The nation's peak association of real estate agents, the Real Estate Institute of Australia (REIA), has fired up its campaign against the Australian Labor Party's negative gearing policy with a media onslaught that focuses on the policy as 'strange" and the issue being 'everyone's problem.'
The campaign is an attempt to discredit the Federal Labor Party's policy to scrap negative gearing on residential property by taking
particular aim at a report published by the Australian National University that effectively admits it has ignored or denied the consequences of the policy, and which appears to have deliberately understated average incomes to distort the proportion of wealthy Australians.
"Doesn’t it strike you as strange that outside the political world and those directly connected to it, not one prominent organisation in the country is campaigning for negative gearing to be abolished," says the organisation's website.
According to their website, the REIA is a politically non-aligned organisation that provides research and well-informed advice to the Federal Government, Opposition, professional members of the real estate sector, media and the public on a range of issues affecting the property market.
The REIA joins the Property Council of Australia,
Urban Development Institute of Australia and a growing group of influential industry associations and business groups lobbying against the proposed policy.