It was akin to telling second-hand car owners that Maseratis are affordable simply because they keep rolling out of the showroom.
It wasn’t his advice to first home buyers to just “get a good job”. That’s a given for anyone hoping to negotiate a mortgage and a purchase. It’s simple common sense.
But saying the most coveted and expensive housing in Australia was affordable was the talk of a Maserati driver preaching to a 1987 model Mitsubishi owner.
In real estate terms, that’s exactly what Mr Hockey is.
He owns a 160ha farm in north Queensland, a home in Sydney’s Hunters Hill bought for $3.5 million in 2004, and his wife owns a Canberra apartment. When Mr Hockey stays in that apartment, he pays rent to his wife with an allowance provided to ministers by taxpayers.
Good luck to him. It is no sin to be well off.
But for a politician it is an offence to lose perspective and that is what Mr Hockey did with his comment yesterday on affordability.
“If housing were unaffordable in Sydney, no one would be buying it,” the Treasurer said Tuesday.
And he suggested mortgages were also a bargain at the moment because of low interest rates.
“That’s readily affordable, more affordable than ever,” he said of a mortgage.
The problem is that the benefit from low interest rates can be wiped out by rapidly rising prices. And that’s what is happening in Sydney and other markets.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has repeated that he is still paying off a mortgage. In fact, Mr Abbott, when in Opposition, successfully lobbied for shadow ministers to be paid a premium because of the burden of that loan on his household expenses.
Good luck to the PM, too. He is claiming empathy with first home buyers his Treasurer has not yet matched.
Mr Hockey knows the Sydney real estate scene well because he is a significant player. But he is participating in a league well beyond the reach of the majority of Australians, with or without good jobs.
No comments:
Post a Comment