Every few years the opposition discovers the problem of housing affordability. For now, it is Labor fuming relentlessly about how "out of touch" Joe Hockey is for suggesting the apparent solution to soaring house prices is a better job. But Hockey was once in opposition himself, and back then he threw similar barbs. "(Treasurer Wayne) Swan must explain why housing is more (affordable) when Melb prices rose 20% last yr", he tweeted in 2010. "The biggest challenge is housing affordability over the next few years", he reiterated a few months later, on the eve of an election. He was right, of course. Even if he now disagrees with himself.

That's the cycle. Oppositions thunder about house prices, form government, watch it get worse, then go back to opposition, where they thunder all over again. Rudd did it to Howard. Abbott did it to Rudd and Gillard. Now Shorten is doing it to Abbott. There's a reason it's like this: behind all the heat, anger and politicking, we've had a raging consensus on policy that dramatically privileges the interests of those who own property over those who don't.

It has been this way for at least 15 years, and it's the product of a worldview that means the only solutions you can find are the kind Hockey has offered. Yes, this was a gaffe. But let's be clear: Hockey's was a crime of politics, and if you're the Labor Party, not of policy. The bare fact is that housing is unaffordable because the market is flooded with investors. Fewer than half of our houses are owned by people living in them. About 30 years ago that figure was around 85 per cent. And if we're honest, that's exactly what both parties have been aiming for, given the way our tax system works.

If you're a high-income earner, you have a choice: you can either pay half your earnings in tax, or, thanks to concessions on things like negative gearing and capital gains tax, you can put it into property and pay about a quarter. The result, put crudely, is rich people buying houses they don't particularly want, but which poorer people want to live in. Naturally, the wealthy can afford to pay a bit more for them, so the price goes up. And since both sides of politics are determined to make sure house prices keep going up, investors take minimal risk and first-home seekers have increasingly minimal hope.