Blame housing shortage on voters and politicians, not Boomers

Meg Kanofski (“Back off, Boomer! You didn’t have to go bush for a house”, April 16) slings off at Boomers “who didn’t need to change buses to get where they needed to go”. As a Boomer, in 1980 I chose to live in Sydney’s far west – St Clair, where I had a three-bedroom house built; the trip into Sydney required a 4 km bus trip to St Marys railway station (47 kilometres from Central) and a not-so-fast train to Strathfield, and another all-stations train to North Strathfield: as I recall, it was around 1 hours each way. (Snoozing or reading were the usual activities on the train to Strathfield – but not writing: the train’s lurching guaranteed an unintelligible scribble.) Later, for more than 30 years, I travelled to Sydney. Sometimes one has to forgo the pleasure of being a hop, skip and jump away from the excitement and activity in order to lay a foundation for family life. For my family, the 20-minute trip to the Blue Mountains National Park was worth the “inconvenience” of living so far from Sydney. David Gordon, Cranebrook

Yet another article from a member of the younger generation criticising Baby Boomers because we could afford a house in the city. Don’t blame us. Blame the politicians for not tackling negative gearing and other investment incentives. Blame voters, young and old, for backing political parties who refuse to make changes needed to make housing more affordable. Get out and protest, write letters to MPs, change the system. But please stop going after those of us who simply benefited from the conditions of the times we lived in. Margaret Grove, Concord

Kanofski laments not being able to buy a home close to the city as her parents could. When I married, we bought where we could afford a house – an ex-housing commission suburb called Sadleir. I got a bus and train to the city, taking over an hour each way. I attended Macquarie University at night. The homeward trip involved two buses and two trains – three times a week. Yes, there are Boomers who had an easy ride, but most bought where they could afford, travelled whatever distance was necessary for work, settled for second-hand furniture and didn’t see a barista or a beautician until they had their mortgage under control. While I wish everyone had the opportunity to buy a home, I do not see the discipline needed to do that in the current generation. Brian Barrett, Padstow

As usual, the housing debate is providing more heat than light. Property investors with tax breaks contribute to rising prices, but not the housing shortage because they rent out their premises. The shortage is due to a population rising faster than new builds. As the birthrate is low, the factors at work must be immigration and foreign students. The Australia Institute’s website incorrectly suggests that because immigration fell immediately during COVID, yet prices rose, immigration cannot be a factor. There was and still is a huge backlog. We still have the mentality we had at the end of World War II that we had to increase the population or some other country would take over this empty continent. It’s time we decided on the most appropriate population level and where we should locate people. Bruce Johnson, Lakewood

In my travels throughout Sydney, in all sorts of suburbs, I note unacceptably high numbers of new houses built among older but perfectly adequate houses, sometimes only 30 years old, as in my suburb. If you take a three-bedroom house, perfectly functional, able to sleep at least four people and knock it down, you waste all the original building materials by just bulldozing and then dumping them. Then new building materials and a whole team of tradies build a new house with perhaps four bedrooms, a designer kitchen, three bathrooms, a media room, and other frills, but only the same four people move back in. This counts as a new house in the stats but is anything but that, and has not increased the overall housing stock, while consuming huge quantities of new materials and scarce tradies. After World War II, the housing crisis was so acute you were only allowed to build a garage from recycled materials and the council-employed building inspectors policed that vigilantly. Peter Kamenyitzky, Castle Hill

The government and superannuation companies (with significant tax incentives) need to build affordable housing. I’ve seen no one address the elephant in the room – the fact that private landlords sell, return to occupy or turn their houses into B&Bs, forcing tenants to relocate constantly. These are often the poorest in our community and can’t afford the relocation stress and costs. Security of long-term tenure is essential to building happy stable communities. Katriona Herborn, Blackheath

Temporary relief

Your correspondent (Letters, April 16) says “... we must at least provide shelters” for homeless people, including those sleeping in cars or “couch-surfing”. I couldn’t agree more. Having spent most of my working life managing commercial and industrial real estate, I suggest there are many vacant or underutilised (smallish) office buildings and warehouses in most major towns and cities that could quickly be converted to “bedsit” type accommodation at a cost far less than what it would cost to build new dwellings for homeless or low-income people. That is not to suggest that these unfortunate members of our society do not deserve housing of a reasonable size and quality. However, as a short-term measure to address this social crisis quickly, surely a small, secure bedsit with perhaps some shared facilities (such as recreation areas and large, fully equipped kitchens) would be better than sleeping in a park under a piece of plastic or under a freeway overpass? Martyn Yeomans, Sapphire Beach

I was sitting on my deck this morning sipping tea and reflecting on how fortunate I was to be an Australian and to live in Australia when I read your correspondent’s letter mourning the loss of better times for our country. Do you remember when women could not vote and were not welcome at university? My grandmothers did. Do you remember when women had to leave work when they married? My mother does. Do you remember the massive inflation of the 1970s, the enormous interest rates of the 1980s? Eleven per cent unemployment and recession in the 1990s? I do. Is Australia incomparably better than it was? Absolutely. Rather than yearn for a mythical better past, we need to work for a better future for our children and grandchildren. Housing as a human right would be a good start. Catherine Bond, Carseldine (Qld)

State tax influence

The cost of retaining a good quality rental property in desirable areas such as close to a business district or university is extremely discouraging to landlords (“Extra costs push landlords to sell”, April 16). In particular, state government land tax based on increasing government-set land values, which are extremely difficult to challenge, can be as high as 40 per cent of gross rental income, rendering the investment return minimal unless rents were increased to unaffordable levels. Selling the property is becoming the only option. If the state government values this necessary service provided by landlords, the problem of rapacious increases in land tax must be addressed. Geoff Harding, Chatswood

Gap widens daily for Coalition

Niki Savva highlights the bleeding obvious (“Dutton’s new headache is his party”, April 16) – Peter Dutton is completely unfit to be prime minister. Even before his backflip-ridden election campaign, his actions as a minister in previous Coalition governments should disqualify him. He is not helped by a front bench devoid of meaningful policy and low on talent with occasional thought-bubbles. Albanese is not the most inspiring leader but is the genuine article and leads a talented cabinet with a safe pair of hands. There is only one choice on May 3 and it’s not Peter Dutton. Max Redmayne, Drummoyne

Angus Taylor’s performance on the election trail and in the past 12 months has been very “low energy”. He rarely does press conferences, has made the minimum appearances during the election, rarely asked the treasurer a question in question time and has failed to score a blow on the government in three years. It certainly appears he is in “power-saving mode” so he can launch a vigorous post-election campaign to become the next Liberal leader. Malcolm Freak, Armidale

What a pleasure to read Niki Savva’s dryly humorous and insightful columns. Her latest doesn’t disappoint. She lampoons Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the Coalition superstar of The Voice referendum, for not having “a functional politic radar” after she trumpeted “make Australia great again”, totally undermining Dutton’s efforts to distance the Coalition from Trump’s recent slide into authoritarianism and economic lunacy. Price compounded her idiocy by claiming she could not remember saying it. Then images emerged of Price wearing a Trump Make America Great Again cap over the Christmas period. Please, Senator Price, don’t stop campaigning. I can’t wait to read Savva’s next column. Salvatore Sorbello, Campsie

Is it any wonder that the Coalition’s election campaign seems to be imploding, as set out by Niki Savva and the editorial (“Liberal Party campaign is self-destructive”, April 16)? As noted by countless commentators, the Dutton-led team is a bunch of leftovers from the Morrison government, none of whom distinguished themselves during that moribund administration. Most significant has been the Coalition’s inability to achieve anything like an appropriate gender balance in leadership and across the parties – a telling factor in the 2022 election. Sussan Ley and Michaelia Cash are all but hidden during this campaign. On the other hand, letting Jane Hume loose has had disastrous consequences, while Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has shown herself to be the best recent example of the Peter Principle. As the election campaign has proceeded, Peter Dutton’s missteps and apparent lack of necessary skills and abilities have been exposed along with ineffective, ill-prepared and somewhat out-of-touch backroom support. Savva reminds us that Anthony Albanese is not without fault, but as each day passes, the gap in competency between the ALP and Coalition inevitably widens. Ross Butler, Rodd Point

Stump specials

I am enjoying the political heckler anecdotes from your correspondents (Letters, April 16). One of my favourites is of a heckler at a Gough Whitlam rally who objected to Gough’s pro-life stance and continually interjected: “What about abortion?” Gough finally replied: “Let me make it clear that I am in favour of abortion and in your case it should be retrospective.” Michael Georgeson, Balmain

My best recollection of Menzies “town hill meetings” wit was when a heckler yelled out “Menzies, I wouldn’t vote for you if you were the Archangel Gabriel”. He replied, “Madame, if I were the Archangel Gabriel, you wouldn’t be in my electorate”. Eric Hunter, Cook (ACT)

War talk spreads

After hearing that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has banned the importation of Vegemite (“Canada smears Vegemite as trade wars spread”, April 16), at the forthcoming election, I will vote for whichever party states that it will immediately declare war on Canada. Canadians are famously nice people – and I have Canadian friends – but such a national insult to our country cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Julian Mallett, Weston (ACT)

I suggest our response to the banning our national icon is to ban that ghastly maple syrup and restore Queensland golden syrup to our pancakes. John Woodward, Ashfield

I can’t entirely agree with the PM that Marmite is rubbish, but he has surely thrown down an election-winning gauntlet in this campaign. I will certainly be checking on the stance of candidates in my electorate. And how will Peter Dutton meet this new challenge? John Flint, St Leonards

Write whole week off

With a public holiday next Monday and then another during the same week on Friday, April 25, wouldn’t it make sense to just declare the whole week a public holiday? Con Vaitsas, Ashbury

Self-inflicted harm

Your correspondent (Letters, April 16) complains that letter writers seem “to be coming up with a new reason to dislike Dutton and his policies day in, day out.” The problem is that Peter Dutton gives us so much new material to work with. His recent dialling up the outrage meter to 11 over the now-denied report of a Russian presence in Indonesia is the latest of his “Chicken Little” outbursts that the sky is falling. Do we really want a prime minister so prone to panic? Neil Ormerod, Kingsgrove

Luckily for the “echo chamber”, Peter Dutton continues to demonstrate almost daily why he is unfit to be our prime minister. Brenton McGeachie, Hackett (ACT)

The disdain for Peter Dutton is self-inflicted. His actions are intended to divide the community. His derailing of the Voice to Parliament, his admiration for an erratic Trump, his desire to prolong the use of fossil fuels and his constant negativity in parliament. Not finding “new reasons to dislike Dutton” is highly unlikely. John Cotterill, Kingsford

• To submit a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, email letters@smh.com.au. Click here for tips on how to submit letters.
• The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform. Sign up here.