Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather and Property Council of Australia chief executive Mike Zorbas took to the National Press Club on Wednesday and presented their solutions to the deteriorating housing landscape.
Under the Greens' $27.9 billion federal election policy, a public developer would oversee building of 610,000 houses over the next decade before they are sold for just more than cost to first home buyers or rented at a maximum of 25 per cent of a household's income.
About 427,000 of the dwellings would be earmarked for the rental market, with about 20 per cent allocated to the bottom 20 per cent of earners. The rest would be available to buy.
Max Chandler-Mather says Australia has one of the most unaffordable housing systems in the world. (Mick Tsikas/AAP PHOTOS)
But Mr Zorbas lambasted the Greens plan.
"I don't think anyone has ever solved the housing crisis by adding another government agency," he said.
"I can't see the dystopia that Max is putting here in relation to those state governments, what I can see is incompetence over time."
Mr Chandler-Mather shot back at the property industry heavyweight, saying he had visited "one of those dystopias" in Austria.
In Vienna, about half the city's housing is a form of social housing and 80 per cent of Singapore's residents live in publicly owned and governed housing.
"Australia has one of the most unaffordable housing systems in the world, precisely because we rely on private property developers," he said.
Australia's vacancy rate has dropped to a record low 0.7 per cent, according to real estate site Domain, driving up rent prices and demand for homelessness services.
Thirteen interest rate rises in almost two years have weighed on mortgage holders as house prices continue to soar.
The Greens' policy would allow renters to save $5200 more per year while first home buyers would spend $260,000 less on the cost of a home, according to costings from the Parliamentary Budget Office.
"The public developer would directly compete with private developers and break their monopoly over the supply of housing," Mr Chandler-Mather said.
Real estate site Domain says Australia's vacancy rate has dropped to a record low 0.7 per cent. (Lukas Coch/AAP PHOTOS)
Mr Zorbas' plan, on the other hand, includes improving state planning protocols, an end to "randomly increasing taxes" on investments in new projects and committing to purpose-built projects such as retirement living and build-to-rent housing.
"Grandstanding, gridlock and policy grenades are not going to house anyone," he said.
The two men butted heads on details of their housing solutions.
Mr Chandler-Mather decried property tax breaks such as negative gearing and capital gains discounts as handouts that go "in the pocket of property investors who use that money to massively bid up the price of housing", while his Property Council counterpart claimed they supported supply.
Mr Zorbas called rent freezes a "stone cold supply killer" but the Greens spokesman said such caps would stop the most vulnerable from eviction.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers slammed the Greens from Parliament House, saying they "talked a big game" and yet failed to vote on the government's first home buyer scheme.
But Mr Chandler-Mather said the government needed to think bigger.
"There are countries around the world already doing this," he said.
"We have a lot of skilled and talented and smart people, so let's put them to work during the sort of things that we know have worked in the past in Australia and work overseas."
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