The Turnbull Government has the solution to its poll number blues already at hand - but will it act?

lesterlost.com

State and federal governments have known for years that there is a correlation between unoccupied residential housing, negative gearing of investment properties and capital gains by individuals in the higher income percentiles.

According to 2011 census, in Sydney's "emptiest" neighbourhood of the CBD, Haymarket and The Rocks, one in seven dwellings was vacant.

By the time of the 2016 Census there were 200,000 more homes sitting empty across the country than there had been a decade ago.

An est. 11.2 per cent of residential properties were unoccupied, up from 9.8 per cent in 2006.

There is currently an artificial scarcity of residential housing in this country which governments seem intent on ignoring.

Similarly homelessness has increased in Australia and rental accommodation is frequently beyond the financial reach of many people whose sole income is a Centrelink pension, benefit, allowance or payment.

It has been reported in 2018 that 250 people are turned away from crisis centres across the country every day.

Again, governments are not paying enough attention to the social and economic costs to their own budgetary bottom line this growing problem will cause.

The latest Newspoll published on 13 May 2018 was conducted from Thursday 10 May to Sunday 13 May with 1,728 survey respondents.

It shows the Lib-Nat Coalition’s primary vote standing at 39% to Labor’s 38%. However the Coalition trailed Labor 49 to 51 on a two-party preferred basis, with that margin the coalition's best position since September 2016. 

That is the 32^nd Newspoll in a row where the Labor Opposition was ahead of the Turnbull Government on a two-party preferred basis.

If Turnbull & Co really wanted to turn primary and two-party preferred polling numbers around they would announce some substantial new policy measures in the months following the 2018-19 Budget.

The phasing out of negative gearing of investment properties over a ten year period, reforming capital gain provisions and creating more tied grants for social housing would be a good start.