by Michael West and Kim Wingerei | Oct 3, 2023 | and published at michaelwest.com.au
Original article: https://michaelwest.com.au/sacred-cow-are-politicians-many-houses-an-impediment-to-property-rental-reform/
Our elected representatives own a lot of property. Not counting their homes, 126 of Canberra’s 232 MPs and Senators own 297 properties between them, at least those that are declared. Nothing wrong with that, but does it affect their decisions? Michael West and Kim Wingerei.
Were you to peruse the politicians’ register of interests, you would find that most of our cherished leaders own investment properties, and many have many investment properties.
Many of these will be let out via Airbnb and assorted other short-term holiday rental operators. That is not disclosed. For the sake of accountability, as well as pure prurience, we are publishing available data. It is thanks to Sean Johnson’s website openpolitics.au. You will find more detail there.
Shortly, we will get to what you can’t see (hint: what is hidden by trusts).
But to get to the guts of this story; our elected representatives can hardly recuse themselves from a vote in which they are conflicted, as that would leave the Chamber very bare; a vote that is on anything to do with property reform: negative gearing, housing affordability measures of substance or rental tax reform – as they are likely to back the horse of self-interest.
They benefit if prices are high, both rental and sale prices. (They will all win too from impending Stage 3 tax cuts legislation, to the tune of 9k apiece, but that is another story).
Bi-partisan support
As you can see from the disclosure data, this is not a Coalition thing, or Labor; the Teals and the Greens are doing as swimmingly on the investment property front as the Liberals and the Nats.
The 297 properties declared by MPs and senators do not include their principal homes, but it does include 25 holiday homes. The rest, we can assume, are investment properties*.
Karen Andrews, LNP member for McPherson (QLD) tops the list with 12 investment properties. Eleven of our elected representatives own five or more properties.
Top Parliamentary Property Owners
MP/Senator | Party | No. of investment properties |
Karen Andrews | LNP | 11 |
Michelle Ananda-Rajah | ALP | 7 |
Tony Burke | ALP | 7 |
Louise Miller-Frost | ALP | 7 |
Garth Hamilton | LNP | 6 |
David Gillespie | Nationals | 5 |
Susan Ley | LNP | 5 |
Kristy McBain | ALP | 5 |
Michelle Rowland | ALP | 5 |
Sophie Scamps | Independent | 5 |
Dan Tehan | LNP | 5 |
The complete list can be found here:
Rental crisis
Meanwhile, there is a rental crisis across the nation, and very little is being done to address it.
Yet the ‘Airbnb mafia’ is cleaning up. In holiday towns, resident workers struggle to find a place to rent because landlords are often better off letting their property for two days of the week to Sydneysiders or Melbourne folk looking for a weekend getaway than they are letting it to a local worker or working family.
Not only is there often more money in short-stay rentals but landlords can use the property too when they are keen for a weekend away. And, here’s the icing, they can claim tax deductions for a whole year if the property is advertised. This is a rort. You can only claim for the use of your car or home office for the time it is used for work.
Yet the Tax Office, despite changing its guidelines since we first published Tim Evan’s excellent analysis on the Airbnb tax rort, remains ambiguous in its guidelines. Property, which commands more reverence than religion in Australia, enjoys special exemptions. Hence the prices. Hence the obfuscation and epic delays over money-laundering laws (AML-CTF Tranche II) which were supposed to be introduced 16 years ago yet remain in the “stakeholder engagement” process.
Disclosure failures
You would think it was good public policy to address this failure to allow deductions for only the time a property was to let for holiday rental, but we haven’t heard boo from one politician since raising the subject. To be fair, the ATO has responded.
Now the disclosures lurk. It is fair to assume that the property holdings of Australia’s politicians are actually larger than what is disclosed in the Register of Pecuniary Interests.
That is because most of them have trusts which are great ways to hide assets. Arguably, if a trust is set up to hide things, even the very existence of the trust itself does not have to be disclosed. If, for instance, a lawyer sets up a company for you as Trustee of the Trust, and your niece or nephew (not your dependent) is recorded as the Beneficiary of the Trust (it doesn’t matter if they are two years old and can’t spell trust yet) then you don’t have to disclose that the trust exists – as long as you don’t legally control it.
Read the full article by Michael West and Kim Wingerei at https://michaelwest.com.au/sacred-cow-are-politicians-many-houses-an-impediment-to-property-rental-reform/
Editor's Note:
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