The Point Live: Coalition clash on net zero all but guaranteed - as it happened.

Property prices have recorded the sharpest growth in more than two years after the government’s deposit guarantee scheme ignited demand for entry-level homes.

(Who could have predicted this? Oh – yes, we did (along with most rational economists))

The first-home buyer scheme, which was expanded at the start of October, appears to have turbocharged the growth in house prices that had already been occurring since the Reserve Bank started cutting interest rates in February.

In October, home prices grew by 1.1 per cent nationally – the fastest monthly growth rate since June 2023 – according to property analytics firm Cotality’s latest home value index, published on Monday.

While there was still a lack of data about uptake levels for the deposit guarantee scheme, Cotality research director Tim Lawless said it was likely the scheme was amplifying demand.

“It’s a pretty clear acceleration that we’ve been seeing since February, since the start of the rate cuts. But it’s fair to say, October does seem to be a bit of a stronger step upwards,” he told AAP.

“You’d have to think, without having any numbers from Housing Australia or anything like that, this is going to be adding some further demand to the marketplace at a time when supply levels are already quite scarce.”

Anecdotally, the middle to lower end of the market, where suburbs or properties are under price caps for the scheme, had experienced the strongest growth, Mr Lawless said.

The upper quartile of the market was exhibiting the slowest growth across almost every capital city.

The rush of buyers looking to take advantage of the five per cent deposit scheme has left just 47 per cent of suburbs nationwide with median house values below the eligibility threshold in October, down from 51 per cent two months prior.

“It’s going to be a program that’s probably first in, best dressed,” Mr Lawless said. 

“The more desirable suburbs, where you still can find a home under the price caps, are going to become scarcer and scarcer.”

Perth was the fastest growing capital city, up 1.9 per cent over the month, while Brisbane rose 1.8 per cent and Adelaide 1.4 per cent. Sydney and Melbourne grew 0.7 and 0.9 per cent respectively. 

While increased demand was pushing up prices, an underlying lack of supply was still the overwhelming driver of price growth, Mr Lawless said, with listings tracking about 18 per cent below average.

“I wouldn’t say demand is shooting the lights out. It’s really a supply-driven upswing that doesn’t look like is going to be changing any time soon,” he said.

Recent planning and zoning reforms by state governments were unlikely to move the dial because builders were still facing severe profitability constraints, Mr Lawless said.

“If the government’s serious about getting more supply into the market, they might need to start providing some sort of incentive to the industry, or alleviation in development contributions or builder taxes that might fast-track some of the supply that isn’t relying on approvals.”

Mr Lawless noted that while the underlying supply shortfall would continue to push up values, falling rate cut expectations, affordability constraints and dampened consumer sentiment might cause price growth to peak earlier than previously anticipated.

What was Mark Butler’s message to Sussan Ley on net zero?

Butler:

The ramifications for the Coalition are extraordinary. We have Liberal MPs in the paper today describing their Coalition partners as terrorists and parasites. That doesn’t bode well for a sober discussion about climate change policy and energy policy going forward this week, I wouldn’t have thought.

More importantly for the country, we need investment certainty. The business groups, particularly in sectors like energy, manufacturing and mining have said for years and years now we need business investment certainty.

The Business Council only in recent days reiterated their strong commitment to a net zero-based policy. They know it needs to guide the investment we need for the jobs that those sectors and many others depend upon. It is more chaos from a [former] government that led a decade of delay and inaction and has got us into a difficult investment position right now.

The Coalition and Greens came together to get a senate inquiry into the Triple 0 failure up and running and that will be taking some attention this week.

The committee wants communications minister Anika Wells to attend, but Wells says she has other commitments.

Mark Butler, who is doing media over the increase in bulk billing rates (complicated story, but it is not going to do a lot for many private GP practices) was asked whether Wells should front the committee on ABC News Breakfast this morning:

House of Representatives ministers are accountable in the house. She has been answering questions in Question Time in the house. That is the proper way this parliament works. We welcome the inquiry. We think it is another good opportunity for Optus to be held to account. People are angry about what happened with that triple oh outage. We lost a woman who died because of that outage in my community. People want Optus to be held to account and they want answers. We have our regulator conducting an inquiry. The Senate inquiry is app important opportunity for Optus to be held to account.

Australia is still trying to secure the UN climate conference, COP for next year, but Türkiye won’t drop its bid, so it’s a bit of a mess.

Anthony Albanese said he has written to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to try and find an end to the impasse.

He told Sky yesterday:

The problem here is, there’s no real process for finalising the matter. I’ve written to President Erdogan of Türkiye, we’re continuing to engage. There’s – it’s supposed to occur by consensus. It’s hard when there’s no consensus, when you’ve got two bids. Our bid, of course, is in partnership with the Pacific as well.

But he remains hopeful:

Indeed, and we are engaging with the Pacific. We want to make sure that their interests are protected in this as well, because they’re particularly vulnerable to climate change. For them, countries like Tuvalu and Kiribati, this is an existential threat to their very existence, which is why this is such a strong issue in our region and why Australia will continue to act on climate change, because it is in our national interest.

The Liberals will continue pretending a review into their own net zero position will actually achieve something, so that’s something that is happening.

In the mean time, shadow environment minister, Angie Bell says she is continuing to work through the government’s environmental protection legislation but she has a problem with how high the maximum fines are.

Environment minister Murray Watt explained the penalty system last week as:

The legislation that we’ll be introducing to the Parliament provides a range of options as to how that fine could be determined, and one of those options, as you say, is to strip a company of 10 per cent its profits if it’s a particularly egregious breach of environmental law or its conditions.

Of course, not every breach would end up being that kind of amount of money, but potentially that’s a very high amount of money, potentially even up to $825 million is the maximum there. But of course, more minor breaches would result in smaller fines, but this is a way of making sure that we are protecting the environment and sending that clear message.

…I mean, all of these kind of decisions would be made independently by a new national EPA, so, I certainly won’t be directing them about which companies they should fine and exactly what kind of fines they should be issuing. But they’ll be able to weigh up a range of factors, including intent, including previous offences, all of the types of things that you would expect a decision maker to take into account when determining what level of fine is appropriate for the particular case.

But this is not good enough for Bell, who thinks it could severely damage a company. Keep in mind this hypothetical company has just damaged the environment bad enough that an independent assessment has determined a 10 per cent of its profits fine is necessary and it makes enough money that the fine is capped at $825m.

Bell told Sky yesterday:

The highest penalty is $825 million, which if you’re running industry and jobs and mining and resources, that’s quite a big cut to the bottom line,” she said.

It (the legislation) doesn’t actually say whether it’s accidental (damage) or on purpose, that sort of thing. It’s open to obviously judgement as well as in the courts.

So, there are some problems around that. We’re working through that with industry and with stakeholders because, as I said, there’s 1500 pages in it.”

Uh huh.

Hello and welcome back to The Point Live, and the start of the second last sitting week of the year (for now, as the rumour of another week being added to the sitting calendar in the first week of December won’t go away, although that is becoming less likely now that the environment bill has been kicked to committee until at least March next year).

But today is all about how the Coalition can’t seem to help digging down. The Nationals have come up with a quasi-abandoment of a net zero goal by 2050, which has the clock ticking on how long the Coalition has, to be a coalition.

And yes. We know. This does not make sense if you think the goal is to win power, because you can’t win power without the cities, and you can’t win the cities by pretending that you can just do nothing on emissions. But this isn’t about winning power, it’s about winning an ideological battle. These people are at war with themselves and wider society – they are not particularly interested in governing, they just want to dominate the debate.

So here we are, Labor completely unchallenged and the Coalition the emptiest of vessels.

We’ll be on board to cover the fall out – and there will be fall out. Anthony Albanese was doing all he could to help yesterday, by making as many media appearances as humanly possible for the sole reason of providing contrast. See that mess? No mess here!

You have Amy Remeikis with you and it is at least a three coffee morning. Mike Bowers from the New Daily will be with us as well, which is always the loveliest of pleasures. You’ll also get some fact checks and explainers from people much smarter than me (my favourite kind), updates from the chambers, the question time mess and anything else that might be of interest as the day rolls on.

Ready? I hope so. We are getting closer to those history marker moments.

Let’s get into it.