For more than 50 years the average Australian was able to buy their first home on the average wage.

Traditionally, in Australia, the median house price has been around three times the median household income. For example, when the median income was $10,000 per annum in the 1970s the median house price was $30,000. And when the median income was $1,000 per annum one could buy a basic house on a basic block of land for $3,000. Young couples got a start in the housing market and worked up from there.

Today, in Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane, the median house price is more than six times the median income and in Sydney and Perth more than eight times. The social and economic consequences and long-term ramifications of this problem are horrendous and by and large not at all understood.

What has caused this problem and what to do about it was the impetus for the establishment of The Great Australian Dream Project.

As a joint initiative of the Institute of Public Affairs and the Housing Industry Association, The Great Australian Dream Project has been created to promote research and inform discussion on the major causes of housing unaffordability in Australia and to encourage the adoption of policies that will once again put home ownership back within the reach of ordinary Australians.

Homeownership carries with it a raft of social and economic benefits that directly affect individual and family stability, security and capacity. What has happened in Australia in recent years is nothing short of tragic.

On behalf of The Great Australian Dream Project team, I not only welcome you to this website, but more importantly, I invite you to join with us in working towards an Australia in which home ownership is the reasonable expectation of the many, rather than the privilege of the few.