Struggling to afford a house deposit? Worry that you’ll never crack into the Australian property market? Well, worry no longer. Victorian Liberal MP Michael Sukkar has the answer.
The Assistant Minister to the Treasurer told an interviewer on Monday night that the “first step” to buying your first home is landing a job that pays well.
“We’re also enabling young people to get highly paid jobs which is the first step to buying a house, it’s not the only answer but it’s the first step,” Mr Sukkar told Sky News.
Listen: Are you living a lavish life of daily brunches? No wonder you can’t buy a house.
Silly us. We thought housing affordability might have something to do with making sure there were properties on the market that, you know, were actually accessible for low-to-middle income earners.
No, that’s not the answer. Just earn more money. I mean it’s so revolutionary – no wonder we never, ever would have come up with that by ourselves. It’s almost as helpful as suggesting young people give up avocado on toast if they want to buy a house.
Nevermind that Australia’s youth unemployment rate currently stands about 13 per cent. Those young people probably just aren’t trying hard enough to get a job. And don’t read too much into the fact that Sydney’s median house price is almost a million dollars and Melbourne’s is just below $800,000 – while the average Australian annual income is just under $79,000.
Mr Sukkar, who has been tasked with tackling housing affordability, argued that he was able to leave university, get started on the path to a good career and crack into the property market because the economy was so good at the time. He said that’s the environment the State and Federal governments were trying to return Australia to.
Perhaps he doesn’t realise that not every industry’s workers will see a pay rise enough to afford a $500,000 home (let alone a million) if the economy improves.
Social media users did not seem too impressed with the advice, taking to Twitter to voice their frustration.
Mr Sukkar is not the first politician to offer up this particularly helpful nugget of advice either.
In June 2015 then-Federal treasurer Joe Hockey said Australians just needed to “get a good job that pays good money,” if they want to buy their first home. While Malcolm Turnbull suggested last year that parents could help their children.
Knowing politicians have found such a simple solution fills us with confidence. I guess we all better log onto Seek.com.au and tick the $200,000 box, hey?
Top Comments
How about paying people more and keeping wages up with the rate of inflation? How about making sure that people get an actual living wage?
If everyone just goes out and gets "high paying jobs" (and, really, where are all these high paying jobs? And how do we get them without going into lifelong debt because our government doesn't see the value in providing free education?), then who will be cleaners and teachers and nurses and aged care workers and in all the other underpaid, overworked jobs?
Well the right will tell you that there are people out desperate for workers and cant get them and if you would only move interstate for a few months a lovely employment agency will get you a lovely job on a farm for five bucks an hour after theyve taken their cut