It was the worst of pranks, painful and humiliating. The tormentor would sneak up behind you, grab the waistband of your undies and yank upwards as hard as they could, cutting off circulation to your nether regions.

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Oh, how we feared the wedgie, favoured as it was by schoolyard bullies. We'd do almost anything to avoid it. And never, ever would we entertain the thought of administering one to ourselves. Which is exactly what the Coalition has done. Yanked up its own undies so hard, it's red in the face gasping for breath and something sensible to say about falling house prices. Wedged itself good and proper.

With auction clearance rates falling and houses prices easing in Sydney and Melbourne, while continuing to rise but at a slower rate in other capitals, the sky was falling - at least that's what you'd think if you were glued to the Murdoch press and the hysteria from the opposition. "Toxic tax" and "Axe the tax" is "Stop the boats", reworked for the 2020s.

Trouble is, no one's buying it. Not homeowners and, most importantly, not even property investors. A poll commissioned by Nine newspapers found that despite all the Chicken Little squawking, the majority were in favour of house values falling. Break those numbers down and the story they tell is that anyone with half a brain knows the residential property market has been way overheated for years.

Among low income earners, 51 per cent favoured the fall in dwelling values. High income earners were even more enthusiastic with 56 per cent thinking falling values were a good thing. Same for homeowners and mortgage holders. And, remarkably, 62 per cent of property investors cheered the easing of prices.

Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson felt the wedgie immediately when asked on Sky News whether house prices should rise or fall. He refused to answer, saying it was a silly question. Perhaps the wedge his side of politics had inflicted on itself cut off circulation to Wilson's head, blotting out the memory of what he had written in his own book some years earlier.

"Capital gains from appreciation of having and holding assets are taxed at half the applied rate, effectively entrenching the benefit of having and holding assets that can only exist if you are established," Wilson wrote in his 2020 tome, The New Social Contract. "There is no........

© Canberra Times