Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s purchase of a $4.3 million cliff top house in Copacabana, on the New South Wales Central Coast, has rightly spurred debate about Labor’s policy amid the housing affordability crisis.

Sure, this will only be his third property: other MPs have declared they own more than twice as many.

The Australian Financial Review has come to the PM’s defence, deriding any criticism as an expression of the “tall poppy syndrome”. “The derision of people in politics making a buck and accumulating wealth risks deterring successful people from entering the political arena,” warned John Kehoe, the AFR’s economics editor.

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Kehoe chided Labor under former PM Bill Shorten for rhetorically attacking the “top end of town”, noting “Albanese didn’t like that language and dropped it when he became leader”.

He reproached Albanese for trimming back the Stage 3 income cuts for those on the highest tax brackets, before warning Labor not to touch the negative gearing and the capital gains perks for the rich, let alone consider the Greens’ “absurd housing policies” — rental price freezes, a government-owned company to build public housing and forcing the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to cut interest rates.

Curtailing negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount (CGT) “won’t fix the housing affordability problem and could have the unintended consequences of deterring investors from building new homes”, he argued.

“Albanese seems to understand this, saying last month he is yet to be convinced that touching the tax arrangements would help the supply of homes,” he added.

This praise for Albanese........

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