*By Paul Bassat*
It is better to be lucky than smart, and I was doubly lucky — a member of the lucky generation, born in the lucky country.
In 1993 my now wife Sharon and I bought our first home together. It was a two-bedroom timber house in the inner Melbourne suburb of South Yarra. It cost $170,000. Our combined incomes as a third-year lawyer and a graduate teacher were around $90,000. Today that same young lawyer and teacher would need to spend nearly ten times their combined income of about $200,000 to buy that same house, compared to less than two times income a generation ago.
The children of the lucky generation have become the unluckiest generation in Australian history. For decades, Australians believed each generation would be better off than the one before. That promise was the bedrock of our national confidence. Today only 1 in 10 believe the next generation will be better off than the last.
Housing is at the core of that collapse in confidence.
Australia’s housing crisis has been hiding in plain sight for more than 30 years. From the early 1990s, house price growth broke from its post World War 2 trend line and accelerated to about twice the rate of income growth. A few years ago we finally admitted, as a country, that we had a problem — but three decades of silence has now been replaced by lots of talk and very little action or urgency.
The situation is worse today than it has ever been. Over the past five years, housing prices have grown at 8% per annum while incomes have grown at just 3.3%. It is equally dire for renters; the rent burden has risen from 26% of median income five years ago to a record 33% at the end of 2025.
These problems are complex, but every one of them is solvable.
It is this sense of frustration about the lack of serious policy debate and progress that drove me to co-found AMPLIFY some 18 months ago. It was also the concern that this crisis was already spilling over into wider frustrations among Australians that could take us into far more dangerous territory – with almost two-thirds of Australians now believing we are becoming more divided.
I decided that I could either remain frustrated or attempt to do something about it.
A simple belief underpins our work: governments know what needs to be done to address our biggest challenges as a country. They just lack the courage and the mindset to do it. Our politicians must accept responsibility for our current malaise. So must the rest of us.
This is why engaging the community is so important. By wrestling with complex problems, weighing the trade-offs and advocating for the changes they want to see, they can provide leaders with a mandate and the courage to act.
And this is what we have done. Since our launch we have engaged with tens of thousands of Australians, policy experts, businesses, governments, oppositions and independents at both federal and state level. We have developed new digital tools to understand how Australians actually think and feel about difficult issues — not the caricatures you see on social media.
That work has culminated in the largest community engagement on housing this country has ever seen, involving more than 18,000 Australians. The result is a community supported housing policy platform that offers a credible pathway to one million additional homes and more than half a million additional first homeowners over the next decade.
Like any startup proving up a new concept, it hasn’t been easy but we have learned a lot.
The first lesson is that common ground is real and far broader than we are led to believe. On housing tax reform, support is remarkably consistent: 65% among investors and non-investors, 65% in the major cities and the regions, and across party lines — 69% of Coalition voters, 77% of Labor, 78% of Greens and 75% of One Nation. On strengthening the safety net for vulnerable Australians, support runs at 79% among Coalition voters and 81% among Labor voters.
This is not a divided country. This is a country whose divisions are being magnified by a political culture that rewards conflict over resolution, and where vested interests hold too many of the cards.
The second lesson is that decision-makers are hungry for this work. In the past fortnight alone we have been approached by multiple Federal and State MPs wanting our help to understand how their electorates are really thinking — on housing and on issues well beyond it. The appetite is real and it is bipartisan.
The third lesson is harder. Despite overwhelming evidence, our political leaders are still too timid. The community is ready for bold action. Where is the crisis-level response to a crisis? Why do we keep accepting the status quo and tinkering around the edges of it?
So where do we go from here? Our thesis hasn’t changed. Both governments and ordinary Australians know what needs to be done. We need to give governments the confidence to act and provide the accountability if they do not. The task now is to convert community goodwill and broad-based common ground into real outcomes.
Housing is not the only area where common ground is being drowned out. It is not the only area where the cost of timidity is being paid by the next generation.
The promise that each generation would be better off than the last is not broken beyond repair. But repairing it will take courage. The community is ready. It is time for our leaders to catch up.
*Paul Bassat is Chair of AMPLIFY.*