The housing crisis isn't sparing Peter Dutton's son, and Albanese won't spare a hug
We're just over halfway through the election campaign, and the Labor and Liberal parties have only now officially launched their campaigns. Focused squarely on housing, Peter Dutton went for the personal angle when he roped his son in to tell the media that he, too, is finding it difficult to afford a home – prompting a 24-hour media interrogation as to whether Dutton senior would help Dutton junior out. James Colley looks back at the campaign in this week's instalment of Surviving the election with James Colley
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Daily Mail
36 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Ben Fordham unleashes withering spray as Albanese fails to meet housing target because of immigration
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his government has been slammed by radio host Ben Fordham over Australia's worsening housing crisis. It follows the release of a report from the Government's National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC), showing Australia will miss its own housing targets. According to the report, housing construction is at its lowest point in a decade, with just 177,000 new dwellings completed in 2024, well short of the government's 233,000 target. The Council warned that housing is not being built quickly enough to meet growing demand and relieve affordability pressures. 'The Council's analysis shows that expected new housing supply will be insufficient to meaningfully improve housing affordability for all households,' the report stated. It forecasts that only 938,000 new dwellings will be completed across Australia over the five-year Housing Accord period ending 30 June 2029, far below the 1.2 million target. No state or territory is expected to meet its allocated share. On Thursday, Fordham lashed out at the government, blaming slow building rates and rising immigration for exacerbating the crisis. 'The Albanese government promised to build more houses, today they're building less. They promised to lower immigration, today, they're bringing in more,' he said. 'The PM will tell us he's bringing down the migration numbers... and building as many homes as he can, but we're not seeing it.' 'We simply can't build the houses fast enough. What we need is a sharp focus on skilled migration and coordination of housing supply policy with immigration numbers.' The NHSAC report also pointed to persistent challenges such as labour shortages, low productivity, and rising material costs as major factors dragging down new supply. Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness, Senator Andrew Bragg, has slammed at Labor's performance, saying the government had failed to support the very people responsible for delivering new housing. 'Labor has failed to get the houses built because they have done nothing to help the people who build houses: builders, tradespeople and developers,' Bragg said. He further highlighted that the government's flagship $10billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) failed to deliver a single new home during the previous term. 'Instead, it was acquiring existing housing, thereby making the supply problem worse... Labor's Housing Infrastructure Fund also failed to build any homes with $1.5 billion,' he added. Housing Minister Clare O'Neil last week pointed to bureaucracy as a major barrier to construction. 'It's just too hard to build a house in this country,' O'Neil told the ABC. 'And it's become uneconomic to build the kind of housing that our country needs most: affordable housing, especially for first home buyers.' One person arrives to Australia to live every 44 seconds according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Under the Albanese government, overseas migration reached record highs. In 2022–23, net overseas migration hit 536,000, the highest in Australia's history. While in 2023–24, it dropped to 446,000, and is expected to fall to 340,000 in 2024–25. As of March 2025, the national median dwelling price surpassed $1million for the first time, reaching $1,002,500, following a 0.7 per cent quarterly increase. The annual growth rate slowed to 5.9 per cent in March 2025, down from 9.5% the previous year New data about Australia's migration will be released on Friday.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Taxing actual rather than unrealised super gains would mean ‘significant' costs for millions of Australians, Treasury says
Treasury says taxing actual instead of unrealised gains would have meant millions of super fund members were hit with 'significant' compliance costs as part of a policy aimed at trimming concessions for just 80,000 of the country's wealthiest savers. Labor's proposal will put an extra 15% tax on earnings generated from super balances over $3m in an effort to make the super system more equitable and sustainable. The Coalition and interest groups have attacked the policy's method of taxing changes in the value of super assets (unrealised gains), rather than on cash profit (realised gains), saying it transgresses tax norms. Nationals senator Matt Canavan vowed earlier this month to 'fight to the death' against the proposed change, arguing that taxing unrealised gains was 'incredibly unfair'. In its impact analysis document released in 2023, Treasury concluded that taxing cash profits 'would be the most accurate method for determining taxable earnings'. However, the trade-off would be imposing an unacceptably high compliance and regulatory burden on the large super funds which manage the super accounts of millions of Australians with smaller benefits, and who would not be affected by the tax change. Super funds currently calculate and report taxable income at the fund level and not at the member level, Treasury noted. As such, taxing cash earnings would 'involve a substantial burden on the superannuation industry to implement as it would involve developing and maintaining a complex new accounting and reporting regime to calculate taxable income at a member level,' the policy document says. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email 'These significant compliance costs would be borne across all funds and all members, including the 99.5 per cent of account holders who are not impacted by this policy, despite this proposal impacting only approximately 30,000 high balance members with accounts in APRA [Australian Prudential Regulation Authority]-regulated funds.' David Knox, one of the country's leading actuaries and a former senior partner at Mercer, said it was more appropriate to think of the proposed additional levy as a tax on wealth, rather than income. Knox said the approach of taxing unrealised gains was not as radical as some have suggested, saying it was similar to the way council rates (a cash levy) increased with the market value of the land. He also pointed to the fact that pension payments were reduced when a pensioner's home value went up. In both cases, an individual paid in cash – either through higher rates or lower pension payments – for what is a change in notional wealth. The super industry is split into two 'subsystems': Apra-regulated funds – including the big industry and for-profit funds such as AustralianSuper and AMP, respectively – and self-managed super funds. The Apra-regulated funds account for about 94%, or 16m of the 17m Australians with super accounts – but only 76% of the more than $4tn in the super system. There are about 1.1 million people in SMSFs, but this 6% share accounts for 24% of total assets. The Self-Managed Super Fund Association has been among the loudest opponents of the bill. It has highlighted the risk that SMSFs with big holdings in illiquid assets could be forced to sell in order to raise the cash to pay for the notional change in the value of their balances. Treasury's policy document noted that 'some stakeholders have noted that as a result of the changes, there may be a greater focus on investing in income generating assets, such as shares and bonds, as opposed to property and other more illiquid assets'. 'This could represent a positive shift as it would better align with the intention of superannuation to provide income in retirement.' The Treasury documents show that this risk applies to a sliver of those likely to be caught up in the new tax. Fewer than 5% of the estimated 77,400 Australians who will be affected by the changes – or fewer than 4,000 people – have more than 80% of their retirement savings in non-residential retail property, such as farms. Bob Breunig, the director of the ANU's Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, had previously said: 'Running businesses and property portfolios inside super, they shouldn't be doing that, that's not what it's for.'
Daily Mail
12 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The big change to superannuation 'all young Aussies' should fear
Millionaire and entrepreneur Mark Bouris has warned young Australians will be the hardest hit by Labor's proposed tax hike on superannuation. The Albanese government plans to double the tax on superannuation balances above $3million from 15 to 30 per cent from July 1. Labor expects the hike, which will also apply to unrealised gains, to only affect an estimated 80,000 people or 0.5 per cent of the population. Mr Bouris said young Australians should be wary of the proposal given they stand to be denied the same tax conditions that benefited older generations. 'Every young person in the country should be worried about this, and I'll tell you why,' he said on his Mentored Plus podcast. 'Because every old person in the country has experienced building their superannuation up with only 15 per cent tax rate from day one, for the last 30, 40 years. 'We've had this, all of us had this fantastic low-tax situation with the money we earn in our super fund,' he said, adding young people 'will not have the same benefits'. Bouris dismissed the idea that young people stand to gain as older Aussies look to withdraw and gift their savings to avoid paying the higher tax. 'If you're a young person now and you're saying: "Oh this is great, because the rich people are going to transfer the wealth across to the younger people", you will be transferring it to your kids and it's going to keep going like that forever.' Mr Bouris said former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who oversaw the introduction of compulsory superannuation in Australia, must feel 'completely demoralised'. 'All this is going to do is put more strain on the government because people are not going to retire with enough money because they're paying too much tax,' he said. The Greens want the threshold to be lowered to $2million and indexed to inflation while deputy Liberal leader Ted O'Brien has ruled out any compromise. O'Brien suggested the Coalition would be open to a deal on the tax hike if Labor agreed not to tax unrealised gains - but has since taken a harder approach. 'Labor's super tax - it's super big, it's super bad. It flies in the face of what we believe as a Coalition,' O'Brien told Sky News last week. 'We will definitely, as a Coalition, oppose this unfair super tax of Labor's every step of way. Every step of the way.' The 30 per cent tax rate would only apply to the value of a super account over a $3million threshold, while the 15 per cent rate would continue below that amount. Industry groups have warned the threshold, which will not be indexed to inflation, will capture an increasing number of Aussies in line with rising costs and wages. Modelling from Treasury and the Grattan Institute estimated one in ten Australians will have super balances over $3million by the 2050s. Treasurer Jim Chalmers last week said the proposal had undergone multiple rounds of consultation and would not undermine superannuation tax concessions. 'We provided years of opportunities for people to suggest different ways to calculate that liability and nobody has been able to come up with one,' he said. Labor, which does not have a majority in the Senate, will need to work with the Greens or the Coalition to get the proposal over the line.
