Tasmania's voters go to the polls on Saturday with radical policies on offer from all the major parties and independents to deal with a housing crisis that's squeezing the Apple Isle. With mainland states and territories feeling the same pressure, it's showing how future elections are likely to focus on the biggest cost of living keeping a roof over your head.
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00:00 The Apple Isle has a profound problem with housing. It began about 10 years ago and in
00:06 many ways reached a real inflection point with the election this weekend. There's lessons
00:11 for the whole of Australia that is dealing with a housing crisis and the biggest one
00:16 is that governments are starting to take it seriously. The competing parties here in the
00:20 election have put forward a raft of policies that are great in scale and breadth and in
00:26 many ways, compared to what's happening on the mainland, would be considered quite radical.
00:30 This is to deal with everything from homelessness through to problems with renting and through
00:34 to a really substantial issue with short stay accommodations such as Airbnb, particularly
00:40 in places like Hobart. Also, protections for renters in the market and assistance for first
00:47 home buyers trying to buy. So a really substantial scale to the policies but a competing kind
00:55 of platform of whether they'll actually work or not. The problems here are so large that
01:02 Tasmania's population actually shrank in the last quarter. People left the island and one
01:06 of the reasons is housing has become so expensive. Rents are more akin to Melbourne despite the
01:12 fact that it is 20 times the size. There's been a substantial amount of properties here
01:17 in Hobart and other tourist centres around Tasmania that have been lost to the private
01:21 rental market because they're on short stay accommodation like Airbnb. A really broad
01:26 range of problems and a substantial but fragmented series of solutions being offered for the
01:31 weekend. Probably the biggest takeaway from this election is no matter where you live
01:35 in Australia, governments will be watching what happens this weekend as they realise
01:40 just how substantial the issue of housing is at the core of what voters value.
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