I was enjoying a perfectly adequate $400 flat white and smashed abalone with a shadow minister in Manuka the other morning when the news broke. A supposedly reliable Liberal senator had gone entirely off-script, declaring to the press that "we cannot continue to blame migrants" for Australia’s compounding economic issues. He was, of course, launching a direct attack on Angus Taylor’s perfectly sensible, time-honored strategy of pointing at an international student every time a young family is forced to live in a 2004 Kia Sorrento.
I nearly choked on my artisanal sourdough. Let me be perfectly clear: if we abandon the sacred tradition of blaming the housing crisis on people who arrived at Sydney Airport last Tuesday, we are stepping onto a very slippery slope. A slope that leads directly to my accountant’s office, my self-managed super fund, and my sprawling portfolio of negative-geared duplexes across the eastern suburbs.
As I told the panel I was chairing at the Urban Development Institute’s winter gala just last month, the Australian economy requires a steady, structural scapegoat to function. Without it, the entire edifice crumbles. Angus Taylor understands this. When he bravely stepped forward last week to link migration rates to the ongoing shortage of housing, he wasn't just practicing textbook partisan rhetoric. He was throwing a protective human shield over the true victims of this cost-of-living crisis: middle-aged men with generational wealth who simply want to leverage their equity in peace.
We simply do not have the rhetorical infrastructure to accommodate a political discourse based on material reality.
It is incredibly frustrating to see members of my own preferred political apparatus lose their nerve just because the facts don't align with the messaging. Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to maintain fourteen separate residential properties? Four of them are currently sitting entirely empty because the localized demographic vibes simply aren't right for the premium Airbnb rates I demand. I am doing my part to constrain supply. I am putting in the hours. The absolute least the government can do is pretend the resulting crisis is the fault of a mechanical engineer from Mumbai.
If we listen to this rogue senator and stop blaming the migrants, I ask you, who is left to blame? The answer is chilling. We might have to blame the local councils and their archaic zoning laws. We might have to blame the bipartisan tax concessions that allow me to write off the depreciation of a bespoke marble kitchen island in a townhouse I have never personally visited. We might—heaven forbid—have to blame me.
If the average Australian renter realizes that their inability to buy a starter home is directly tied to my divine right to own seventeen of them, the social contract is effectively finished.
I am not asking for sympathy, though heaven knows those of us in the top tax bracket rarely receive it. I am simply asking for a return to the foundational principles of Australian economic discourse. When a millennial couple realizes they will be renting until they die, they need somewhere to direct their anger. It is an act of supreme civic generosity to ensure that anger is directed at a newly arrived visa holder rather than a domestic property hoarder.
Angus Taylor gets it. He knows that the moment we stop talking about border policy, people will start talking about capital gains reform. And if that happens, I might have to sell one of the beach houses. I urge the Liberal party room to rein in these dissenting voices, stick to the script, and remember who they really work for. My portfolio depends on it.