A Senate committee agreed Australia is in a housing crisis, then could not agree on one thing to do about it

The Senate committee we said would report on 30 September did, after 185 submissions and eight public hearings. Its ten findings are unanimous and they are blunt. What it does not have is a single agreed recommendation: in its own words, The committee has not, however, been able to reach agreement on a unanimous set of specific recommendations to guide the way forward. The Greens Chair, the Labor senators and the Coalition senators then wrote three separate prescriptions, and two of them point in opposite directions on the same tax change.

2 October 2026 · the report’s findings and all three sets of recommendations, read at source

Ledger-style graphic for a development story: a row of buildings and a crane over one dashed, unbuilt outline — Story graphic: the development device. The dashed outline is the home that has not been built.

What every senator signed

The committee’s findings open with a sentence no member dissented from: It is an indisputable fact, universally agreed by the committee, that Australia is in a housing crisis. They go on to say the crisis cannot be attributed to the decisions of any single government or period of government, which is a notable thing for senators from three parties to agree in writing, and that It is clear that many elements of the current crisis arise from the decline in investment in public housing.

That is where agreement ends. The findings are ten statements about the problem. The recommendations, the part that would tell a government what to do, are not the committee’s at all: they sit in three sets of additional comments at the back of the report.

Three prescriptions, two of them opposites

The Chair, Greens Senator Barbara Pocock, makes 31 recommendations. Among them: a target to increase public and community housing to at least 10 per cent of Australia’s housing stock over the next decade, and a national framework that would cap annual rent increases at the lesser of 2% or the annual rate of inflation (CPI), applying both within and between tenancies.

The Labor senators make three. The first is that the Australian Government continue to implement its Budget announcements of reforms to the operation of the Capital Gains Tax Discount and of negative gearing to level the playing field for first home buyers. The others are to keep working with the states on social and affordable housing, and to implement the agreed renter protections nationally.

The Coalition senators make three. The first is to Reverse Labor’s housing tax hikes introduced in the 2026-27 Budget. The second is to Make it cheaper and easier to build good houses by streamlining the National Construction Code, and the third is quarterly public reporting by Housing Australia on what it spends and builds.

Put the two first recommendations side by side and they are the same Budget measure with opposite instructions attached: Labor’s senators say keep it, the Coalition’s say reverse it.

What it says about older people, which is the part that bears on the Coast

The report does not mention the Central Coast. Its evidence on older people is the part that matters here. It records that women over 55 are one of the fastest-growing cohorts experiencing homelessness in Australia, and that older people are another cohort experiencing increasing levels of homelessness and housing insecurity. The Coast has more residents over 65 than any council in NSW, so whichever prescription prevails, this is a region with an unusually large share of the people the evidence says are increasingly at risk.

Our view

A committee that calls the crisis indisputable, agrees it is not one government’s doing, and still cannot agree a single recommendation has told readers something useful about where the argument actually is. It is not about whether there is a problem, or even mostly about building more homes, which every set of comments wants in some form. It is about two specific settings: the tax treatment of investors, on which Labor and the Coalition give opposite answers, and rent regulation, where the Greens go furthest. Those are the two places to watch, and the two where a reader’s own interests, as a renter, an owner or an investor, will shape which answer looks right.

Sources

Chapter 7, Committee findings Senate Select Committee on Intergenerational Housing Inequity, final report Locked out: the growing generational housing divide, tabled 30 September 2026, read 2 October 2026. The ten findings, the “indisputable fact” and single-government passages, the public housing finding, and paragraph 7.18 on the absence of agreed recommendations.
Report home page Same report. The 185 submissions and eight public hearings.
Additional comments from the Chair, Senator Barbara Pocock Read 2 October 2026. The 31 numbered recommendations, including the 10 per cent public and community housing target and the rent cap.
Additional comments from Labor Senators Read 2 October 2026. The three recommendations.
Additional comments from Coalition Senators Read 2 October 2026. The three recommendations.
Chapter 6, Housing insecurity and homelessness Read 2 October 2026. Paragraphs 6.103 and 6.108 on women over 55 and older people.
Members The committee’s membership and party affiliations.
The Coast has more residents over 65 than any council in NSW The Coast Record, August 2026, and the sources it cites.

How we read this. Every quotation is from the report’s own pages, and each set of recommendations is given the same treatment: what it proposes first, in its authors’ words, and how many there are in all. We have summarised the 31 Chair’s recommendations by their two most consequential, not reproduced them; the full list is in the source. Our view is labelled as ours and rests on the facts set out above it.

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