13/05/2026
My 10 cents worth in plain context….🤷♂️
The notion that this budget meaningfully improves affordability for first home buyers is, quite frankly, completely detached from the economic reality facing ordinary Australians.
Politicians continue to parade housing initiatives as though they are groundbreaking reforms, yet the average working couple with two kids and everyday jobs still cannot realistically enter the property market without taking on crippling levels of debt. You’re now flat out buying a three-bedroom basic unrenovated property in the ass end of nowhere for under $750,000 — and somehow we’re expected to believe affordability has improved.
What many people also fail to comprehend is that a $750,000 mortgage today is roughly around $1,100 per week in repayments once interest rates, insurance, and ownership costs are factored in. What average Australian family with two children, everyday jobs, childcare expenses, groceries, fuel costs, utilities, and general living expenses can sustainably absorb that sort of financial pressure without being financially suffocated?
At the same time, Australians are being absolutely hammered by soaring fuel prices, grocery costs, childcare fees, insurance premiums, utility bills, and virtually every other basic living expense imaginable. Wage growth has not remotely kept pace with inflation, and for many households, the dream of home ownership has shifted from difficult to fundamentally unattainable.
What’s even more frustrating is the complete failure to address the core issue: supply.
Demand isn’t magically going to disappear because Canberra announces another recycled housing package dressed up as reform. Housing supply remains critically inadequate, while development approval systems are paralysed by excessive bureaucracy, political indecision, and planning processes so painfully slow they border on incompetence. Entire developments capable of delivering desperately needed housing stock are delayed for years because we’re apparently more concerned about protecting seven trees on an 80-acre site in the middle of bumf**k nowhere than providing homes for thousands of Australians.
What I also foresee happening is rental prices increasing even further as governments continue discouraging investors from participating in the existing housing market. Whether people like it or not, private investors currently supply a significant portion of rental accommodation across Australia. If you diminish investor confidence through excessive regulation, taxation, and anti-investor rhetoric, you inevitably reduce rental supply — and when supply tightens while demand remains strong, rents increase. It’s basic economics.
Meanwhile, politicians spend more time bickering amongst themselves inside the four walls of Parliament House than actually stepping outside and confronting the realities everyday Australians are dealing with. There is a profound disconnect between political rhetoric and real-world hardship.
To make matters worse, Albanese and the entire Labor government genuinely appear to believe that giving people an extra $250 a year in their tax return is somehow life-changing relief. The idea that this has any meaningful impact on families already drowning under rising mortgages, rent, groceries, fuel, and childcare costs is completely outlandish.
The average Australian family doesn’t need more slogans, announcements, or headline-driven policy spin. They need decisive reform that increases housing supply, streamlines development approvals, reduces cost pressures, and restores a realistic pathway to home ownership for ordinary working people.
Because right now, for most Australians, this budget changes f*% # all in any positive way…
*Photos for reference of sales prices only as an example
