There’s an upcoming election in Australia, and housing will be a big issue. Show host Gene Tunny chats with Fusion Party candidate Owen Miller about Fusion’s sweeping housing policy proposals. Topics include eliminating negative gearing, taxing capital gains on owner-occupied homes, and increasing public housing. They also discuss ideas like charter cities, high-speed rail, and a government-run real estate platform.
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You can listen to the episode via the embedded player below or via podcasting apps including Apple Podcast and Spotify.
About Owen Miller
Owen Miller grew up in Sydney and has long been interested in science fiction, ultimately leading to the study of mechatronics (robotics & control systems) and computer science at the University of Sydney.
After working in different software roles in Sydney and even dealing Blackjack for some months, Owen moved to Seattle to work on the recommender systems at Amazon. Owen later moved to New York and was involved in smaller startups, especially in hospitality. Although the start-ups didn’t take off, this rite of passage involved less shielding from the real world and helped clarify the roles of the market and the state in the provision of essential aspects of life, such as software and social cooperation.
In 2020, Owen started the Non-Human Party; a vision for an opt-in online nationality that would optimise the existence of robots and animals, in addition to humans.
Upon moving to Melbourne in 2022, Owen became the Registered Officer of Fusion, with the hope of enabling Australia to reach its full potential as a wealthy, sustainable and harmonious paradise; a beacon for the rest of the world. He currently serves as Fusion’s Convenor.
Owen was Fusion’s candidate for the 2023 Aston federal by-election.
In 2024, he ran as a candidate for local council in Merri-bek (for the Bulleke-Bek ward).
He will again be running as a federal candidate in 2025, this time in Wills.
In 2024, Spotify classified Owen as belonging to the top 0.05% of Kylie Minogue fans.
Source: https://www.fusionparty.org.au/owen_miller
Timestamps
- Introduction (0:00)
- Relationship Between Fusion Party and Pirate Party (3:07)
- Fusion Party’s Housing Policy Goals (4:04)
- Comparisons with Other Countries and Tax Policy (6:19)
- Immigration and Housing Policy (9:09)
- Owner-Occupier Capital Gains Tax and Land Tax (12:53)
- Renter’s Rights and Social Housing (17:16)
- Supply-Side Housing Policies (27:49)
- Liberté Account and Open Source Real Estate Listings (38:24)
- Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up (51:02)
Takeaways
- Tax reform is central to Fusion’s housing strategy — They propose reducing capital gains tax discounts and phasing in land tax for all properties, including owner-occupied homes.
- Fusion supports a major investment in social housing — Advocating a jump from 3.2% to 10% of housing stock as public housing.
- Tenant rights need an upgrade — Fusion argues for banning no-fault evictions and establishing minimum standards like clean air and energy efficiency.
- Livret A accounts could revolutionize infrastructure funding — A French-style citizen savings bond to fund high-speed rail and public housing projects.
- Urban sprawl isn’t the answer — Fusion favors infill development and transport-driven decentralization over expanding city fringes.
Links relevant to the conversation
Fusion’s housing policy:
https://www.fusionparty.org.au/housing_as_a_home
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Transcript: Fixing Australia’s Housing Crisis: Fusion’s Plan w/ Owen Miller – EP277
N.B. This is a lightly edited version of a transcript originally created using the AI application otter.ai. It may not be 100 percent accurate, but should be pretty close. If you’d like to quote from it, please check the quoted segment in the recording.
Owen Miller 00:03
You know, it encourages people like you should spend as much money as you can afford on buying a home. And you know, that obviously creates rich suburbs poor suburbs. It’s interesting to note as well. You know, if you look at like domain, the real estate side, if you look at their list of top 10 most livable suburbs in Sydney doesn’t match the list, you know, the price list. So you know the most livable suburb is not actually the most expensive.
Gene Tunny 00:34
Welcome to the economics explored podcast, a frank and fearless exploration of important economic issues. I’m your host Gene Tunny. I’m a professional economist and former Australian Treasury official. The aim of this show is to help you better understand the big economic issues affecting all our lives. We do this by considering the theory evidence and by hearing a wide range of views. I’m delighted that you can join me for this episode. Please check out the show notes for relevant information. Now onto the show. Hello and welcome to the show. Today we’re looking at the housing policy of the fusion party. So this is an Australian political party, and I’m joined by Owen Miller, who is the convener of the fusion party, and he’s also a candidate for the Federal seat of wills in the upcoming election. Owen, thanks so much for joining me on the program. Adrian,
Owen Miller 01:38
good to be here. I’ve enjoyed listening to it so far. And, yeah, I’m also becoming a fan of the organic coffee from the highlands of Peru.
Gene Tunny 01:45
Oh, very good. So you’ve ordered some brilliant I love to let him know. He’ll be, he’ll be super excited. Very good. Okay, now. Oh, and I read in your bio. I mean, there are a couple of things that stood out to me. I mean, one is, you’re in the top. What is it fraction like point, oh, 5% of Kylie Minogue fans guilty. It’s
Owen Miller 02:05
inspirational. You know, especially you know the song your disco needs you. It really, you know your nation’s falling. You know what needs to be done. Your disco needs you. It feels like it’s resonating for anyone you know, thinking about getting into politics.
Gene Tunny 02:19
Well, she’s a great Australian Export, really. I mean, she’s brilliant. I remember going to her impossible Princess concert here in Brisbane at the entertainment center. I mean, now she’d have to have a bigger venue. I imagine that was back in 1998 I think that was the start of when, I mean, she was, I mean, she was always huge, obviously. But that was really the start of when she started to become an icon. I think, where, oh, this is, it’s really changed. It’s not just the pop. It’s really getting sophisticated. And so, yeah, yeah, I can, I can see where you’re coming from. So that’s, that’s, that’s fine. I don’t want to talk about Kylie or all. We’d be here all night. Very good. So what I want to chat with you about is the housing policy of of fusion party. First, can you just explain what’s the relationship between fusion party and Pirate Party? Because I’ve previously spoken with John August, who’s involved with Pirate Party. Can you just tell us a bit about
Owen Miller 03:16
that, please? Yeah, so pirate party, that was one of our branches, so there was the law change a few years ago, 2018, I think it might have been previously, to have a party registered. You only needed 500 members, but then the rule changed, so you needed 1500 so, you know, various parties merged together. So the founding ones of fusion were, yeah, pirates, secular science, vote planet, and then also climate change justice. Gotcha.
Gene Tunny 03:43
Okay, gotcha. So you’re fusing together those different, those different philosophies or platforms. Okay, great. Oh, plus,
Owen Miller 03:51
we support nuclear fusion. Hence the like,
Gene Tunny 03:55
very clever. Okay, got it. Okay, that’s brilliant, right? So, can you tell us, I mean, what’s the overarching philosophy behind your housing policy? Can you? Can you give us an overview of your housing as a home policy, please, before we dive into some of the specifics.
Owen Miller 04:13
So what we were trying to solve for, there were three main goals. So there’s lowering the barrier of entry, not necessarily buying, but, you know, just being able to get a place to live. The second idea was increased mobility, you know, moving more easily. And the third is the efficient allocation of capital. Because, you know, homes the moment they’re doing double duty, you know, is it a place to live, or is it an investment? By trying to get them to do both, it ends up, you know, undermining both purposes.
Gene Tunny 04:42
Gotcha. Okay, so I guess the background is, I mean, in Australia, we’ve got a real problem with with housing. At the moment we’ve had, particularly in it was 2223 we had something like 20% growth in rents in some capital cities. Uh, we’ve had, you know, big, you know, massive appreciations of property prices. It’s becoming much harder for for young people, for first home owners, and we’ve got a growing homelessness crisis. So certainly, we certainly need some policy, policy measures. What are the major specific policy measures that you are advocating for Owen, can you tell us please? Yeah,
Owen Miller 05:23
so one of the main things at the moment there’s a capital gains tax discount. So the idea is, if you sell your home and it’s raised in value over the years, part of the reason it rose in price is just because there’s inflation going on around you in the economy. So you know, it makes sense that you don’t have to pay capital gains tax at 100% of that gain. Currently it’s up to 50% but we feel that that’s a bit too generous. So for owner occupiers, we’re suggesting the discount at the moment is, you know, 0% we’re suggesting it gets changed, you know, 15% and then for people who don’t live in the property, currently the discounts 50, but we’re also suggesting lowering that. So yeah, the main thing is, if we treat homes as if they’re going to keep rising in value and that you’re going to get a tax discount for this rise in value, then it sort of incentivizes the tap. And so, yeah, by us taxing these gains more, they’re sort of people are less likely to pursue it,
Gene Tunny 06:29
right? And so is this your this is the where you’re coming from. You think that these tax, the tax policies regarding housing? I mean, do you think that’s a significant source of the problem that we have in Australia with housing? Yeah. So
Owen Miller 06:45
especially if people want to visit the website where they can review our policy in detail, you’ll see, I’ve got comparisons with different countries. At the moment, we’re most comparable to the Netherlands. The similarities there, it’s mainly that in the Netherlands, they were allowed to borrow, sort of out of control, and then also they got tax discounts for the mortgage payments on their primary residence. So, you know, when you give all these generous tax treatments, pushing people into buy homes, then you know, that’s sort of what they do. And you know, you could get a mortgage in the Netherlands up to 105% of the value of the property. So, you know, I guess, you know, covering stamp duty and moving costs, all that sort of thing. And so one of the things they did to rein this in, in the early 2000s was to lower it so you can only borrow 100% the value of the home.
Gene Tunny 07:35
How did they do that? I mean, did they have, did they have state owned banks, or was there, so was there government support for I mean, I’m just wondering how they managed to do that, because that seems risky from the from the banks perspective, yeah,
Owen Miller 07:49
yeah, because you’re right, the risk of default, yeah, I’d have to look into that more. But I guess, in terms of how much anyone can borrow, I guess, you know banks, it’s pretty common worldwide, isn’t it, for, you know, banks to get bailed out by governments. I
Gene Tunny 08:04
guess, regrettably, there is that. There is that issue there that yes, and I mean, we’re still dealing with, I think, the the implications of the bailouts in the financial crisis, I think, I think, I think a lot of the reason that we have we’ve ended up with such toxic politics is that we’ve got a lot of people who are, you know, the people are mad that the people who are seen as the villains in the financial crisis ended up getting bailed out or didn’t go to jail when they probably should have. So I guess that’s a that’s a matter for another day. Oh, and I think, I think it’s Yeah. It’s interesting this point about taxes, because this is a debate I’ve been involved in. I used to be in the treasury, and so I probably got a different view. But that’s, that’s okay, I mean, I mean, I guess the sort of standard view would be that, well, okay, these are probably having some impact, but maybe it’s 4% two to 4% or something. It’s, yeah, the bulk of the the actual problem that we’ve seen recently. And so I’m just wondering, how do you see the the tax policy settings, and you mentioned capital gains, and there’s obviously the other thing, people argue about negative gear. And so be keen to hear your views on negative gearing. But how do you how do you compare these tax policy settings to say, immigration, there’s a lot of concern about rate of immigration. So could you tell us about both your views on negative gear and also immigration, please, in regards
Owen Miller 09:33
to that two to 4% Yeah. So one of the sources I was relying upon heavily was from Peter Tullet, the Center for Independent Studies. And yeah, so he included that figure where he’s saying, if we were to, if we were to have the same application of negative gearing that Paul Keating perform, you know, what many people think of as scrapping negative gearing, if we would do that, and then also we were going to change the capital gains tax for quote, unquote invest. Dollars, you know, people who don’t live in the home, then those two effects combined have been estimated be responsible for two to 4% of property prices. Where fusions policy differs is that we’re also changing the capital gains tax for owner occupiers, so we have more than this two to 4% impact. But then also, yeah, in terms of the impact of immigration, yeah, obviously that’s a huge component to it. So we did have a specific section on immigration, and that it’s skewed towards students at the moment. And you speak to anyone in the tertiary education sector, and they’ll tell you that there are whole there’s just rampant fraud going on at the moment. Many of these students are not learning anything. The colleges will never equip teach them anything. And, yeah, which even, even the skilled migrants. I saw a talk by Matt Barry, the CEO of freelancer, I believe he said he had some figures where it was showing 20% I think it was 20% of skilled migrants aren’t paying income tax, you know, because they don’t have a job, presumably. And 7% of skilled migrants are on unemployment benefits. These are the skilled ones. And so, you know, there are certainly arguments we can make, you know, in favor of immigration, you know, covers shortages where we have shortages. So you know what? I mean, yeah, but then yeah, it doesn’t seem to be panning out in Australia’s best interest at the moment. So, so yeah, we’ve suggested lowering it back to 2017,
Gene Tunny 11:30
levels, right? Okay, do you know for the top of your head what that was? I mean, I can look it up later and put it in the show notes. So
Owen Miller 11:36
500,000 net immigrants versus 650,000 at the moment, right?
Gene Tunny 11:42
So 500,000 would still be high relative to,
Owen Miller 11:47
oh, the world, sure, yeah.
Gene Tunny 11:49
No, I guess so, 500,000 we’re talking so this is for Australia. Is that? Yeah? 500,000 net immigrants. Yeah. Net immigrants. Okay, I’ll have a look at your policy, because that still sound to me that still sounds high relative to the sort of rates that we’ve had in the like, pre, you know, pre pandemic, and we also had, I guess, what the Mac the macro business guys, I think they want to, you probably know, the macro business guys that I think they want to take it back to about 100,000 or something. I mean, that might, I mean, who knows? That may be too low, but it’s sort of, for many years, it was sort of running around, I think 150 to 200 or two to 250 and then it sort of, you know, went up to this very high level, post pandemic. That’s okay, we’re gonna, we’re gonna,
Owen Miller 12:35
oh, sorry, you’re right. I did sorry. This was the, I was quoting the gross arrivals. Yeah, you’re right. Net arrivals is has been, yeah, you’re right. In 2017 net arrivals was 250,000
Gene Tunny 12:48
sorry, yeah. I think that’s probably, that sounds good. Yeah. That sounds fine. I mean, I think that’s sort of the level that yeah would be, well, definitely more sustainable than what we’re having now. I think the points you make about the rorting, I think they’re good. I think they’re good points. I think, unfortunately, there is, you know, quite a bit of that going on. So, so that’s good. Now I need to know, I want to ask about this owner occupier capital gains tax. Because So isn’t it the case. If you live in the principal place of residence long enough, is it over 12 months, you don’t, there’s no capital gains. Yeah, that’s my understanding. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you’re tweaking this for people who own occupy and what they only occupy it for they occupy for only a few months, or something. Is that the, oh,
Owen Miller 13:35
we’re saying that even if you, even if you live it, in it for a long time, you should still have to pay, you should only get a 15% discount on on that gain, as opposed to 100%
Gene Tunny 13:47
so really, okay, that’s interesting. So
Owen Miller 13:50
one of the, one of the issues that people have with that is basically, you’ll sort of depart from the rest of the housing market. You know, it’s gone. Let’s say you bought your house for a million dollars. Now the price is around. You are 2 million. You sell yours. You know you’re gonna some of that 2 million is going to get taken away in tax and you can no longer buy the house near you. Yeah. But I guess what I was suggesting before that part of that rise was because there were these incentives for people to, like, want it to rise and everything. If housing prices were more steady, then, you know, maybe the prices rose, you know, $20,000 around you. And so this capital gains tax that you’re paying, you know, just wouldn’t be as significant.
Gene Tunny 14:33
Yeah, okay, so that’s, yeah, that’s quite a bold policy. Uh, what feedback are you getting on that? Oh, well, I
Owen Miller 14:40
mean, as I said, there was the, there was the idea that, you know, the house prices around you could escape, yeah, yeah. But then also, it’s worth noting that, you know, this could be phased in over, you know, decades even. So, you know, if, if we started to increase this tax and, you know, we did see, you know, terrible outcomes, you know, since it’s been rolled out slowly and be. Shocked or reversed? Yeah, it’s I should mention as well. Sorry, I said this was the biggest feature, perhaps just as large is we want to move towards land tax, but land tax in the way that Henry George proposed, not what we’re getting now. So, you know, some states offer quote, unquote land tax, but the primary place of residence is immune from this tax.
Gene Tunny 15:23
Yeah, gotcha. Okay, so this is just want to go back to this, yeah? Owner occupier, so capital gains tax, so you’re saying, only was it discounted 15 or 50% I couldn’t hear it clearly. Sorry,
Owen Miller 15:36
oh, sorry that they get a discount of 15% 15, like, 1415, yeah. Okay.
Gene Tunny 15:41
So that means they have to pay tax on the bulk of the the capital gain, so 85% of the capital gain, even though,
Owen Miller 15:52
oh, no wait, sorry, um, I’m quitting it the wrong way around. Oh, good, okay, they have to pay tax on, they have to pay tax on 15% of the capital gain. Sorry, Gotcha,
Gene Tunny 16:01
okay, okay, so that’s, that’s going to be, that’s not going to be as drastic, Okay, gotcha.
Owen Miller 16:07
Because I’m not an economist, it was keeping up with all these the
Gene Tunny 16:11
way I was sort of, yeah, I was interpreting my going, that sounds really people with their pitch box. Yeah, exactly. Well, but, well, I mean, I guess it’s interesting. It’s interesting proposal, because, I mean, there are a lot of concerns about inequality, and now, I mean oligarch is the word everyone’s talking about in the US. I mean less so in Australia. I mean, is this? Do you see this as a measure to address wealth inequality as well? Do you have policies regarding inequality? Yes,
Owen Miller 16:41
so especially for homelessness. So I guess homelessness is often mischaracterized, the causes, all that sort of thing. So there’s a graph I included here. They had a comparison of housing affordability versus homelessness for various American cities, and you can see this so closely correlated. You can see that, you know, housing affordability is, like, quite obviously, the number one driver of how many people are homeless, yeah. And so, yeah, by all these tax treatments, infusions, housing policy, we’re aiming to level the playing field more between owning versus renting. And then, you know, once there gets to be more renters, so there is about 30% at the moment in Australia, in Germany and Switzerland, it’s about 50% so basically, the more renters we have in Australia, the more rights they will achieve, which, you know, creates a virtuous cycle of making renting more and more appealing,
Gene Tunny 17:37
right? Okay, so what? What additional rights do you think renters should have? I mean, there have been changes in Queensland. I’m not sure exactly what’s happened in New South Wales. I mean, we had some changes to so that, you know, rents could only go up every 12 months. I mean, that just means they have a higher rental increase at the, you know, the start of a 12 month lease. What? What additional measures or rights do you think should be in tenancy agreements? Well, it
Owen Miller 18:12
really starts with no ground, no fault evictions. So if we’re going to create any extra rules that landlords have to follow, if they can count people, you know, at the drop of a hat, then it means that any of the other rules can’t easily be enforced. You know, you could say, like, Hey, you are meant to give me, you know, energy efficient appliances. Then you didn’t. And so then, you know, the landlord can say, Oh, well, you know, get out then. So, yeah, preventing against no fault evictions is really the starting point. One of the other things that we call for is an upgrade in extra rights for clean air. So we can think that as our standard of living gradually evolves over the years, you know, like internet is now seen as, you know, a basic necessity of living in modern society. And so if anything becomes commonplace in a home where the owner lives in it, then basically those facilities should also become expected in rental accommodation. And so, you know, things like air purifiers, having clean air, it helps you think, it helps you live longer, you know, staying healthy. And so we would like to see some minimum standards about clean air and apartments. Yeah, right.
Gene Tunny 19:31
And what’s your policy on social housing? Because one of the things we’ve seen in Australia is that state governments don’t invest in social housing anymore. And I mean, I guess economists have to blame for this, partly because for a long time, the common wisdom was that, oh, well, social housing is inefficient. It doesn’t make sense for governments to hold on to this social housing stock and have to look after it. You can get people can get stuck in social housing for years. And it’s not a really, you know, it’s not a really great way. Deliver to deliver the support, and you may as well just provide decent rent assistance. The problem, I guess, the mean, I guess the problem we’re starting to see now is just that, well, there are so many people are just falling through the cracks. Who just they do end up homeless. So I’m just wondering, what’s your policy on social housing? Please. Owen,
Owen Miller 20:21
yeah, well, actually, many people would be surprised to know, if you see a comparison of social housing worldwide, you know, the United States, anyone who’s been there can see that. You know, if you’re down on your luck in the United States, you can fall very far down the, you know, complete disdain for homeless people there, and yet they have more social housing, you know, as the proportion more social housing than Australia does. So Australia’s social housing is currently at 3.2% at the other end is the United Kingdom with 16% so we’re suggesting that the Australian Government should get to 10% public housing. So social housing includes public and then also nonprofits. But you know, unfortunately, you know, some nonprofits, some of them, have a tendency to sort of problem going, you see as well, like there’s this book dead a where they’re talking about all the money that’s been paid to Africa over the years as charity. And, you know, lots of that gets funneled off. And you know this, if the public housing is run by the government, their incentives are most aligned to, you know, actually look up the population, right?
Gene Tunny 21:35
Okay, gotcha, I might go back to the tax issues now with with capital gains. So you’re seeing a role for greater taxation of the capital gains so that there’s less what speculative investment in housing is that? Yeah,
Owen Miller 21:56
well, so you know something that’s making housing and appealing investment for many people, they regard that, you know, it’s safe that’s going to go up forever. Yeah, there’s this. Seems to be a correlation between these nations, where house prices stay more level, those nations seem to invest more in research and development. And you know, if you think about startups, here, for instance, the funding for startups is nothing like it is in the US. And yeah, it it seems like such a such a waste that, you know, the best thing we can possibly spend our money on is just buying a home and just leaving it there for decades. You know, like, what value are we actually adding and you know that comes into the justification for land tax as well. You know, if, if your gain is thanks to basically, the rest of society evolving around you, then, you know, shouldn’t the rest of society be rewarded for doing that? Like, why should you get the reward for just sitting
Gene Tunny 22:57
there? Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I know John’s got a he wants to come on. Well, yeah, I want to have John on to talk about George’s policies in a future episode. For sure, absolutely, just so on the tax so capital gains. Yep, you can, they’re certainly at it. There’s certainly income those capital gains, and there is a case for for taxing them. I mean, we’ve made an exception for owner occupied housing where people live in the house, if it’s their principal place of residence and and, I mean, there’s social policy reason, and it would be incredibly unpopular. And also, we don’t allow people to tax deduct mortgage payments, unless it’s for an investment property. So, yeah, that’s, that’s probably part of the, the reason to you have a discussion of imputed rent in your policy. So you’re, what’s the pirate, sorry, what’s fusion party’s views on this concept of in imputed rent, and how does that figure in your your housing policies? Yes,
Owen Miller 24:03
just a bit of background for everyone. So imputed correct me, if I’m wrong. Gene imputed rent is the idea that if, let’s say you and I, we both buy homes for a million dollars, I choose to live in mine, you choose to rent yours out. So if you’re collecting, say, $500 per week in rent, you have to pay tax on that income. So for me, living in this house, I’m getting, you know, a $500 per week benefit from living there, but I’m not paying any tax on that benefit. And so, you know, some people would say, you know, but you bought it, you should be able to do whatever you want with what you buy. Another view is that, you know, basically, I bought a money printing machine. And you know, if I’m able to print money every week, essentially, like and never pay tax on it. But I guess putting that aside, it’s worth noting. So in a few countries in Europe, they have imputed ran the UK. Used to be one of those, and they got rid of imputed rent explicitly to encourage home ownership, so that sort of, you know, resolved the debate. And so, you know, after discovering this, you know, it’s eye opening in terms of, how can we change our tax system to make it, you know, less skewed towards, you know, pushing everyone into you have to buy a home. And you know, with the different tax treatments for owner occupied homes, you know, it encourages people like you should spend as much money as you can afford on buying a home. And you know that obviously creates rich suburbs poor suburbs. It’s interesting to note as well that, you know, if you look at like domain, the real estate site, if you look at their list of top 10 most livable suburbs in Sydney, doesn’t match the list, you know, the price list. So you know the most livable suburb is not actually the most expensive. And so like double bay, for instance, it’s a very expensive place if you want to buy a house, an apartment, and yet it’s not livable. And you have to wonder, like, are all these people in double bay just lying to each other that it’s a great place to live there, right? Their property price is high,
Gene Tunny 26:08
yeah. How do they how do they assess livability? Does it have to do with transport links? Does it have to do with nightlife or,
Owen Miller 26:17
yeah? Yeah, not quite sure. Yeah,
Gene Tunny 26:20
I’m not. I don’t either. I’m not sure either. I mean Double Bay, I know. I guess it seems, I mean, it seems reasonably livable, but it is a nice place. It is. It can be hard to get a like, Get get a seat at a, you know, one of those cafes or restaurants there. I remember, I haven’t been there that offered. But I think, I think
Owen Miller 26:41
lavender Bay was number two in terms of livable. But not, yeah, not the most expensive. Yeah, interesting.
Gene Tunny 26:47
Yeah. I’ll have to have a look at that. Okay, so, so you’re not proposing to tax imputed rent, are you?
Owen Miller 26:53
Oh, well, no, not explicitly, but we are proposing to make it more even for renters in the same, you know, charging imputed rent would make things more even for renters, as do our policies. But we don’t. We’re not suggesting explicitly, let’s introduce imputed rent. Okay, a big motivation for that is, you know, like, we have to deal with political realities. Fusion says, like, here’s a new tax you’ve never heard of, and now you have to pay it. Yeah, I
Gene Tunny 27:19
think if you introduce that you’d have to introduce tax deductibility for mortgage interest payments as well, so that that’s, that’s something that’d probably have to go along with that. Okay, that’s interesting. I thought it was good. You had that discussion there in the in your policy now, what about, what about on the supply side? Lot of, a lot of the concerns about housing relate to, well, there’s just not enough housing stock where productivity is low. We’ve got, we’ve got a union that I won’t name, but that is allegedly, you know, responsible for holding up projects to to, you know, increase benefits their members have been done very well for their members, I must say. But a lot of concerns about, about that, about industrial relations in construction, there are concerns we’re not allowing enough development, enough greenfield development. What are your thoughts? What? What does fusion party proposed regarding supply, yeah.
Owen Miller 28:22
So I was looking, there’s a chart from where’s the source? St Louis, fed, yeah. So it’s a chart of dwelling completions per 100,000 people. And yeah. So Australia is leading the way above the UK, US, Canada, France. We’re building, you know, more dwellings per capita than these other countries are. And so in I believe it was 2020 Sydney had the second most cranes in the world, behind Dubai. And so this notion that, oh, well, let’s build quicker. Like, how quickly can we we’re already, we’re already building so fast. And so another supply argument that gets brought up is, you know, basically, let’s have lots of urban sprawl. Let’s subsidize urban sprawl. If only, you know, various councils would just, you know, get out of the way. And you know, we can build a new you know, we can build these new towns in the middle of nowhere, and, you know, create like industry hubs to spur them on. But you know, even one argument is that nobody wants to live there. And we can also see, so there’s this mathematical concept of benford’s law. There’s a notion that some numbers like, if we say city population, it’s more common to have a city population that starts with the number one and then the number two and sort of declining as you go along. And it doesn’t matter what what base you use. So, you know, we normally can in base 10, if you change the base, it’s still more common. So, you know, it’s an odd phenomenon. I mean, it sounds like a joke when you first hear a bit, but so city populations already have this odd phenomenon happening to them. Right? And so for you to say, like, No, I’m going to intervene, you know, the government is going to subsidize these new cities. Well, if you do spur on a population growth in, say, golden, then you’re just going to create all these smaller places nearby with, you know, the previous population of gold. And essentially, so, you know, this is basically a natural phenomenon. I don’t think you should fight it in this way of urban sprawl. I should note as well, many people in the fusion party, including myself, you know, have an affection for the environment, and so we don’t like urban sprawl from that perspective, either.
Gene Tunny 30:35
Okay, so does that mean you would favor greater redevelopment in in the cities, in the inner cities, relaxing heritage restrictions, that sort of thing, character protection.
Owen Miller 30:49
I’m hesitant to relax her protections, because, you know, like, what’s the point of actually living in the city? You know, it has to, it has to still maintain something about it, you know, like, we don’t, we don’t we want a country that actually has a culture, don’t we want cities that we’re proud of? You know, if we want to move to just like a warehouse of people, you know, who does that serve? Although it can be a bit ridiculous, I included in our housing policy situation in Brunswick. So there’s how many was it? I believe there’s like 714, old. Power what do they call them? Power substation? From the outside, it looks like a shed, a shed built in the 1920s or so, you know, they’re dilapidated. They’ve covered in graffiti. And yet, this new development in Brunswick, they’re going to have, like, this old thing in this like glass atrium. You know, it’s completely unused now, it’s just an old shed. You know, some old buildings are glorious. Some, you know, a good example is the council’s getting in the way.
Gene Tunny 31:52
Okay, we’ll take a short break here for a word from our sponsor.
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Gene Tunny 32:27
Now, back to the show. What type of development Do you Do you see occurring So, broadly speaking, what, what type of development, where do you see the people living will will you? Is it in well, one
Owen Miller 32:42
of the main things is, you know, let’s create a better alignment between government and, you know, this, the rest of society who wants to build these homes? Because at the moment, you know, Council, they don’t have too much incentive to prove the extra development. You know, they could get extra rates from the people who live there. But you know, that’s in a few years time, in the next people’s next people’s term, there are more immediate concerns. And so one of the big parts of our housing policy is the introduction of the Livret A at a it’s a government bond. It’s hugely popular in France. 82% of people have one. And so the Australian version of the lever at a we would use, once people put their money into the bond, then this bond would be used to fund city building projects, you know, sustainable infrastructure, high speed rail. I mentioned before that we don’t want to create, you know, urban sprawl in middle of nowhere. But if we had, like, high speed rail connections between, you know, all of Australia’s, at least the East Coast, large cities. Then, you know, easier transport around cities would also allow, like, if we think of, you know, Ricardian advantage. And you know, why is this city rich? What does it do better than other cities? And so with much easier travel, you know, different pockets could spring up around Australia that have their own unique societies, their unique economic advantages. And, yeah, basically, we could spur on the evolution of society even faster,
Gene Tunny 34:14
right? Okay, so it is a form of decentralization, is it? I mean, you’re saying you’re not supportive of urban sprawl, but you well, you’re supportive of connecting our major cities up with with other centers, and then that can encourage population growth in those other centers,
Owen Miller 34:33
plus, you know, places along the way that might be that could grow further. Yeah.
Gene Tunny 34:38
Gotcha. I think I might have been chatting with John about this was, is there the idea of this Turing? Oh,
Owen Miller 34:47
yeah, yeah. So that was from The Science Party, so we suggested having a charter city near Canberra. So, yeah, charter cities, you know, I guess maybe you know more about this gene, like worldwide. You know, if you are. For these special immigration permits, where it’s like easier for foreigners to move to this place. And then, yeah, if it starts off with some sort of economic reason for why this city is going to succeed in some industry, then yeah, you know, more people will move there. But, you know, I guess this stuff, it’s hard to achieve. I mean, you see, like the city building projects being pursued by the Emirates by the Saudis at the moment. And it’s really hard to start a city out of nothing. I mean, why does anyone need to be there? But I guess it is an interesting way to look at like, how can we quickly spur on, you know, science, technological development, and, yeah, like, this is one way to achieve it,
Gene Tunny 35:46
yeah, gotcha, okay, okay, yeah, I thought that cheering idea was the city idea was, that was, I thought that was interesting. I mean, I think, yeah, cheering, obviously. I mean, huge, huge contribution. So, great name. So absolutely. So I might go over your recommendation summary, because there’s a good summary of your your housing policy, and I’ll put a link to this in the show notes. So one abolish stamp duty and then introduce taxes on unimproved value of land. So I think there’s a lot of sort of economic logic behind this? So, yep, I think that gets a that can get a tick of approval eradicate homebuyer grants and schemes. So what’s your concern about these first home owner grants, etc?
Owen Miller 36:34
Well, they’re not a long term solution. It’s just another band aid you see over the last, say, 20 years. Yeah, liberal labor governments, they only implement band aids. And so one of the current ones being proposed is, you know, let’s let people access their super earlier to buy a home, especially for first time buyers. Well, I mean, you know, home buyers, the first time buyers, obviously haven’t saved up much super yet. Anyway, you know, besides, you know, we see this like equilibrium, where basically house prices are basically as expensive as people can afford. And so if you give people extra spending power, well, the house prices will go up by pretty much the same amount. Obviously, the people who actually get the money actually get, you know, if we say first time buyers get this extra cash, then they’re the ones who benefit most. But if they’re getting, say, 50k extra, it’s not like, you know, it’s not an actual 50k improvement, it’s maybe a 10k improvement, right?
Gene Tunny 37:33
Okay, okay. I mean, we’ll have to, I haven’t. I’m trying to think of, I’ve seen a good study on what that that impact is, I mean, I agree there is some impact. I might have to think about just how large it is, and I’m but, you know, it’s debatable. So I think, you know the point about the first homeowner grants. I think, I think so less lakes made a similar one, and so I think there’s a reasonable amount of support there. There’s probably a question about the magnitude of that impact. But fair enough, we might, we’ll move on. And you’ve got, then this is another, I mean, this is, I think what you’ve done is you’ve got, you know, a set of proposals you’ve thought about. There’s a they, I mean, you’re, there’s a risk of, you know, I mean, some of these things are going to be hugely unpopular as you’re as you’re aware. That doesn’t mean they’re they’re not, they’re not good policy measures. So this is, this is interesting. You you want to stop excluding property wealth from the means testing of government benefits. What government benefits do you have in mind? Can you give us an illustration of what you’re talking about there, please. Owen, yes, I believe the, I believe
Owen Miller 38:43
it was the age pension. So there’s a notion, you know, are you basically poor enough qualify for these ongoing government payments? And in New South Wales, I believe the your primary place of residence in the valuations, that’s capped at 150k so, you know, if you own a mansion, you know, and they’re assessing your assets, it’ll get, you know, marked down as only 150k worth of assets. And I mean, you know, we can obviously see the problem with this. If, if people are paying a mortgage over, say, 30 years, if, if everyone is spending as much money as they can on a home, and then, you know, we say, like, later in life, should we pay this person all these government benefits, like they only have their home and, you know, their quote, unquote cash poor like, you know, let’s, let’s give them the benefits, versus if the person had been spending all they could afford for their entire life on gold, yeah, tell them, like, are you really poor? Why don’t you just sell something that’s called,
Gene Tunny 39:41
yeah, gotcha, gotcha. I mean, there’s, yeah, I think with the appreciation of property prices, there’s, there’s more of an argument for that. Again, it’s, it’s one of these things that, you know, we’ve made this judgment as a society that we, you know, we find that so. But that we don’t approve of that, or there’s a widespread view that against that sort of proposal, even though it, you know, there is some there is some sense to it. I guess it’s got, I mean, obviously, you know, a lot of pensioners vote. I mean, I guess they all vote, generally,
Owen Miller 40:17
I guess as well. The other thing I’d say in defense of introducing this change is that, you know, the city changes around people. You know, as we said before, the house prices have gone up in value. Because, you know, Australia has changed. These cities have changed. And so when you say, like, you know, I’ve lived here for 50 years, well, you lived in basically somewhere else years ago. And so I guess, you know, land tax best captures that if the city changes around you, then your ongoing taxes change as a result of it. I recall John was giving the example of, let’s say, a rubbish dump gets built next to your house. And so, you know, you can rightfully demand that, you know, society pays you some sort of compensation for ruining your place of residence now, but if it’s the opposite, if you know, a train station is built nearby, nobody says like, oh, well, you know, now that I have such a better place to live, you know, I should give back to society some of this compensation. So, yeah, we can think as well. I mean, you know, in Brisbane, just recently, you know cyclone Alfred, you look at the photos of the beach afterwards, and so who would want to buy a beachfront home in Brisbane anymore? So you know, those people are going to be worrying. Well, I spent all this money on this beachfront mansion, and now it’s smashed in value because, like, who’s going to buy this now, if more of their money had been going to land tax over the years as opposed to the asset price, then, you know, their loss would be far reduced now. So, you know, here’s a way where rich people can get on board for these tax changes as well. Yeah,
Gene Tunny 41:55
yeah. There are a lot of other interesting ideas, and we probably won’t have time to go through them, but I’ll, I’ll put a link to this in the show notes. So very interesting ideas, government shall fund and operate an open source service for real estate listings and history. So yeah, that would smash some of the business models for for what is it domain and for real estate? Yeah, right. Okay, what do you see as the benefits of of this policy measure? Diffusion
Owen Miller 42:25
is very big into openness, transparency and so, you know, getting into the housing market, it’s such, you know, it’s such an important aspect of everybody’s life, and everybody wants to live somewhere, like there might be exceptions, you know, for something this critical to be in the hands of people who don’t have the same incentives as society like, it’s just a recipe for disaster. I mean, there was an instance real page, I think it was called this company in the US, they had a monopoly, and they, you know, they run, they offer real estate data, and so they changed their algorithm, or something, how they report the prices. They were telling these people that the prices were now 14% more expensive. And so then all the landlords thought, oh, shit, you know, I better keep up with the market. I better raise my rents 14% Yeah. I mean, you can see it’s a very problematic situation to have. Yeah,
Gene Tunny 43:18
I remember seeing some of the stories on that? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, that’s interesting. But what about this idea about an open source service for landlord reviews and background checks residents shall be made aware of the criminal background of a potential or current landlord. Is that? Is that an issue? Is that a concern?
Owen Miller 43:36
It seems very asymmetric. So you know, if I’m going to move into a place to rent, you know, the landlord wants to check, you know, what’s Owen’s criminal background, what’s he going to get up to? This person has keys to my house? Like, what if, you know I’m there sleeping at night, they can just sneak in into my bedroom. I want to know about their criminal background. You see, like, um, you know, sexual assault in Australia is still rampant, you know, physical assault, you know, sort of non sexual assault, still rampant. This person has keys to where I’m living, like, I want to know,
Gene Tunny 44:10
yeah, that’s a fair point. And I think so this could be part of this greater rights for tenants that you were, that you were talking about before, right? Oh, and there are these other, the other, the other aspects of your policy, I found interesting that you want to publish data. So the government, using data from universities, in the tax office, shall publish data about future earnings and job titles based on each student’s degree TAFE course to allow potential students to assess whether the education is worthwhile and whether they should visit Australia for their education. I think that’s that’s interesting. And so that’s so people can figure out whether, okay, is this going to get me a useful job? Use that it can help me get a, you know, help me get into the property market at one stage? I think, yeah. Yeah,
Owen Miller 45:00
they’re messing with people’s future with their advertising. I mean, I’ve seen billboards. It says, you know, come to whatever university, get a degree in sustainability. I think it was, yeah, yeah. The first question my head was, like, sustainability, like, that’s not really a job title. If I did this degree, like, sort of, what would be the use of it? Then, you know, most people go into university. You know they’re 1718, you know they they haven’t learned sort of all these cons that are going on in the world. You hear, it’s a regular phenomenon that you know someone study. If you look at, you know what someone studied at university, and you try to guess their job title, say, 10 years later, you know, it’s yeah, it’s anyone’s guess. It’s yeah, gotcha the universities, yeah, it’s just conceivably,
Gene Tunny 45:47
they could do that pretty easily, because they’ve got the living in Australia. Data Set used to be, I think it used to be called, made it. But essentially, the, you know, you know that data set, the data set that the ABS manages, where they link up tax data, they’ve got their census data, they’ve got social security data, and they’ve got this huge, you know? Well, it’s not synthetic. What’s the right word? They’ve it’s, it’s the piece together, the all of these administrative data sets to create this one big data set, like matching all of these records, and conceivably, you could achieve what you’re recommending very cost effectively. Now, there are limits on the access to it at the moment, but they should be able to produce some summary data along the lines of of what you’re suggesting,
Owen Miller 46:42
it seems, yeah, like, you know, if we combine all the government departments, then, yeah, there’s information they already have, yeah,
Gene Tunny 46:48
yeah, yeah. So I think that’s reasonably feasible. That could be, yeah, you could get a pretty good return on investment from that. So yeah, big TIG of approval on that one. So before we go, I want to go back to this liberate a just to make sure I understand it. Because this is so this is a French idea. Is it a bit so your recommendation, a bank account, liver at a shall be created available to all Australian residents. Account holders can have some options of risk reward with the account being used to fund city building, including the creation of high speed, high speed rail and public housing projects. The increased land tax revenue in these places shall go towards subsidizing low income housing and amongst the public housing projects, as well as towards a return on investment for the liver day clients. Okay, so which, which bank is it? And, yeah. I mean, how does it work? So,
Owen Miller 47:44
how it works in France? Yeah. So it’s government bonds. You know, in essence, you put your money there, it makes the money available to be spent by the government. Except, I guess I don’t know, many people aren’t familiar with government bonds. So it’s marketed in France as though it’s the bank account. When you’re interacting with it, multiple banks offer it, and to an everyday person, it behaves the same as the bank account, and so that’s partly why it’s so popular. 82% of people in France have one. It’s capped at 29,000 euros, and it offers tax free returns. Admittedly, the returns aren’t great. I think it’s around two to 3% at the moment. But the idea here is that if we could, you know, if we’re going to tax housing more strictly, then you know, we need some other way for Australians to invest. And I guess they already had the share market. And so if they’re not going there, you know, what else can we offer them? And so investing in our future, investing in our cities, you know, it’s a no brainer. It’s so aligned to, you know, the interests of both making money and to, you know, society. I mean, um, Brisbane, for instance, you know, they’re building a village to host the Olympians in the future. The Queensland Government, they didn’t want to actually build the homes. They sold off those rights to someone else. Yeah, and you know who bought the rights? The Saudi Development Fund. You know, some other foreign government thinks it’s a good investment build homes there. Yet, for some reason, the Queensland Government doesn’t think that’s good investment. Think that’s good investment. And so, you know, if people want to get in, if people, if everyday Australians, want to invest in high speed rail in city building, like I think many people would be, you know, chomping at the bit to get this chance,
Gene Tunny 49:35
right? Okay, so I have to look at this liberal day concept, interesting idea. I mean, traditionally. I mean, I don’t think our governments, probably are, they really don’t offer the retail bond offering, do they? I mean, they’re mainly selling to the big investors. That’s a, that’s an interesting concept. So it’s an on demand. So it’s an ON. Call bank account effectively,
Owen Miller 50:02
I’m not quite sure about like, any sort of time delays.
Gene Tunny 50:05
Yeah, I’ll have to look into it just to see how they manage it and what the financial, the finances of it are. But yeah, potentially an interesting concept, right? Oh, and this has been great. I’ve enjoyed talking about your housing policy and chatting about these important issues before we wrap up. Are there any other points you’d like to make before we before we wrap up, please?
Owen Miller 50:26
Oh, yeah, I should just clarify one last thing about the deliver it a I mentioned the high speed rail. Yeah. So if we imagine, if we imagine moving towards land tax in the way that Henry George proposed, so let’s say the land tax. And, you know, let’s use Goldman as an example. Again, all the tax revenues collect from land tax in Goulburn. If we then build high speed rail through Goulburn, we can say that most of it was attributable to the high speed rail. So let’s give some of that extra cash to those investors who invested in the high speed rail. And so this like easy attribution for investment means that it’s a lot easier to make it happen. And so, so, yeah, you know, governments can more easily spend money on this. Citizens can get the return, but, but yeah, to close out, Gene, yeah, as you said, there are losers in this policy. But you know, hopefully people will see that overall, it better aligns the interests of Australian society with the interests of the government. So hopefully people can, yeah, hopefully people can see that this will create a brighter future for us, right? Oh,
Gene Tunny 51:37
very good. Helen Miller, the convener of fusion party and the fusion party’s federal candidate for wills. Thanks so much for your time. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks, Gene Righto, thanks for listening to this episode of economics explored. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you. You can send me an email via contact at economics explore.com or a voicemail via speak pipe, you can find the link in the show notes. If you’ve enjoyed the show, I’d be grateful if you could tell anyone you think would be interested about it. Word of mouth is one of the main ways that people learn about the show. Finally, if your podcasting app lets you, then please write a review and leave a rating. Thanks for listening. I hope you can join me again next week.
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