iscover 
At the crux of it, its position was: “Renting is not simply a less desirable alternative to owning, but a structurally inferior one. Leaving people more exposed to housing shocks, less able to plan for the future and with fewer opportunities to build wealth or stability over time.”
We launched Skip in 2022 with a mission to improve access to home ownership for hard-working Australians (at every stage of life).
We think this is in Australia’s national interest and worthy of being our life’s work. But as Anglicare’s report makes clear, government interventionism is yielding all sorts of unintended consequences. Namely, via: “A shift in government policy away from supply-side support, such as public housing and first home construction schemes, toward demand-side subsidies, such as grants and tax concessions that inflate prices, has further entrenched barriers to entry.”
Examples include decisions such as removing income caps. This created perverse incentives, bringing high-income buyers into lower-priced assets, pricing out those who don’t qualify, and pushing those who do to pay more than they otherwise would.
The scheme saves a buyer 2–3 per cent in LMI, which sounds great on paper. However, asset prices within the scheme grew +6 per cent in the first six months after income caps (double that of assets outside the scheme) – so what did we really save those buyers?
The unseen cost of government policy overreach is that as a country, we fail to fully support those who need it most. The government should focus strictly on only necessary intervention. Specifically, boosting supply and establishing more social and affordable housing.
Anglicare’s snapshot survey of more than 48,000 rental listings across the country earlier this year showed: “Not a single rental property across the country was affordable for a young person on Youth Allowance.”
While Anglicare’s report rightly highlights the severe impact of housing affordability on young people, the broader reality is that poorly engineered policies are making life harder for working households across every demographic.
Indeed, the ABS data shows that national home ownership rates have now entered a prolonged period of decline. A drop that was particularly acute among 25–54-year-olds, a majority of the working population.
If we are serious about improving home ownership, we need a disciplined, three-pronged approach. Firstly, cease market-distorting demand subsidies that inflate asset prices. Second, focus on supply-side stimuli by removing red tape and reducing construction costs.
Finally, shrink public expenditure and focus public balance sheets on highly targeted social and affordable housing where intervention is genuinely required. By exiting the markets they don’t need to be in, the government creates the space and opportunity for the private market to flourish, and if history is any guide, find more efficient and lower-cost solutions to those problems.
When a professional household demonstrates strong earning capacity and a clean credit profile, they do not require handouts that artificially elevate property price floors. They simply require modern credit architecture that evaluates risk on economic merit.
Restoring the housing ladder is fundamentally in Australia’s national interest, and it begins by letting the government focus on targeted welfare while allowing private innovation from local companies like Skip to unblock market access.
Mario Emmanuel is co-founder and CEO of Skip, where he’s building the foundational architecture – through people, partnerships, and technology – to tackle one of the biggest intergenerational challenges Australia has ever faced: helping the forgotten Australians attain home ownership. His career stitches together experience from a diverse range of sectors including technology (Stripe), consulting (Bain & Company), investment banking (UBS), and family office (Lowy Family Group).
Read Anglicare Australia’s Falling Behind: Young People and Australia’s Growing Wealth Divide here.
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