Oh please, give me a break from this pile of the steaming proverbial!

The simple facts are:
Federal tax breaks have been favouring investors over owners for sometime.
The real cost of housing has risen far more compared with wage increases in the same period.
A greater proportion of (2!) average wages are required to pay off the average home today compared with even 10 years ago, let alone 20 or 30.

This kind of garbatorial is insulting to the 20-30 year olds who havent reaped the spoils of the tax-fuelled investment housing boom but have to pay 50-100% more for the same house as 5-10 years ago. No one's expecting everything to be given to them on a platter, but they dont expect a government to be kicking first home buyers, and pretending to help with a paltry $7000 distraction.

This is the forum of the have and have-nots.
As a father of 2, supporting a family I take my responsibilities very seriously. I dont own a credit cards, a mobile phone, a flash car or plasma telly...and have a family income of around $75000 a year.
I just bought my first home (its small and modest) and costs me 40% my monthly income.
What was my choice, pay $350-380 a week in rent and get moved on for the 3 rd time in 2.5 years. Not because I'm a bad tenant, just that the owners decided to sell at such a good time.
Why dont the government assess the effects of negative gearing on the property market, wipe that out and I'm sure the baby boomers may find other places to put their money. Of course it wont get a sideways look, too much for the 'haves' to lose.
I feel sorry for my kids, at this rate they wont be buying the Aussie dream, this may be the sad reality. But please dont blame the 'have-nots' for over borrowing and pushing up prices,how can you begin to blame new home buyers for this, when they are struggling for years just to get a decent deposit. Responsibilty should lie with everyone, and the government should mediate it fairly.

Realist made an interesting point others seem to have missed or ignorned. Young people these days are often in debt to the eyeballs long before they even think about buying a home.

When were credit cards introduced? Was it in the 80s? Mobile phone plans with massive bills young people just don't see coming. 24 months interest free purchases of quite expensive items. And a lot of finance companies are happy to keep upping the credit limit regardless.

None of these finance options were available 30 years ago. You turned up at the local bank every week with your bankbook and whatever deposit you made was entered by hand by a teller with a full time job and a familiar face.

In the middle was a generation who grew up with bank books and gradually got used to credit. Now we're seeing the first generation come through since easy credit has been around all their lives.

It's not just a matter of personal responsibility. There's a lot more complicated stuff going on.

Mmm Chainsmoker I knew there was a damn good reason that I have never had a credit card or a mobile 'phone - and given the very limited amount of telly I watch I sure don't need a plasma screen....
I feel sorry for the father of two who is spending 40% of his income on his mortgage - he says his house is modest. (I do wonder though whether our ideas about 'modest' would be the same.)
This mortgage bit...how much do the young save beforehand? Or is one of the reasons they need to borrow so much that they have not learned how to save?

"She is a member of the Liberal Party."
More to the point she is a right wing demagogue practising the well worn subterfuge of absolving the Howard government of any and all responsibility by transferring blame onto those who are victims of Howards policies: policies many of which are outright criminal. Or to put it into actual real living context- the governments are waging economic terror and everlasting uncertainty into peoples lives. Howard and his ilk have transferred billions of dollars into the banks, corporations, real estate, financiers and Petrol/Oil monopolies whilst actively intervening to suppress and drive down living standards for most. Living standards for most have gone backwards! The Howard government came to power in 1995 with the pledge that they were for "the battler, the little man." Labor and Liberal are instruments of the rich to bleed the poor.
A well known cowardly and devious ploy the governments use is to deflect attention outwards or away by blaming the very victims, or to scapegoat immigrants, aboriginals, workers and lately anyone of Middle Eastern origin. The right wing create the troubled waters then fish them.

I forgot to mention in my post that in my household there is zero debt. No credit cards, no personal loans, nothing. We're even in credit on our bills (we do weekly partial payments of an amount slightly larger than what we expect the bill to be, so when the bill comes, we're in credit and don't have to pay anything - if we're short of cash for a bit, we'll be okay).

When a couple is saving 40% of their income, has a 30% deposit, and still doesn't dare take out a mortgage, that tells you something. Again - we could afford it today, but if our income dropped for some reason, or our expenses increased, we'd lose everything. And since we can rent for half the amount our mortgage would be, it's just not worth it.

But I suppose this must be our fault for being such crazy big spenders. Yeah, right.

It doesn't help that house prices don't count as part of inflation, and that there are tax breaks for investors. Those prudent 50 year olds the 20-35 year olds are being asked to emulate, it's them keeping the house prices up. A person buying their third or fourth property will naturally be able to bid more on it than someone buying their first one.

The baby boomers are making Generation X homeless.