Hasbeen:

Three basic and primary responsibilities of a Government are, to ensure the necessary social structure is in place and working to achieve for its citizens;
1, Food
2,housing
3,employment.

I don’t suggest, I say outright, any Government failing on any of the three key points is ineffectual and must go.
So the main element to success is number three. Number three supports the success of points one and two.(food and housing).
Keep in mind, the demise of Howard was the reengineering of the remuneration from employment. He had a riot on his hands, and was correctly thrown out. Remember work choices?

Is Labor a success over Howards Liberals. No. They are worse I believe. Housing has continued its merciless ascent of the unaffordable. Rents have continued on the same course, upwards ever upwards. Utilities have undergone a meteoritic hike and wages have been suppressed in the usual tradition of Governments of all colours.

Back to housing. If we in Australia want another riot on our hands similar to the one Howard presided over with work choices, then the current situation with the housing market will surly assist greatly.

People will continue to pay unaffordable prices for housing in the short term, provided they are prepared to eat less and turn off the power to compensate, for example.
Yes, I can hear the bleating of the well off, forego holidays. Dress the kids in flour bags and walk them to school six miles away. Well there is a limit to the ability of people to save. But should the bad old days return, when unemployment reaches double digit (as in many parts of America, and Australia), the reality is high rents and high mortgages on overpriced housing cannot be maintained on the pittance of the dole. Consequently, evictions and bank foreclosures become the feature of many lives.

The conditions as described have of course been exacerbated by the recent string of natural disasters, which I also believe will add pressure on the existing undersupply of housing in Australia.

Belly:

And you should be proud of your innovative efforts to house yourself. And many people across the country do the same. But it is not possible for all to overcome the same hurdles and achieve a home of their own your way.

Governments can assist new housing hugely with subsidised loans, as an example. Housing could be well classed as a national infrastructure.
The greatest problem is overpricing of real estate. We could follow the American way, and wait till foreclosures force the Banks to go broke, as did happen. The effect was to drive down the price of housing. That crude result in price reduction created unprecedented homelessness and abandonment of foreclosed housing: Was wasteful of the resources of both people and housing.

A better way is for Governments to bite the bullet and deflate real estate prices artificially by applying realistic valuations on dwellings and compensating for losses of capital gains. It could tax heavily any capital gain from the sale of housing. It could tax landlords on excessive rent receipts and regulate rents proportionally to incomes of tenants. That move would force landlords from the market, and replace them with owner tenants. And on and on …

Danny boy, stop crying for yourself, & get out & have a go.

The government's job is to set conditions for people to advance themselves, not provide all their wish list for them. Perhaps you should ask yourself, why, if others can do it, you can't.

25 years ago my wife, baby & I were living in a 3m by 6m shack, with walls made of shade cloth, old carpet, & roll down blinds made from old sails.

Like Belly, we moved a house, ours from the sight of a new shopping complex to a cheep block out in the sticks.

After a few more projects my assets are over a million, all earned.

My daughter, only 4 years out of uni, & her tradesman husband have almost $300,000 equity in their second house, all earned.

Perhaps a bit less time bitching about being hardly done by, & a bit more effort would get you into a similar position.

I have always found that those making something of their lives are too busy to have time to whinge.

Hasbeen:

So you lived in Reo de Janeiro on the side of a mud hill in a rag hut with 30% of the population of desperados in Brazil? (your suggestion). See, that is the point here. Try living like they do in this country and you can find yourself on the wrong side of the law. Alternatives to escape the web of rorting and rent gouging are limited.

I maintain that the system as it is, that captures a large element of the population as milking cows for profit in order to house them; all the while cordoning off alternatives, is a recipe for poverty. The Australian housing (debacle), aligned as it is, so closely to the failed American system, is unsustainable and is proving to be a social catastrophe. Not of course for “Jack Hasbeen” but for many who can’t marry their daughters off to a builder, out in the broader community.

To much hate can make you blind, & stupid.

I would say that everybody lost the plot fifty years ago. Harold Holt showed that increasing the top tax to 66.6% slowed the excessive incomes such as salaries, and this decreased the costs of everything, goods and services. The only thing he failed to do was to increase the level of income where no tax was paid, this should be about $30,000 today. These politicians - surprisingly, the Prime Ministers and treasurers have, except for Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd, been lawyers, and have managed to plonk our economy into a recession four or five times and driven our wage earners into desperation, only able to get two or three days work a week as permanent employment, making it impossible to feed their families, rent or buy a home and provide any of the necessities of reasonable living, yet still publish the unemployment as being only about 5.5%. Our members of parliament are a despicable group who have not got one iota of brain and are even quibbling about the repairing the damage done to this country during the flood and the cyclone. I would think that any intelligence, would insist in maintaining a big enough surplus to make it possible to hop right in and start repairing the essential industries. It is unfortunately that there are too many people who do not realise that a high top tax, will make goods and services cheaper.