Between all the backflips, repeals and retreats – not to mention the spin, policymaking on the run and the dreaded "announcables" – it's sometimes hard to keep faith that good policy development is happening within government.
It's partly our fault, as journalists. In addition to keeping you abreast of the latest mayhem, I believe it is the job of journalists to attempt to influence good public policy outcomes.
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MPs tackle housing affordability
Scott Morrison summons all the state treasures to Canberra to tackle the housing affordability crisis.
This rightly involves a good deal of scrutiny when things go wrong. But it also involves delivering due attention when things go right.
So, step forward and take a bow: Scott Morrison.
On Friday, Morrison announced his finest policy achievement to date as Treasurer (this says something about the candidacy of his other policy achievements, but let's stick to the good news).
Along with his state counterparts, Morrison has cooked up a policy of genuine merit: the best thing for renters since 3M hooks.
It was a long time in the making.
As social services minister in the Abbott ministry, Morrison assumed responsibility for delivering social housing – a task that costs state and federal budgets about $10 billion each year.
Under Morrison's lead, the department started work on tackling a particularly thorny problem: the lack of affordable private rental housing for low income earners. Morrison's particular contribution was to insist officials begin investigating ways to harness private sector investment to build new affordable rental housing.
When the Turnbull coup delivered Morrison the Treasury portfolio late last year, one of his first acts was to establish an Affordable Housing Working Group under the Council on Federal Financial Relations.
State and federal Treasury officials began knocking heads together to come up with innovative financing solutions to encourage more low-cost private rentals.
The working group diligently took submissions from, and consulted with, interested groups, including community housing providers who borrow money to construct modest rental housing, paying off the interest on the loan with incoming rent payments (subsidised, indirectly, by government through rent assistance and other welfare for low income renters).
The best thing for renters since 3M hooks.
It soon turned out that the community housing providers suffered from a lack of scale and access to finance. Investors keen to invest in a low yield, but essentially government income guaranteed, scheme saw little real market appeal, given the size and sporadic nature of the projects.
After considering options, the working group landed upon a "housing bond aggregator" as the best model to promote investment.
Bond aggregator is not a sexy name, but here's how it works: "The establishment of a housing bond aggregator would require the establishment of a specialist financing intermediary, whose function would be to liaise with affordable housing providers to determine the amount of debt they are seeking to raise. The intermediary, or entity acting on its behalf, would then source these funds in aggregate from wholesale markets by issuing bonds to investors. The funds generated would then be loaned to the relevant housing providers in return for ongoing interest payments."
In Britain, a similar agency is called the Housing Finance Corporation. By pooling projects and offering them to investors, this agency has managed to secure finance for community housing providers at cheaper rates than the government can borrow.
Last Friday, Morrison and his state counterparts, agreed to try to do the same in Australia.
A new taskforce will determine the exact mechanism and report back mid next year.
The working group estimates that if $1 billion in loans currently outstanding to community housing providers can be refinanced at cheaper rates under the new model, this "could result in an increase in their borrowing capacity by over 65 per cent or an additional $765 million. If this amount were reinvested into new affordable housing it could fund the construction of up to 2200 new dwellings".
Vulnerable renters will benefit from a greater supply of affordable properties, owned and run by non-profit institutions more committed to providing secure tenure.
It's not all tea and roses. The new body will have to provide a pipeline of projects of sufficient size to attract ongoing investors. There will still be a "financing gap" because cheap rentals, by definition, offer lower returns than full-market rent rentals.
But amid the end-of-year political mayhem and the media circus which seems to churn and spit out policies by the hour – if not minute – it is deeply reassuring to know that the wheels of government and bureaucracy still turn – a subterranean process giving policy substance to the ephemera of modern politics.