ACTU warns Australia’s social contract ‘broken’ amid housing crisis

Australia’s social contract has been “broken” in the wake of three decades of house price growth and the skewed concentration of home ownership, the nation’s peak union body has warned.

Fronting the Select Committee on Intergenerational Housing – tasked with probing intergenerational inequity in the housing market – ACTU assistant secretary Joseph Mitchell said the current approach to housing was “unjust”.

“The decline of public housing has meant that public housing which was once available to not just the most destitute and desperate Australians has been limited to those,” Mr Mitchell told the committee.

“It should not be the most emergency of emergency accommodation, but it has. It has become that over the last few decades, and it needs to be much more available.

“And the second part is, home ownership has been turned into a speculative investment by professional landlords.“We see it pulled further and further out of reach for first-home buyers. It’s just unjust that we treat housing this way, and it does need to end.”

ACTU senior economist Thomas Greenwell warned that because of the way older people were able to accumulate wealth based on capital gains tax concessions, “determination of whether or not your own home is whether or not your parents are wealthy”.

“Which just concentrates and centralises wealth in a particular cohort of people and locks out those who are unable to access the generosity of having been born to rich parents,” Mr Greenwall said.

The committee is examining the different aspects of intergenerational inequality in the housing market including its causes, relevant policy settings, and how the issue has been experienced by Australians from all walks of life.

Originally published as ACTU warns Australia’s social contract ‘broken’ amid housing crisis