Chaney calls for housing reform

WA politicians have called on all levels of government to advance the state’s housing affordability and boost supply in the lead up to the federal election.

Federal MPs Patrick Gorman and Kate Chaney, appearing alongside Senator for Western Australia Jordon Steele-John at a housing townhall on Wednesday, said more needed to be done to protect social housing and increase market access across the state.

Data from housing affordability campaigner Everybody’s Home reveals that Perth, Swan, Canning and Brand are the electorates with the biggest homelessness and social housing shortfalls in WA.

Moreover, the latest report from the Real Estate Institute of Australia showed housing affordability in WA declined over the December quarter as property prices continue to rise.

“The Perth median house sale price increased 23.3 per cent in the year to December 2024 and the regions have also seen strong growth,” REIWA chief executive Cath Hart said on Tuesday.

“As a result, larger mortgages are needed to purchase property.”

While the pollies clashed on how to best approach the issue, they all agreed that policies which stimulated housing supply went hand-in-hand with creating affordability in the state. 

Ms Chaney likened funding without reform in the current social housing environment to “having an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff”, stressing that key policy levers were missing in action.

To that end, the Member for Curtin said commonwealth, state and local governments would need to collaborate on strategies to boost the number of homes available, and to ensure that new buyers weren’t priced out of the market.

“House prices have increased from three to four times the average income to seven or eight times since 2000,” Ms Chaney said.

“This has been driven by policy settings from both sides of politics over the last 20 years. 

“Rising property prices may be politically popular, but they exacerbate inequality.”

Senator Steele-John echoed Ms Chaney’s sentiment, claiming that current housing policy made it easier for those that already owned a home to make further investments.

“If you look at the personal disclosures of so many MPs … the average home number owned by a member of the Federal Parliament is about 2.5 houses,” Mr Steele-John said.

The register of interest reveals that one in three federal politicians own two homes, while another 77 own three or more properties.

Elsewhere, the federal opposition’s ‘super for housing’ proposal, which would allow prospective buyers to dip into their superannuation to help fund their home ownership dreams, failed to garner support among Wednesday’s panellists. 

“It throws more fuel on the fire, so it just means there's more money competing for the same number of houses,” Ms Chaney remarked.

Instead, Mr Gorman proposed that more universal levers should be pulled to promote housing access and affordability.

“There have been a lot of ideas about where people want to spend super, but I think it's time for the raids on superannuation to stop," he said.

“It's got a purpose. It's about saving for the future and for retirement.”

While all three politicians agreed that each level of government had a part to play in promoting housing affordability, Mr Gorman stressed that clear roles needed to be defined to make their contributions effective.

“What I do expect to see is that the number of houses which any state or territory has in their social housing stock is going up, not down, particularly when we're giving them significant amounts of Commonwealth taxpayer dollars to do exactly that.”

But Mr Steele-John believes the federal government should play a larger role.

“The Commonwealth often has the biggest voice in the room. We should use it," he said.