The dirty little secret that keeps Australian housing wildly unaffordable

I read the article, but missed the secret. What's the secret?

Yeah, clickbaity title I know. But if you're not being sarcastic:
Decades of government policy that has favoured property as an investment vehicle
Little effort to change it as too many voters have financially benefited from it
Any change that would fix the problem in any significant way would likely result in an economic downturn
I guess it's a "secret" in the sense that government doesn't talk about it so plainly, but not really a secret to anyone else.
Kohler's Quarterly essay should expand on the article significantly, but it's paywalled and quite expensive (and not released yet).
I would have linked the Australian politics podcast episode which goes into more detail too, particularly in terms of the historical causes, but I'm not sure of the policy on linking podcasts here.
- Yeah it pretty much just lists known facts, then ends with 'someone outta do something!!' Waste of pixels.
- I didn't read the article yet and this is basically what I expected. Hardly a secret, and a fairly good summary. The economy is going to downturn anyway because people just can't afford the new housing. For a two bedroom anywhere with people, it's 650,000 and up. At that point you have to be married to someone who also works full time to have any reasonable chance of being able to afford the mortgage. At the average interest rate of 6% you're paying $4,100 per month, which is about the average pre-tax income ($54,000 per year, so $1038 per week). Of course, that leaves very little wiggle room to save, and if either of you were to lose your jobs or the interest rate goes up, you'd probably default.
  EDIT: I forgot to add the point. It's this. A whole bunch of people are going to default. People take bad mortgages because they have to, it's not like its an option to be homeless and sharing a house with strangers can really, really suck. But those people are going to be defaulting, or moving overseas, or just staying at home with their parents. The market will correct itself.
The secret is there are too many beneficiaries to expensive houses to really move governments into fixing the problem properly. There are a Million Millionaires thanks to housing prices and they'll be really cross if you go and make them as poor as the others.
It's not really a secret, though. It just isn't something spoken about in Parliament because it's a huge hit button issue.

Wow what a secret. Rich people own the most homes, those rich people decide which other rich people get into government, and those rich people in government set policy. I wonder who the fuck that policy is going to benefit?

1.2 million houses over 5 years while planning to grant 1 million permanent visas in that same time period? While also making it easier to get work visas and massively extending the length of post-study 'reward' visas?

The unrealistic 'aspirational' goal isn't even enough to cover the damage they're causing with their irresponsible migration policies.

Edit: Added for context for those unfamiliar. People who study in Australia are 'rewarded' by being able to apply for 'temporary graduate visas'. These visas are being extended more and more over the past few years, with people able to remain up to an additional 6 years after they finish their study with no work limitations.

No secret at all.

I haven't read the article and I'm not Australian but throwing a random guess out: isn't there a political issue about the conservative liberals stopping the labor party from rolling out a low income housing program that has historically paid for itself before?

Honestly, the Labour party is not truly interested in doing this. In USA politics (assuming you're familiar with it) the left and right are further apart than in Australian politics.
We have the Greens party which is the left leaning party and the Nationals which are the right. Labour and Liberal are on opposite sides of the middle and they team up with the Greens and the Nationals (respectively) to make up the numbers.
- Labor* party.
It's more talking about regular private housing than public or social housing. Social housing itself is more of a semi-private thing too, and is more of a band-aid than a real fix.
Massive investment in proper government funded public housing would be one solution, along with a substantial improvement in renters rights. And the article is suggesting removing some concessions that encourage housing as investment, which would help and the public might accept (but previous elections have suggested otherwise).
No - our government is generally able to get things done. There might be vocal disagreement by the opposition party, but they can rarely block things. Also on this particular issue everyone agrees something needs to be done... it's just not clear what can be done.
Social housing for low income people is an entirely different issue. This article is talking about high income families who still can't afford a home.
If you want to buy a typical family home in a major city, the loan repayments are higher than the entire income of even the highest paid jobs a young person can get (lawyer, etc). Even if a husband and wife both work full time, the amount of money is not even close to within reach.
No bank will let you take out a loan for that much money unless you're covering a large portion of the purchase by selling another home that you bought 20 years ago. How is someone who graduated from law school in 2023 supposed to have bought a home 20 years ago?
I'm young and was able to buy a home recently... but I was only able to do that by choosing to live in an unusually small home on the outskirts of a regional city (the nearest "proper" city is a thousand miles away...). And also I got in before the pandemic - property values have gone up by 1.5x in the last two years in my suburb. I don't think we could afford it now. We also have a kid now, so we can't work full time... even at the price we paid two years ago, the bank wouldn't give us a loan anymore now that we're not able to both work full time.

Oh no, I happen to be old enough to have bought a house before the crazy got super crazy, is that the secret, time?