Sister Harrow

How dare anyone suggest that elderly Australians should be pressured into selling the homes they’ve worked their entire lives to own? These are private citizens, many of them pensioners, who have spent decades paying mortgages, maintaining their properties and building their lives in their communities. Their homes are not government assets to be redistributed whenever their housing policy fails to deliver. Rather than pointing the finger at elderly homeowners, perhaps governments could concentrate on releasing land, lowering immigration levels, reducing construction costs, removing planning obstacles and actually making it easier to build family-sized homes. We know that Australia has a housing supply problem but that doesn’t mean elderly Australians have a moral obligation to sell their homes. How ridiculous. Private property rights should mean something in this country.