Australian Freedom Under Attack: The Housing Crisis and Beyond, By James Reed and Paul Walker
Tarric Brooker's July 2, 2025, Macrobusiness article frames Australia's housing affordability crisis as an assault on personal freedom, arguing that skyrocketing housing costs have transformed the dual-income household from an option to a necessity, eroding discretionary time and economic choice. Drawing on the Finder First Home Buyer Report 2025, Brooker notes that only 16% of suburbs are affordable for a single earner buying a median house, and just 28% for units, with price surges since the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic exacerbating the issue. This post expands on Brooker's thesis, situating the housing crisis within a broader, multi-dimensional strategy undermining Australian freedoms, encompassing health, speech, and digital autonomy, while critically examining policy failures and their human toll since 2000.
Before 2000, a single average wage could secure a home and support a family, with a second income offering a significant boost to living standards. Since then, house prices have outpaced incomes at a compound annual growth rate of 7.2% versus 3% for wages, doubling household debt relative to disposable income (from 50% to 120% of GDP). Key policy missteps since 2000 include:
- Tax Incentives: The 1999 introduction of a 50% capital gains tax (CGT) discount, alongside negative gearing, fuelled speculative investment, driving up prices. A 2023 Forbes analysis notes these policies, combined with low interest rates (8% in 2000 to 2% during the pandemic), increased credit availability, inflating demand.
- Immigration Surge: Post-2005, immigration doubled, then trebled, due to relaxed student visa policies, adding pressure to housing demand. Australia's population grew 30% to 26 million over two decades, but homebuilding stagnated.
- Planning Bottlenecks: Stringent zoning and bureaucratic planning systems limited land supply for medium-density housing, especially in desirable inner-city areas. A 2025 ABC News report cites land shortages and construction delays as key drivers of the crisis.
- Pandemic Fallout: Post-2020, record migration (2.1% population growth in 2024) and construction slowdowns due to labour shortages and material costs worsened the housing deficit. The PEXA Buyer Deposits Report shows deposit-saving times rising from 4 years in 2020 to 8 years in 2023, and up to 20–30 years in NSW.
Impact on Freedom
Brooker's central claim, that housing costs constrain freedom, resonates deeply. Affordable housing enables choices like parenting, entrepreneurship, or career shifts, which enhance personal and national prosperity. Today, dual incomes are often mandatory, costing families 35 hours of weekly leisure with no proportional gain in living standards, as Rory Sutherland notes. The Gallup 2024 survey reveals 76% of Australians are dissatisfied with housing affordability, the highest among OECD nations except Türkiye, with only 16% of 18–34-year-olds satisfied. This erodes the "Great Australian Dream," now dubbed a "nightmare," particularly for young people.
A Multi-Dimensional Attack on Freedom
Brooker's focus on housing as a freedom issue is compelling but narrow. Posts on X and broader analyses suggest a multi-dimensional strategy undermining Australian liberties since 2000, particularly post-pandemic, across health, speech, and digital autonomy. While these claims require critical scrutiny, they reflect growing public distrust.
1. Health Freedom: The mRNA Vaccine Debate
The COVID-19 mRNA "Vaccine" Harms Research Collection (July 2025), featured today in posts, compiles over 700 peer-reviewed studies highlighting risks like spike protein toxicity, biodistribution, and immune imprinting. While mainstream sources like the CDC argue vaccines saved millions of lives (70% mortality reduction), adverse events (e.g., myocarditis) at fuel scepticism. X posts, like @jamiemcintyre21's, frame the WHO's Pandemic Treaty as a threat to health autonomy, alleging it could enforce mandatory vaccinations. Adopted on May 20, 2025,it emphasises global coordination, not mandates, but public distrust persists due to perceived overreach during Covid-19 lockdowns.
2. Freedom of Speech: Misinformation Laws
The 2024 Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill, passed in September 2024, allows the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to regulate online content deemed "misinformation." Critics call it a "Stasi-stralia" law, arguing it curtails free speech by enabling government censorship of dissent. The law exempts satire and professional news but grants ACMA power to fine platforms, raising concerns about subjective enforcement. Supporters, like @BroadbentMP, claim it targets harmful falsehoods (e.g., election interference), but a 2024 Spectator Australia piece warns it could chill debate on contentious issues like vaccines or policy.
3. Digital Autonomy: Digital ID Bill
The Digital ID Bill, passed in May 2024, establishes a voluntary digital identity system for accessing services. Critics allege it's part of a "shock and awe" campaign to control financial and personal freedom. While the government emphasises opt-in convenience, critics fear future mandates, citing global trends (e.g., EU's eID). A 2024 The Australian report notes privacy safeguards but acknowledges risks if the system expands without oversight. These concerns amplify distrust, with 35% of Australians in a 2025 YouGov poll opposing digital IDs.
4. Economic and Social Freedom: Housing as the Core
The housing crisis ties these issues together, as unaffordable homes limit economic mobility, forcing reliance on government systems (e.g., rent assistance) that some see as control mechanisms. Neoliberal policies, privatisation, tax breaks for investors, and underinvestment in public housing, created a "permanent underclass of renters." The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports 169,000 households on public housing waitlists in 2023, with homelessness rising 25% since 2019. Policies like negative gearing and CGT discounts, unchanged despite Labor's 2025 review, prioritise investors over first-time buyers, deepening inequality.
The housing crisis and perceived erosions of freedom strike at the heart of Australian identity. Picture a young couple in Sydney, both working full-time, saving for a decade only to afford a unit 40 km from the city. Or an Indigenous family in a remote community, stuck on a 10-year public housing waitlist, facing overcrowding. The Gallup 2024 data shows 80% of young Australians feel locked out of homeownership, with the average first-time buyer age rising from 25 in 2000 to 35 in 2025. This mirrors the frustration of older generations, like the baby boomers who bought affordable homes in the 1970s, now watching their children struggle.
The housing crisis fuels social unrest—rent strikes in Melbourne, protests in Brisbane, echoing the desperation of those turning to "van life" or homelessness (120,000 in 2024). Yet, stories of resilience, like Micah Projects' work moving rough sleepers into secure housing, offer hope, saving $13,000 per person annually. These human struggles, from families to activists, are proof of humanity's drive to overcome adversity.
Australia's housing crisis, as Brooker argues, is a profound attack on economic freedom, locking young people and vulnerable groups out of the "Great Australian Dream." Since 2000, policy failures, tax incentives, zoning restrictions, and underinvestment, have driven prices to unsustainable levels, with post-pandemic migration and construction delays worsening the toll. This crisis intertwines with perceived threats to health, speech, and digital autonomy, fuelling narratives of a multi-dimensional assault on freedom. These issues reflect systemic neglect and public distrust.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2025/07/australian-freedom-is-under-attack/
Australian freedom is under attack
When the word freedom comes to mind in our collective consciousness, it can be interpreted in a number of different ways. It can be an expression of one's ability to share their ideas or views freely, or it can relate to one's capability to go about one's day unimpeded by a Draconian state.
But there is another definition of freedom, one that is especially relevant in present-day Australia, that impacts the overwhelming majority of us in some capacity: the ability to live our lives the way we choose if we work hard enough.
Once upon a time, a single average full-time wage was enough to buy a house and support a family, with any additional income in the form of a second earner being a significant boon and a second full-time earner offering a huge leg up to living standards versus other households.
In present-day Australia, a second earner is now all but a requirement for a household on a single average full-time wage to buy a house.
This shift is summed up quite nicely by marketing expert Rory Sutherland:
The creation of the double inome household was one of those changes which went from being an option to an obligation. The principal beneficiaries were government who could had twice as many people to tax. Property owners because now you needed two salaries to buy a house….And the unit of the household, the family, lost 35 hours of discretionary leisure every week with no commensurate increase in living standards because the money got soaked up by property prices and by taxation.
According to figures from Finder.com.au First Home Buyer Report, a single person attempting to buy the median house can only do so in 16% of suburbs Australia-wide. If the focus is shifted from houses to units, things do improve, but not by as much as one might think, with only 28% of suburbs Australia-wide being affordable.
Source: Finder First Home Buyer Report 2025
Looking at the numbers on the level of price growth seen across much of the nation since the onset of the pandemic, it's clear why affordability has deteriorated so dramatically.
For better or worse, in the modern world, one's level of freedom in how one lives can be heavily derived from housing costs. If housing costs are affordable or perhaps even cheap, then the freedom of choice to potentially have a parent spend more time at home with a young child in the formative years becomes more possible.
It can also grant the scope to dedicate one's time to other pursuits, such as a small business, which can, in time, contribute to greater productivity at a national aggregate level.
Australia's policymakers have been crimping this freedom for over two decades."
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