00:00 The rental market is incredibly tight. It's really hard to find a property. And so what
00:05 we're seeing is really a Hunger Games style scenario where people are competing for a
00:09 really limited number of properties that are available. That's pushing up rents and putting
00:12 more pressure on vulnerable households in Australia.
00:15 Rental affordability is also deteriorated in regional areas. How concerning is that?
00:21 It is a big concern because those in regional areas tend to have lower incomes. And so what
00:25 we're seeing is as people are moving out of the cities as they're pushed out because housing
00:29 has become less affordable, they're actually displacing those people that are trying to
00:33 find rental accommodation in regional areas. We're certainly seeing that in Queensland
00:36 in these latest figures and across areas like New South Wales as well. And so it is a big
00:41 concern because a thousand people leaving Sydney is a big impact on the rental market
00:45 in a place like Bathurst or in Wollongong or somewhere else.
00:48 The authors of this report have pointed to WA's rent relief scheme where four and a half
00:53 thousand struggling households will receive a one off $5,000 payment so they don't get
00:58 evicted. I know you don't support things like rent freezes, but do you support a program
01:02 like this?
01:03 Yeah, absolutely. The best thing we can do right now is to put money in people's pockets,
01:08 low income renters' pockets, so that they can go out and compete in the rental market
01:12 and make sure that they can afford to keep a roof over their heads. So that WA scheme
01:16 is a really positive step. What we would love to see is a national approach where rent assistance
01:22 is increased further across Australia. It's gone up by 15% in the budget. And we'd like
01:27 that to be turned into a 40% increase. That would be close to a thousand dollars extra
01:32 into the pockets of low income renters. But in the long term, we're going to have to deal
01:37 with this by building more homes. Unfortunately, that takes time. The National Cabinet's Housing
01:41 Accord target of 1.2 million homes is a really important step. But we really need the states
01:47 now to come on board and to get those homes built and make those difficult political decisions
01:52 to essentially help solve housing affordability across Australia.
01:55 So as rents continue to skyrocket, we know home ownership is also seemingly becoming
02:00 out of reach for renters. ANZ's boss Shane Elliott said yesterday, if you want a loan,
02:06 you have to be better off and essentially rich. What does that tell us about housing
02:10 in Australia?
02:11 Well, I think it tells us that housing is expensive. So the prudential controls and
02:18 the limits on what people can borrow are there to make sure that people are not borrowing
02:23 what they can't afford to repay. And we're certainly seeing that there are signs that
02:26 that's happening for quite a few people at the moment, as interest rates have reset from
02:30 the lows of 2% up to 6% and above for standard mortgage rates. But it reflects the fact that
02:36 housing is expensive and that the loans are therefore difficult for people to get because
02:40 they're trying to borrow a larger share of their income. The typical house price is now
02:45 four, five, six, seven, eight times average incomes. That wasn't the case two decades
02:49 ago. And it's unsurprising that in that world, it is harder to get a loan because you're
02:53 trying to stretch your budget so much further to get into the housing market.
02:56 What's the impact of higher migration here? We know that that's pushing up rents and house
03:00 prices because supply is limited. Do we need to have a really serious conversation about
03:05 migration levels in Australia?
03:08 Look, there's no doubt that current record levels of migration, you know, we're talking
03:12 about 500,000 people, extra people in Australia, you know, over the course of the last year
03:18 is affecting housing affordability because anyone who comes to Australia needs housing,
03:25 they need somewhere to live. We could certainly and we should be looking at migration. I think
03:30 the challenge is going to be that if we're reducing migration or trying to slow down
03:37 that pace of migration, it would make housing more affordable, but it would also probably
03:41 make us poorer because the kinds of migrants that are coming to the country, whether it
03:45 be students that are paying fees to universities and also making a big fiscal contribution,
03:50 whether you're talking about skilled workers, these are groups that are actually benefiting
03:54 the Australian community in other ways. So if we slow it down, it would certainly make
03:58 housing a little bit cheaper, but it would come at other costs. And I think that's the
04:02 trade-off that Australia faces at the moment.
04:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]
