Just as the housing market calms down just a little bit, watch some politicians issue a spate of crazy policies to juice the market and push up prices again.

This time it’s One Nation saying that Australians should be able to access their superannuation before retirement more easily, including as a deposit on a home.

If this sounds familiar, then you’re probably thinking about the Coalition’s policy that it took to the past two elections, which would have allowed first-home buyers to withdraw their super to put a deposit on a home.

These are terrible ideas for a host of reasons, not least because they would just push up house prices and make housing less affordable.
But that might be exactly the point.

There has been a group of people talking loudly in the media about how terrible the recent, very modest, fall in house prices has been. Since the changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax were announced at the May budget, according to Cotality, prices have dropped nationally by 1.9 per cent.

This “drop” is barely more than a flattening of house prices, because it comes after 25 years of rapid growth that have pushed the dream of owning a home beyond the reach of so many people. And for the “lucky” ones that have got into the market, it has shackled them to enormous mortgages.

The fall in house prices has not been met with the expected widespread anxiety that many in the media thought it would be. According to a recent Resolve poll, 60 per cent of respondents support house prices falling, with only 10 per cent against. Previous polls have found similar results.

Most people support the shift to more affordable housing.

But the biggest risk to helping people buy their own homes is going back to “housing affordability” policies that do nothing but increase demand for houses and push up prices. This is exactly what proposals to allow people to access their super to buy a home would do.

Policies that inflate demand have a long record of failure. Allowing people to access their super for house deposits is one such example. Now that we finally have a government that is brave enough to put in place policies that are working, it would be crazy to undermine them.

Some people have made a lot of money from rapidly rising house prices, and they don’t want to see a change. This group includes property investors, banks, and the real estate industry. Just remember that when you hear claims that a small drop in house prices is a calamitous event.

If fuel prices fall, fuel is more affordable. If grocery prices fall, groceries are more affordable. And yes, if house prices fall houses are more affordable.

But wait, various property boosters shout, homes are an investment. Investments shouldn’t fall in price.

Let me introduce you to another investment, the sharemarket. Most Australians own shares, even if it’s just part of their super. The sharemarket goes up and down in price all of them time. In fact, it regularly has bigger falls in a single day than the 1.9 per cent drop in house prices over the past three months.

In the past four years, the ASX200 has fallen by more than 1.9 per cent on a single day a dozen times. The most recent drop was in March this year, when it dropped 2.8 per cent.

Were there headlines about financial Armageddon? No. Outside the financial press it went largely unnoticed.

Importantly, Australia’s obsession with housing as an investment that has got us into this mess. We once thought of housing as a safe and secure place to live.

But more recently we have as accepted the narrative that it is an investment. A place to build a financial nest egg. There is nothing wrong with trying to build financial security, but we shouldn’t have to trade away affordable housing to do it.

There are plenty of things that people can invest in. We need to pick things that don’t destroy the dream of home ownership.

For the first time I’m optimistic that we’ve turned a corner and homes are going to become more affordable.

Allowing people to use their super to buy a home will just see house prices rapidly rise again. People will drain their super accounts and houses will continue to become unaffordable.

There are some people who would like to see the housing market heat up again, but it is clear the majority of Australians would rather see more affordable housing.