20 August

After WW2, fewer than half of Australians owned their own home. Menzies wanted to change that. He knew 'the market' wouldn't achieve it (it hadn't ever), so what did he do? He made the government build LOTS of public housing. By the time his term of office ended in 1966, home ownership rates had exploded to 72%. The 'great Australian dream' of home ownership came from government acting as a property developer. Which is what it needs to do again today. The market (a myth) will never do it. Cameron Murray explains Menzies' method: "Predominantly, this was through the purchase of housing commission dwellings and funding for state-run housing developers who sold only to first-home buyers at discounted prices. He didn’t rely on the market, nor think that up-zoning or fancy tax tricks would get high home ownership. He knew that governments had to operate on the supply side of the market and provide access to those homes below the market price. In those years, 15 per cent of new dwellings were built by public housing agencies. To translate that period to today’s numbers, 15 per cent of all new housing would be about 25,000 to 30,000 new public dwellings per year. Another boost of 20 percentage points in home ownership, like those post-war decades, would get us from 66 per cent to 86 per cent home ownership, near Singapore’s level, and take over two million households out of the rental market." For those who don't actually think and just back their team in everything, Menzies wasn't just a Liberal. He founded the entire Liberal Party. So this wasn't some 'Greenie' idea of the government building houses. The Liberals created public housing. It's what we need now to fix housing again.