Labor, Coalition are offering on housing
Underpinning this cost-of-living-centric election is the issue of housing. The states and territories have a big responsibility to play, but the federal government has more money at its disposal and the major, overarching levers to pull.
In the latest federal budget, Labor beefed up its shared equity scheme, taking the program to $6.3bn over the next 15 years. The government will pay for and take a stake in a first homebuyer's house.
The Labor government has also set an 'ambitious national target' to build 1.2 million new homes over the next five years, including 55,000 social and affordable properties, all at a cost of $21bn. This figure includes $4.5bn to the states and territories to unclog planning and infrastructure backlogs. The latest estimates forecast the country will fall 400,000 homes short of Labor's 1.2 million home target.
If the Coalition is elected, they say their plans for big cuts to immigration will fit hand in glove with measures to reduce power bills, and allowing people to pull from their superannuation, to help more people buy themselves a house.
What the major parties agree on:
Foreign buyer ban: Both Labor and the Coalition will ban foreign investors and temporary residents from buying existing homes for two years. The policy does not stop this cohort investing in newly built homes.
No changes to negative gearing: Both major parties have ruled out changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax.
Negative gearing allows an investor to offset income from an investment property against any losses from maintaining it, giving them a potential tax deduction.
Capital gains tax is a 50 per cent concession on any profit made from the sale of assets, including a house, after owning it for at least 12 months.
Labor:
New home builds: Labor will expand its Homes for Australia plan to build an extra 100,000 homes specifically for first-time buyers. The party has also vowed $54 million to boost construction of prefabricated and modular homes.
Help to Buy: The government committed another $800m in the 2025 federal budget to lift property price and income caps on its Help to Buy scheme, which contributes equity of up to 40 per cent to support eligible homebuyers.
Home Guarantee Scheme: All first homebuyers to be eligible for 5 per cent deposits, without needing to pay mortgage insurance.
Tradies: In a bid to boost supply, the government is offering construction apprentices a $10,000 cash bonus, while employers of various key trades can get $5000 under the Priority Hiring Incentive. Tradies can also get means-tested concessional loans to help with living expenses, learning a trade and doing an apprenticeship.
Infrastructure boost: Labor has committed $1.5 billion to fast-track roads, sewage and water connections, aimed to speed up construction of new housing.
Rental investment: Investors will receive tax breaks as part of the build-to-rent program, which is estimated to deliver an extra 80,000 units over the next 10 years.
Coalition
Superannuation for housing: A Coalition government would allow first homebuyers to take 40 per cent of their superannuation, up to $50,000, for a home deposit. When the home is sold, the money would be repaid into superannuation.
Mortgage tax break: The Coalition will allow first homebuyers of new properties to claim the interest paid on the first $650,000 of a mortgage as a tax deduction, which is expected to cost $1.2 billion over four years.
Home Guarantee Scheme: The Coalition has also vowed to maintain the Home Guarantee Scheme program, which includes a 5 per cent deposit program for first homebuyers, and a 2 per cent deposit scheme for single parents or eligible single legal guardians with at least one dependent. Income testing will be increased to $175,000 for single and $250,000 for joint applicants – an increase of $50,000 on the current caps.
Infrastructure boost: A $5 billion fund would help speed up development of new homes, fast tracking necessary infrastructure like roads, sewage and water.
Population: The Coalition would slash immigration numbers, which it says are a major contributor to the housing crisis. A Liberal National government would reduce permanent migration from 185,000 to 140,000 for two years, and then 150,000 in year three and 160,000 in year four). The refugee and humanitarian program intake would be cut from 20,000 to 13,750.
Backlog: Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has pledged to clear the backlog of housing projects waiting for environmental approvals, estimated to be more than 100, within his first 12 months if elected.
Lending rules: The Coalition has pledged to work with financial regulators to change lending rules to help young Australians access a mortgage, including reducing the serviceability buffer, which the party says is overly cautious.
Apprentice boost: A new national network of Australian Technical Colleges would be created, which would fast-track students to high-skilled and well-paying jobs in fields like housing and civil construction.
The Coalition would also provide $12,000 to small and medium businesses to help them hire a new trainee or apprentice, with a focus on building and construction.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Age
an hour ago
- The Age
‘Progressive patriot' prime minister faces his call to arms
'In today's Australia, the new default should be that patriotism is a love of country that is democratic and egalitarian. It is something that includes those of different races and backgrounds,' he wrote in this masthead a couple of weeks ago. 'With his political authority unquestioned, Albanese has an opportunity to craft a nation-building agenda. The significance is more than just national. At the moment, parties of the centre-left are struggling to find compelling alternatives to Trumpist populism.' Albanese's defiance of America doesn't come out of nowhere. It rings a Labor bell. It resonates with the decision by Labor's celebrated wartime leader, John Curtin, to defy Australia's great and powerful friend of his time, Britain. 'I'm conscious about the leadership of John Curtin, choosing to stand up to Winston Churchill and say, 'No, I'm bringing the Australian troops home to defend our own continent, we're not going to just let it go',' Albanese said last year as he prepared to walk the Kokoda Track, where Australia and Papua New Guinea halted Imperial Japan's southward march of conquest in World War II. Defiance of allies is one thing. Defeat of the enemy is another. In a moment of truth-telling, the Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral David Johnston, this week said that Australia now had to plan to wage war from its own continental territory rather than preparing for war in far-off locations. 'We are having to reconsider Australia as a homeland from which we will conduct combat operations,' Johnston told a conference held by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. 'That is a very different way – almost since the Second World War – of how we think of national resilience and preparedness. We may need to operate and conduct combat operations from this country.' He didn't spell it out, but he's evidently contemplating the possibility that China will cut off Australia's seaborne supply routes, either because it's waging war in the Taiwan Strait or South China Sea, or because it's seeking to coerce Australia. 'The chief of the defence force is speaking truth,' says Professor Peter Dean, co-author of the government's Defence Strategic Review, now at the US Studies Centre at Sydney University. 'There's a line in the Defence Strategic Review that most people overlook – it talks about 'the defence of Australia against potential threats arising from major power competition, including the prospect of conflict'. And there's only one major power posing a threat in our region.' History accelerates week by week. Trump, chaos factory, wantonly discards America's unique sources of power and abuses its allies. China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin are emboldened, seeing America's credibility crumbling. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, alarmed at the rising risks, this week declared a campaign to make Britain 'battle ready' to 'face down Russian aggression'. Loading Starmer plans to enlarge the army, commission up to a dozen new nuclear-powered submarines jointly built with Australia under AUKUS, build six new munitions factories, manufacture 7000 long-range weapons, renew the nuclear warheads on Britain's strategic missiles, and put new emphasis on drones and cyberwar as war evolves daily on the battlefields of Ukraine. Starmer intends to increase defence outlays to the equivalent of 2.5 per cent of GDP with an eventual target of 3 per cent. Ukraine's impressive drone strike on Russia's bombers this week knocked out a third of Moscow's force, with AI guiding the drones to their targets. The Australian retired major-general Mick Ryan observes that Ukraine and Russia are upgrading and adapting drone warfare weekly. 'The Australian government has worked hard to ignore these hard-earned lessons and these cheaper military solutions,' he wrote scathingly in this masthead this week, 'while building a dense bureaucracy in Canberra that innovative drone-makers in Australia cannot penetrate in any reasonable amount of time.' At the same time, the FBI charged two Chinese researchers with attempting to smuggle a toxic fungus into the US. It's banned because it can cause mass destruction of crops. A potential bioweapon, in other words. What would John Curtin do today? 'Curtin, like Albanese, was from the left of the Labor Party,' says Dean. 'He was not an internationalist, he was very domestic focused.' Indeed, he was an avowed Marxist who believed that capitalism was in its late phase and bound to fail, leading to world peace. He abandoned his idealism when confronted by the reality of World War II. 'He realised that a leader has to lead for his times. He had to bend his interests from the domestic sphere to the international.' Curtin famously wrote that, after Britain's 'impregnable fortress' of Singapore fell to the Japanese in just a few days, Australia looked to America as its great and powerful friend. 'Albanese can't repeat that,' observes Dean, 'because there's no one else to turn to.' 'A modern John Curtin,' says the head of the National Security College at ANU, Rory Medcalf, 'would take account of the strategic risk facing the unique multicultural democratic experiment of Australia. He'd unite the community and bring the trade unions, industry, the states and territories together in a national effort. 'It's certainly not about beating the drums of war, but we do need a much more open conversation about national preparedness. Australia might be directly involved in war, but, even if we aren't, we will be affected indirectly [by war to our north] because of risks to our fuel security, risks to the normal functioning of the economy and risks to the cohesion of our society. Is there scope to use national cabinet' – which includes the states and territories – 'to talk about these issues?' And the defence budget? Albanese is dismissive of calls to peg spending by set percentages of GDP. Apply that to any other area of the budget and you'd be laughed out of the room. The prime minister prefers to decide on capability that's needed, then to fund it accordingly. How big a gun do you need, then find money to pay for it. Medcalf endorses this approach of deciding capability before funding, but says that risk should come before both. 'And if you look at risk first, it will push spending well above 2 per cent of GDP and much closer to 3 or 4 per cent.' Regardless of what the Americans say or do. Do they turn out to be dependable but demanding? Or uselessly absent? 'Australia will need to spend more either way,' says Medcalf. 'The only future where we don't need to increase our security investment is one where we accept greatly reduced sovereignty in a China-dominated region.'
Sky News AU
2 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Victorian Labor government to spend $81 million on economic and policy advice
Victoria Shadow Treasurer James Newbury discusses the prediction of the Victorian Labor government to spend $81 million in the current budget on economic and policy advice. 'The government is hiring an executive on $220,000 a day,' Mr Newbury told Sky News host Steve Price. 'For $81 million, I don't think we're getting very good advice because the government doesn't seem to be getting any better. 'What's this $81 million going towards?'
Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Muslim Vote to support candidates in NSW, Victorian elections
A pro-Palestine political movement that failed to win a seat at the May federal election has vowed to push on and support candidates for the upcoming Victorian and NSW state elections. The Muslim Vote endorsed independent candidates in three Labor-held seats – Watson and Blaxland in western Sydney and Calwell in Melbourne's north-west. Its greatest success was in Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke's seat of Watson, where independent Ziad Basyouny was the second-most popular candidate on a two-candidate preferred basis. Burke, who was accused of 'vote buying' after holding pre-election mass citizenship ceremonies in Sydney's culturally diverse western suburbs, still comfortably won the seat, receiving 66 per cent of the vote after preferences were distributed. In Education Minister Jason Clare's seat of Blaxland, Ahmed Ouf won 18.76 per cent of first preferences, but the Liberal candidate was second-preferred. In Calwell, Samim Moslih only garnered 6.85 per cent of first preferences. Despite failing to win a seat, Muslim Vote convenor Sheikh Wesam Charkawi said the results were a 'significant step' that 'demonstrated the model works'. In each seat, the independent campaign ate into both Labor and the Liberals' first preference vote distribution from the 2022 federal election. 'One form of success in the political arena is unseating the sitting minister. Another form is winning hearts and minds of the masses, setting the foundations for future challenges,' Charkawi said. 'We've had an avalanche of people reach out to us post-election, either to be candidates or to support our work ... The community isn't backing down. We all want to continue.'
