Can we please stop pretending the major parties have the slightest interest in fixing the housing crisis?

We all know the song by now. We have tent cities popping up in public parks, full time workers staring down the barrel of homelessness, and the most highly educated generation in Australian history completely dependent on inherited wealth to purchase a basic home. And yet, for the umpteenth election in a row, the policies on offer from both Labor and the Coalition are a smorgasbord of short-sighted gimmicks that will make housing even less affordable than it is today.

From the ALP we have the Help to Buy Scheme; a government backed version of the Bank of Mum and Dad in which the state kicks in up to 40% of the purchase price in exchange for an equity stake in the property, enabling people to bid on homes they could never afford on their own.

This inflationary boondoggle is being bolstered by plans to waive 20% of outstanding student loans, and have banks disregard those debts when assessing mortgage applications.

The Opposition, for its part, intends to let people withdraw $50,000 from their superannuation for a home deposit, and will instruct the banking regulator to loosen the criteria banks have to apply when assessing a potential borrower’s ability to make repayments.

Let’s be clear: the intended effect of every single one of these measures is to allow people to borrow more money. This isn’t about making housing more affordable. It’s about making people eligible for bigger debts.

But what about those for whom home ownership is a pipe dream? If we shift our attention to the other end of the housing spectrum, we see that neither party has a credible plan to improve the lives of renters, least of all those languishing on the country’s bloated social housing waiting lists. Labor is forging ahead with its beleaguered Housing Future Fund which, under the best-case scenario, will deliver just 8,000 homes per year, roughly 3 per cent of the 240,000 it says are required. The Coalition, on the other hand, intends to scrap the Housing Fund altogether, passing all responsibility for social housing back to state governments which are already drowning in demand they cannot possibly afford to meet.

This is what passes for housing policy in Australia. The social contract is breaking down in front of our eyes yet here we are, in the middle of a federal election campaign, with both major parties planning to light a fresh fire under house prices that are already at historic highs, spilling crocodile tears over the plight of renters, and brandishing a two fingered salute at the next generation.

What kind of country tells its young people the best they can hope for is the chance to get a mortgage that will see them hustling to scrape together five grand a month, every month, for the next 30 years? This kind, apparently.

Once upon a time Australia had leaders who understood the private sector would not, (and probably could not), supply decent quality housing that was affordable for people on lower incomes. We had leaders who recognised that housing is one of those things, like education and healthcare, which are expensive but essential, and which lots of people will be unable to afford unless the state is heavily involved on the supply side. The mistake housing advocates have made in recent times has been to believe the current crop of leaders simply don’t understand this basic concept, don’t realise the impact their policies are having, and just need to be shown the right charts, and the right data, to correct course.

This is an increasingly difficult position to sustain. The economics at play here are not particularly complicated, and a battalion of peak bodies and academics have spent decades churning out reports demonstrating the folly of stimulating demand in the name of affordability, all to no effect.

The idea that our elected representatives might be the only people left in Australia who don’t get it, doesn’t hold water. The more likely explanation is that they know exactly what they are doing, and that pushing up prices is their true goal. I suppose it might help if there were a few more of them who didn’t own three houses, but here we are.