News Corp campaign against housing affordability shows right-wing hypocrisy

News Corp’s response to falling house prices exposes the hypocrisy of a right-wing campaign that weaponises housing unaffordability while attacking reforms designed to address it, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

NEWS CORP exists to wage political campaigns against the Labor Government to benefit right-wing parties — including the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation.

This political campaigning has reared its ugly head in response to house price growth slowing, demonstrating that News Corp will use high house prices against Labor and slowing prices; indeed, they will use anything it can find to bash Labor no matter how hypocritical it looks as a result.

The whole point of the Labor Government’s negative gearing reforms is to address housing unaffordability. Negative gearing has for generations created inequity in the housing market by enabling those who own houses to use their accrued capital to purchase property investments and to rent them out at a loss, with that loss reducing their taxable income.

This policy privileged generations of existing owners and investors ahead of new generations of people trying to get a foothold in the property market, not as an investment, but to buy a house to live in.

News Corp jumps on One Nation bandwagon

News Corp’s growing support for One Nation follows a familiar playbook: protecting billionaire interests by repackaging far-right politics as a movement for ordinary Australians.

This is the reason why, for decades in Australia, despite the Global Financial Crisis and despite the COVID pandemic, house prices across the country have risen at alarming rates, creating wealth for those already in the market, and putting home ownership out of reach of those renting and trying to purchase a home.

To demonstrate how unaffordable housing has become in Australia, Sydney Morning Herald analysis has shown that:

‘...if prices had simply kept pace with inflation since 1996, the median house price in Sydney today would be about $465,000. Instead, it’s now $1.79 million.’

These ridiculously unaffordable house prices are a key reason why young people in Australia feel that their generation will be worse off than previous generations. Unaffordable house prices have created a generational gulf between the haves and the have-nots in the housing market.

When young people do the hard work of saving up tens of thousands of dollars for a deposit, while paying exorbitant rent to investors, only to be constantly outbid by investors who use their growing property prices to underpin the purchase of additional assets, this generation’s miserable frustration is absolutely justified.

So, what did right-wing politics do with this generation’s legitimate resentment and their parents’ genuine concerns about their children’s futures? Did they reform negative gearing to help fix the inequity that was driving house prices ever out of reach of young people?

No, of course not. Quite the opposite. Whenever Labor proposed reforming negative gearing, the Liberals and Nationals ran a scare campaign against them, claiming the economic sky would fall down.

Journalists need to resist adopting News Corp’s agenda

When News Corp frames the story, too many journalists stop asking whether the frame is true — and democracy pays the price.

This bad faith politics is even worse than that. One Nation smelt political opportunity from this hotbed of generational resentment over house prices and, being the craven political operatives they are, made political hay out of it.

This was not, of course, to demonstrate the inequity between investors and renters and to help to reform negative gearing to solve the inequity. Instead, One Nation, and in turn, copycat Liberals and Nationals, have worked to turn those angry about housing unaffordability against immigrants by blaming immigrants for high house prices.

In other words, right-wing political parties have unfairly and misleadingly weaponised high house prices to divide and conquer for political gain, while doing nothing to actually address the problem.

This is because right-wing politics have never been interested in solving inequality, but rather, work for the beneficiaries of inequality. Indeed, this week the Liberals showed their true colours in the housing debate when Senator Andrew Bragg offensively argued that if Australians want cheaper housing, they should accept substandard homes and wear more jumpers when it’s cold inside.

It is important to note at this point that the Government has not cancelled negative gearing altogether. Investors can still negatively gear; they just have to add to the housing stock first. Yet, in response to Labor limiting negative gearing to only new houses, investors are leaving the market and, as a result, house prices have fallen, albeit modestly.

Analysis has shown that by the end of 2027, prices across the country will fall by 10.6% and 14.6% in Sydney — Australia’s most unaffordable city. This certainly is not going to make housing broadly affordable, but it will slow what seemed like unstoppable and unsustainable growth of the past generation.

This is good news. The whole point of this policy change was to make housing more affordable to those who want to live in a house, rather than using property to extend their wealth. News Corp, in concert with its right-wing political allies, however, was never going to congratulate the Labor Government for a job well done.

Negative gearing reforms expose a new housing trap

Negative gearing reforms may boost new housing, but also lock up the established homes first home buyers need most.

Instead, as per usual, it is using the successful result of the negative gearing changes to whip up a fear campaign against the Labor Government. For example, News.com.au reports that the policy changes have “soured investor sentiment” – yep, that was the point and as a result, fewer people are showing up at open inspections – again, exactly what was meant to happen.

Never one to miss an opportunity to work to generate an economic downturn to hurt a Labor government, The Australian breathlessly reported that Australia’s 10% reduction in house prices is the largest in 50 years and threatens to cause a recession. This is of course not journalism, but is a political campaign.

What you won’t hear News Corp report, of course, is that Labor’s successful correction of house prices is broadly popular, with a poll recently finding 61% of Australians want house prices to fall. What it also won’t be reporting is that it was always investors unfairly privileged by negative gearing who were inflating house prices and not demand for homes from immigrants, as right-wing parties continue to falsely claim.

News Corp’s hyperventilating hyperbole over house prices correcting shows the Right has no interest in making housing affordable. Instead, it uses the success of Labor’s negative gearing reforms to whip up yet another fear campaign against the Labor Government.

This demonstrates once again that right-wing politics is not interested in solving structural problems but instead will weaponise them in a toxic attempt to spread hate and divide Australia.