Treasurer Scott Morrison has it wrong: The solution to housing affordability isn't halfway around the world

Treasurer Scott Morrison has the laughable idea that the answer to housing affordability lies in taking a 23-hour flight back to the motherland.

That is, in England – home to another of the world’s least affordable capital cities, London, where property prices have tripled in the 20 years to 2015.

For home buyers on median incomes in London it costs 12 times their salary for a median priced house – a ratio that’s almost identical with Sydney.    

We don’t need to fly overseas to know that low levels of supply, a growing population and the onslaught of investors are all to blame for rising prices – all you need to do is head to an auction on the weekend.

Scott Morrison was due to land in London on Sunday night to see if affordable housing policies in Britain are “fit for purpose in the Australian context” as they are “leading the way on this front”.

Though the initiatives were not specified, he indicated the $10 billion-plus spent on housing each year could be redirected “more efficiently in order to help disadvantaged households”.

Getting ideas and inspiration from overseas could help improve a small portion of the market. But they won’t fix the systemic problems that led us here, which are mostly unique to Australia.

Even renters who aren’t considered disadvantaged are struggling to enter into the housing market in Sydney and Melbourne.

Negative gearing, capital gains tax discounts and stamp duty all need to be put back on the table for discussion before we even consider importing ideas from other countries.

And instead of jumping from one expensive metropolis to another, Scott Morrison would be well-placed taking a hard look at what is already working in Australian cities outside Sydney and Melbourne.

For his next trip, he could instead take the five-hour flight to Perth if he wanted an example of an effective program to help home buyers get on the ladder.

Shared ownership, where a home buyer buys a portion of a property and the government owns the rest, is working in Western Australia.

The Shared Home Ownership scheme allows home buyers earning between $50,000 and $70,000 or couples earning under $90,000 to buy a home with a $2000 deposit.

The government will co-own a 30 per cent share of the home.

From 2011 until 2015, there were almost 1000 low income households using the initiative to buy a home in co-ownership with the authority. Clients of Keystart, the lender funding these co-ownership purchases, were predominantly young renters buying their first home.

And those taking out all Keystart loans, including low-interest home loans for qualifying buyers, totalled more than 60,000 since the commencement of the lender in 1989.

Bringing this type of program more widely across Australia is one consideration experts and summits have recommended the government consider for years.

It’s also something London has attempted – yet an analysis of 214 shared ownership one-bedroom and studio apartments in early-January from UK-based consumer advocates Which? found 76 per cent of them were unaffordable to under-30s.

What works in some countries won’t work in others, where the rules around housing supply, the desire to own, incomes, cultural norms and even the geography of cities are so vastly different.

Simply, Australia isn’t England. If we want solutions to our housing issues then we need to work on identifying what is causing them here, in our own backyard.