Housing

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   The beginning of the end of affordable housing in Australia happened in 2000.
Before
 then, the median house price was 3.5 times average household income, 
and house prices had been increasing at roughly the same rate, on 
average, as both incomes and GDP, or 3-4 per cent per annum.
In
 2000, house prices went from increasing at roughly the same rate as 
both incomes and the economy, to double that rate, or an average of 6-7 
per cent per annum, compound.
...
As dozens of reviews, 
studies and inquiries have found, there are many causes of Australia’s 
housing affordability crisis, in particular immigration and restrictions
 on supply from NIMBYism and poor transport.
But the crisis began in 2000, so the first question that must be answered in any examination of it is – what happened in 1999? 
The answer is that the rate of capital gains tax (CGT) was halved in September that year by John Howard and Peter Costello.
The
 idea was a recommendation in the Review of Business Taxation conducted 
by three businessmen who would benefit from it – John Ralph, Rick Allert
 and Bob Joss. In other words, it was not independent, but conflicted.
As I write in the Quarterly Essay: “That
 was a big, radical tax reform in itself, but it was Australia’s unique 
system of negative gearing plus the abolition of inheritance taxes 
twenty years earlier that really made it work.”
The
 50 per cent CGT discount supercharged the impact of negative gearing 
and led to investment property becoming everyone’s tax dodge.

Alan Kohler
...
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2023/11/27/housing-capital-albanese-chalmers

https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2023/11/the-great-divide/extract