“Make no mistake, we are facing in Australia the greatest crisis in housing since the Second World War.”

That was Queensland’s then-Housing Minister Robert Schwarten in State Parliament in October 2002.

He wanted the Commonwealth government to hold a national housing summit to find solutions.

It didn’t happen of course. Prime Minister John Howard was never going to sign up for a state Labor Government-proposed initiative.

On Wednesday last week, 20 years after Schwarten’s demand the Local Government Association of Queensland and 10 other peak bodies, called on the Federal Government to hold a national summit to solve Australia’s “perfect storm” of a housing crisis.

It’s not going to happen either, at least judging from Federal Housing Minister Michael Sukkar’s initial response, which boiled down to “it’s not our problem”.

“State governments and local councils need to step up and increase the supply of housing to put downward pressure on house prices and rentals,” he said.

Which succinctly highlights why it’s so hard to develop a national policy to solve a problem that has been obvious to everyone for at least the past several decades – making sure everyone has access to affordable and secure accommodation.

There are just so many moving parts and different levels of government, which allow for plenty of buck passing.

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And everyone has their own vested interests and definitions of what an affordable and equitable housing policy would look like.

Social service providers want secure housing for all, inevitably paid for out of the public purse, and private sector developers don’t want to be undercut by cheap publicly funded housing.

Private sector developers also don’t want to pay hefty development charges but ratepayers don’t want to be stuck with someone else’s development costs.

First-home buyers want all the help they can get to break into the market but existing homeowners don’t want policies that threaten the value of the biggest investment of their lives.

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Even if we could organise a national housing summit, would it make any difference?

Parliamentary committees have held five inquiries into housing in the past five years alone.

The most recent was by the House of Representatives Standing Committee and Tax and Revenue, which released its report, “The Australian Dream: Inquiry into house affordability and supply in Australia” just a few weeks ago.

Despite seven months of hearings and reviewing nearly 230 submissions the committee couldn’t reach agreement on what to do next.

Committee chair, Liberal MP Jason Falinski, determined it was mainly a matter of supply.

“This report identifies opportunities for all levels of government to unlock more housing supply, create more affordable homes and increase home ownership,” he said.

“We need to reform broken planning systems, fix inefficient regulation and stop new home buyers unfairly bearing the brunt of taxes and charges that are designed to raise funds, not living standards”.

The Labor MPs on the committee, Julie Owens and Ged Kearney, disagreed.

“The report fails because the chair’s focus was, and remains on, supply,” they said.

Owens and Kearney said the committee ignored evidence that supply chain issues, labour shortages, natural disasters and increasing costs were all part of the problem.

The LGAQ-led group of peak bodies – representing mining, farming, planning and social welfare interests – make a similar point.

Australia, they say, is facing “a perfect housing storm” – the result of “unprecedented low interest rates, sharply rising property prices, supply chain issues, significant labour shortage issues and scarcity of trades,” in addition to the Covid-19 pandemic and recent storms and floods.

And so, how to respond?

I’d suggest the first step is for politicians to recognise they’re dealing with more than one topic under the title “housing crisis”.

If you need more social housing – and the numbers clearly say we do – then convince voters you need to spend the money.

Federal Labor has announced it will create a $10 billion off-budget Housing Australia Future Fund to build social and affordable housing, which it claims will build 20,000 properties over five years.

And in last year’s State Budget the Queensland Government committed $2.9 billion over four years with a target of 6365 new properties.

But that barely touches the sides if you use the LGAQ’s figures. It claims we need to spend another $4.8 billion  over the next four years in Queensland alone and that there are more than 50,000 people currently on the state’s social housing waiting lists.

If you’re talking about housing affordability, then change the tax laws to make housing a commodity rather than an asset by getting rid of capital tax gain exemptions and negative gearing.

But good luck with that. There are more home-owning voters than renters, which means that no matter the promises, politicians from all sides will only ever be able to tinker around the edges of the problem.

The LGAQ and its team of peak bodies have picked the right moment to make affordable housing an issue – just months before an election.

But they probably won’t get what they’re asking for.

There are just too many vested interests happy with the way things are.

Which  means that 20 years from now, someone will no doubt once again be calling for a national summit to address the housing crisis.