Ranked: how many properties do Australian politicians own?

With more and more Australians finding it difficult, if possible at all, to break into home ownership amid surging home prices, housing affordability is not an issue to worry about among the ranks of federal Parliament’s members and senators given their real estate holdings and current annual pay ranging between $211,000 and $550,000.

The property ownership ranking below compiled by Mirage.News based on the Parliament’s registers of interests include primary and secondary homes, investment properties, holiday homes, commercial buildings and vacant land, including those jointly owned with spouses.

The table does NOT include the properties wholly owned by politicians’ spouses as  they are not always declared or obscurely declared.

We have also EXCLUDED real estate owned via trusts or companies as it appears, per the register, many politicians own properties or hold financial interests in property through companies, trusts and other investment vehicles but they don’t declare the quantity and details of actual investments (making the register less transparent and to some extent meaningless).

Therefore, the information in the table below is not the full story and  the real number of properties owned by our parliamentarians is significantly higher.

Still, the table below highlights our politicians’ very personal interest in any changes to negative gearing and generous capital gains tax discount, both of which are often blamed for frenetic property speculation in the country.

As negative gearing is the process by which housing investors can deduct housing investment losses from their gross income such as their high salary, it makes sense that the top earners choose to leverage this tax minimization technique.

This simply means ordinary taxpayers and prospective first home buyers are double-disadvantaged due to both the escalating pressure on housing affordability we are facing now, and low tax paid by the highest income earners to the tax coffers.

Unfortunately, this comes at a time when the great Australian dream of home ownership remains just as a dream for an increasing number of Australians, with now nearly a third of households (non-politicians) renting.

Of course, our parliamentarians can and should own and invest in property but the analysis speaks volumes to how far removed they are from the experience of everyday Australian home buyer.

• • Almost half of our politicians have an investment property, compared to 10% general population
  • Only 15 out of 227 politicians (151 Members, 76 Senators) do not declare any property ownership, meaning 93% of the total do, compared to the national average of just above 50%
  • Many of the politicians making decisions on tax advantages for property investment are property investors themselves
  • There are many properties we don’t know about: concealed through companies, trusts, self-managed super funds and other investment vehicles
  • As, according to the register (not fully declarations – eg. Bob Katter put it “She does not provide me with this information”), spouses of many politicians have substantial real estate holdings both residential and investment (not included in this table) as compared to the general population, there can be 3 possibilities, or combinations thereof: 1) a politician makes their partner wealthy; 2) a wealthy spouse makes their partner a politician; 3)  the rich are marrying the wealthy, creating doubly rich households, which so happens to make a politician.

Does owning property affect the way a politician votes? It is hard to claim, let alone prove a direct link between property holdings and decisions of politicians. Yet, it would be imprudent to assume prima facie that the property holdings do not play a role at all given the the interests involved.