Australians are continually told that the nation’s housing crisis is a supply issue.

We are told that the crisis would be resolved if planning was eased and the nation built more homes.

As a result, we are being conditioned for a future of high-rise apartment living to accommodate the projected 13 million extra residents expected to arrive in Australia over the coming 38 years.

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Nonetheless, the federal authorities’s precise housing affordability insurance policies all the time revolve round pumping demand.

This week, Treasurer Jim Chalmers directed Australia’s monetary regulators to ease home-lending restrictions for thousands and thousands of Australians with training loans.

A borrower’s scholar debt shall be excluded from mortgage serviceability exams the place a financial institution anticipates the borrower to repay the quantity in “the close to time period”.

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In accordance with Compare the Market, a tertiary-educated single skilled incomes $125,000 would be capable of borrow an extra $95,900 underneath the introduced coverage.

Somebody incomes $100,000 would have an additional borrowing capability of $56,000, whereas somebody incomes $75,000 would be capable of borrow an extra $26,800.

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Late final 12 months, housing minister Clare O’Neil explicitly stated that authorities coverage wouldn’t decrease home costs and that Labor needs to see costs rise “sustainably”.

“We wish to carry home worth development into one thing sustainable. So we’re not attempting to carry down home costs”, O’Neil mentioned.

“Our authorities’s insurance policies should not going to cut back home costs and we would like home costs to develop sustainably”.

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This week, O’Neil spruiked the most recent lending modifications, that are “centered on getting younger Australians into a house of your individual”.

The fact is that the modifications will intensify Australia’s housing disaster by growing demand and inflating dwelling values.

We shouldn’t be shocked by this coverage. It was explicitly flagged by O’Neil final 12 months. The federal government’s official coverage is to extend dwelling costs whereas they faux to deal with “affordability” through demand-side stimulus.

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The Coalition isn’t any completely different.