Voting Green may be the greatest act of self-harm by a generation ever

Then interest rates rose, along with house prices. The deposit problem intensified, but servicing capacity became an even greater issue as borrowing rates rose from somewhere around 2% to 6% meaning repayments on an interest-only loan increased 200%.

This is bad enough for homeowners, but it meant a number of Australians who could have bought a home with lower interest rate were trapped in rentals.

At the same time more people joined the rental queue as migration added the equivalent of another Tasmania of residents each year and maturing younger generations moved out of home.

Add to this a slowing in housing starts because of shortages of land, workers and resources caused by, in some parts, red tape and Nimbyism, and in others, competition from the energy transition and various infrastructure projects.

With higher prices rents were going to adjust. While there might be a shortage of houses there is no shortage of investment opportunities – higher borrowing costs means cash and bonds become more attractive, and share market returns are good.

When you can buy blue chip shares yielding 4%, after company tax and all other costs, including depreciation, and half the profit has been retained for reinvestment, why would you buy an asset yielding only 3.7% gross?

Into this maelstrom, where the investment property market is barely holding its head above water, stride the Greens. The only thing going for residential investment is the capital gain, so let's double the tax on it by halving the discount.

Interest rate increases will increase the incidence and size of losses, but instead of allowing the investor to pool their income from all sources and pay tax on that, we'll insist they cordon-off losses from property.

Should they wish to fund their way out of trouble by increasing the income from the property, we'll stop that and ensure they can only increase rents by a figure less than the projected rate of inflation.

The result will be that investors will flee the sector. How many rentals will leave the pool we don't know, but an academic study looking at San Francisco found that rent caps alone could reduce it by 15% - that's 450,000 dwellings in the Australian context.

And the rent increase required to restore the miserly 3.7% gross return is 11%. Voting Greens could be the greatest act of self-harm by a generation ever.