The construction of the Australian housing industry
Creators: name: Batt, Christopher
Publisher: name: University of Tasmania
Year: 2024

description: This thesis examines Australian housing policy to understand why rising costs continue to make homeownership and rental unaffordable for many citizens and why intergenerational inequity and homelessness are increasing. The thesis examines specific housing policy but also examines policies that are seemingly unrelated but have a significant influence on housing and explores the ideological basis for those policies. The study focuses on Australia at both a federal and state level. <br>As housing policy is discourse and reflects social structure, this thesis adopts a constructionist methodology, employing Giddens’ structuration theory. Given that a key determinant in the construction of policy is the manner in which problems are defined, the thesis also examines social problems theory and rhetorical approaches to claims making. The key method employed in this thesis is critical discourse analysis, which is applied to interview data, government policy documents, media commentary and press releases. The thesis explores the key influences on the construction of Australian housing policy by examining claims about housing problems and the discourses that underpin and shape contemporary policy. These influences are revealed through interviews with key stakeholders, government policy statements, and by examining media commentary on proposed tax policy changes during the 2019 federal election. <br>The research shows how the contemporary social and economic settings loosely called neoliberalism play a significant role in shaping housing policy and underpins a social structure that is reproduced through discourse. Housing policy in Australia is largely determined by neoliberal ideology and practice which is reflected in a housing related, rather than a housing specific framework. Specific housing interventions fill the gaps created by the broader framework but generally respond to the symptoms of housing policy failures rather than the causes. The interconnected and discursive reproduction of neoliberal ideas also creates strong resistance to social change and in reflecting the power of homeowners, investors, and the property industry, has significant implications for the effectiveness of housing strategy. <br>Giddens’ structuration ontology supports an understanding of the system-like and persistent nature of Australia’s housing environment and explains the capacity for significant resistance to housing policy change. This resistance is demonstrated through the analysis of media commentary on the 2019 housing tax debate and the resources that were mobilised to maintain existing arrangements. The key conclusion is that change is not possible simply by adopting new policies without also changing the key narratives and discourses that underpin existing policies. Current perspectives about the role of government and the private sector in the provision of housing limit policy options, as do a focus on welfare dependency that constrains government efforts to forge alternate housing responses. From this perspective, strategies that seek to implement change are unlikely to succeed if focused on top-down approaches and unless they also seek to change existing narratives and discourses about the role of housing in the economy and the current approach to capital accumulation by homeowners and investors.