Labor says young people do not need to “retire” to buy a home, calling Scott Morrison’s new policy to give first home buyers access to a super “desperate act of the dying government”.
On Sunday, the prime minister announced that in the event of a re-election he would make changes to the super to allow first home buyers to use up to 40 percent of their super to put on a home purchase.
The ad received mixed reviews: real estate groups welcomed it, while Industry Super claimed it would lead to higher house prices.
Labor was quick to reject the ad, and Shadow Housing Minister Jason Claire noted that the idea was rejected by former Liberal leaders, including John Howard, when they looked at it in the past.
“What we saw today was the last desperate act of the dying government, every heavy attacker in the last-generation Liberal Party who looked at the issue hit him in the head,” Mr Claire told a news conference on Sunday.
“Malcolm Turnbull described it as ‘the craziest idea I’ve ever heard.’ John Howard said it was “super for retirement” and he was right. Peter Castello said: “Well, look, this idea has been around for a long time. Every generation thinks it’s a wheel invented. ” «
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Mr Claire went on to say that former Finance Minister Matthias Corman was the most critical of the idea. He read a quote Mr. Corman cited in 2014 when he said that “access to super savings before retirement will not improve housing affordability” and “actually raise housing prices even further. That is, reduce the affordability of housing, including for first-time home buyers.
“This is the last great generation of liberal leaders who could count – Howard, Castello, Turnbull, Corman – all came to the conclusion that this policy would not work; that it will only push up prices and mean that Australians are retiring with fewer, not more, ”Mr Claire said.
He said young people “don’t need to raid your super to buy a house,” and said those who struggled to get into the housing market usually didn’t have or had very little super.
“The Gratton Institute has concluded that such a policy will largely help wealthy people buy more expensive homes,” Mr Claire said.
He spoke about a Labor aid scheme to buy, which would allow first home buyers to buy a home where the government owned 30-40 per cent of the shares to be repaid by selling the property or increasing the buyer’s income.
The “Purchase Help” scheme is similar to the existing Keystart scheme that works in WA.
Mr Morrison was critical of Help to Buy, arguing that Labor wanted to own “part of your home”, but Labor responded, citing a previous interview given by the Prime Minister, where he praised such programs in other jurisdictions.
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who was the original developer of a mandatory pension scheme that requires employers to invest in workers ’retirement funds, called the policy another reason not to vote for Mr Morrison.
“Liberals hate the pension system – they object to Australian workers having a wealth of pensions regardless of government,” he said in a statement.
“Liberians believe that ordinary executives should be content with an old-age pension. Let them know their place.
“If the public needs another idea to kill this intellectually corrupt government, it is an important crime – and with the government, its unscrupulous prime minister.”
https://thewest.com.au/politics/federal-election/federal-election-2022-labor-blast-morrison-government-over-desperate-housing-policy-c-6807846
