Could Bandt become a King Maker?, page-5

In the last year Brisbane Adelaide and Perth have had housing price increases of 15%+. So our existing arrangements are seeing Australia's other major cities "Sydneyfied" in terms of their housing situation. Without policy changes housing will become nearly as prohibitive in those cities as it has in Sydney, under Labor governments at the state and federal level. The Greens offer to young people who don't own assets is basically to knock over the existing tax arrangements to make it feasible for them to access the housing market. It's not hard to see why a young person's first vote between the ages of 18-20 would go to the Greens, and why they might continue voting that way at least until they're mortgagees. It's been said that the only thing that happens to you by standing in the middle of the road is that you get run over, and that's a risk the ALP currently faces over this issue. They risk being dependent on the Greens to prop them up to form government, with the Greens being seen as the driving force in that government. The ALP's diffidence on housing risks placing them in an unenviable position of being in government as the tail being wagged by the Greens dog.