Image: Salt lakes’ ‘unreal’ rainbow of colours captured by Scott Jon McCook in WA’s Wheatbelt
When Western Australia opened a parliamentary inquiry into land rent schemes, ABC Perth Drive turned to Karl Fitzgerald to explain why it matters. Karl is the Managing Director of Grounded Community Land Trust Advocacy, he was invited to make a submission to the WA inquiry, and he brings hard won experience from his involvement in stakeholder engagement around the ACT land rent scheme nearly twenty years ago. That is what makes his contribution so valuable here. He is not speaking from the sidelines, rather as someone who has seen this model up close, understands where it can help, and knows where policy design has to get sharper.
The inquiry itself is a serious one. The WA Public Accounts Committee has been asked to examine whether a government land rent or similar scheme could help promote privately owned, owner occupied dwellings and affordable home ownership for moderate and middle income households. It will also consider pilot sites, financing settings, and lessons from other jurisdictions, including existing land rent style models.
ABC interviewed Karl at exactly the right moment. WA is now actively considering whether land rent or similar models could help moderate and middle income households into owner occupied homes, at a time when the housing market has run far ahead of what ordinary incomes can carry. That is the reality Karl spoke to in the interview: people who had good savings before COVID have been locked out of home ownership, pushed back into an already overloaded rental market, and left looking for a pathway that feels realistic again. In that context, land rent is not an abstract policy idea, but rather a practical housing affordability tool that deserves serious attention. The ABC summarised the interview as households with decent savings have been “locked out of the home ownership market and are now clogging up the rental market,” and this tool helps move people into “more secure accommodation.”
What is a land rent scheme?
At its core, a land rent scheme separates the cost of the home from the cost of the land. The household owns the dwelling, while the land remains in public, community, or mission led stewardship under a long lease. The WA Parliament’s explanatory note puts it plainly: by separating land and dwelling ownership, residents avoid the upfront cost of purchasing land, reducing the barrier to home ownership. The ACT Land Rent Scheme is named as the key example.
Karl explained it in more direct terms in the ABC interview. “The basics are instead of, in a way, leasing the land off a bank and paying mortgage interest off it, we pay a lease either to government or to a local community or community housing operator.” That is the shift in one sentence. Instead of asking households to take on the full speculative cost of land at the start, land rent creates a pathway where people can own their home without having to buy the land beneath it on day one.
That distinction matters because land is now the hardest part of the housing equation. The point is not to wave away the cost. The point is to stop forcing ordinary households to carry the full weight of inflated land values upfront. Done properly, land rent changes the financing task, lowers the entry barrier, and keeps more land working for community benefit instead of speculative churn.
Why does this matter now?
Because the market has broken away from what wages and savings can support.
ABC reported in February 2026 that average rents in WA had risen 66 per cent over five years, while wages rose only 18.5 per cent. It also reported that rental affordability in the state was at an all time low. That is not a temporary wobble. It is a structural squeeze.
Perth’s rental market tells the same story. In April 2025, ABC reported that Perth had gone from the nation’s most affordable capital city to rent, to now the second most expensive in just five years. Median weekly rent now reaches $700 for houses and $650 for units. REA Group senior economist Anne Flaherty called the shift “astonishing.”
Buying is no easier. In January 2026, ABC reported that Perth’s median house price had broken through the $1 million mark, with households spending 39.5 per cent of their income on a median mortgage, up from 22.3 per cent in 2019. Domain’s Nicola Powell said, “Rapid price growth has pushed home ownership further out of reach for many buyers.”
Karl’s own diagnosis in the interview is more human and more immediate. “This is how bad the housing crisis has gotten, that the mainstream development model can’t even provide housing for those who earn a modest income.” He is not talking about a niche group. He is talking about the missing middle. Teachers, nurses, care workers, hospitality workers, and younger families are being priced out of the communities they help hold together.
A lower deposit and lower ongoing costs
One of the strongest arguments for land rent is the way it reduces the upfront barrier to entry. Karl put it bluntly: “This is the big advantage of this model is that it reduces the deposit you are required to save by some 60 per cent.” In the interview he pointed to the sheer absurdity of current house prices and the way they have pulled the ladder up behind people who were saving in good faith.
He also gave the argument its clearest practical expression: “They can’t get to 200k. Who can do that anymore? No one. So let’s bring it back to 50-60 thousand dollars and that’s a reasonable deposit people can aspire to.” That is the heart of the policy case. Land rent does not promise fantasy prices. It makes the first step plausible again.
The ACT experience shows the mechanism is real. ABC’s reporting on the ACT Land Rent Scheme explained that new entrants rented land from government at 2 per cent of the unimproved value and only needed finance for the house, which lowered upfront costs. One participant said, “We only needed 10 per cent of what the build was going to be,” while an ACT official said the model could take “around about $700 per month” off a typical mortgage.
The ACT Revenue Office says the same thing in more formal terms: the scheme gives people the option of renting land rather than purchasing it, reducing up front costs because lessees do not need to finance the cost of the land itself.
Karl also makes the longer term case. He argues that because people are not borrowing for the land, “your occupancy costs are saved by 40% over time.” Whether WA adopts exactly that structure will depend on policy design, but the broader point stands: if we stop loading speculative land costs onto households at the beginning, we create room for stability instead of constant financial stress.
Who could this help?
The inquiry is explicitly focused on moderate and middle income households. That matters because it recognises how far the crisis has spread. This is no longer only about the poorest households, though they remain under enormous pressure. It is about a housing system that is failing people on ordinary wages.
Karl put it simply: “Middle class Australia is looking for answers.” He is right. When more than half of West Australian households consider their housing unaffordable, this is not a marginal policy debate. It is a mainstream economic and social problem.
A well designed land rent scheme could create a protected pathway into home ownership for these households. As Karl noted in the interview, eligibility rules could ensure these homes remain targeted to people who need them most, including workers on ordinary incomes and people below a set earnings threshold. In his words, “speculators can’t come in. It’s only for community. It’s only for workers.” That is exactly the kind of discipline good policy design should preserve.
What can WA learn from the ACT?
The ACT offers both inspiration and a warning.
The inspiration is straightforward. It proves that separating land from dwelling ownership is not just a theory. It can reduce upfront costs, lower mortgage pressure, and give households a secure path into ownership through long leases. The WA inquiry explicitly says it will consider land rent and similar schemes in other jurisdictions, and it should. The ACT is the obvious place to start.
The warning is that policy design decides whether public value is protected or leaked away. Karl was candid about that too. He said the ACT system “got a bit gamed” and that WA needs to avoid builders becoming land bankers inside the scheme. That is an important lesson. If public land is going to support housing affordability, the value created needs to stay with households and communities, not be siphoned off by intermediaries.
WA also has the chance to think more carefully about where the revenue goes. Karl’s argument is not just that land rent can help one buyer at a time. It is that a well designed lease system can generate an ongoing stream of funds that can be recycled into more affordable housing and more social housing over time. That is a far better use of public land than selling it once and losing it forever.
A real opportunity for reform
Land rent will not solve the housing crisis on its own. WA still needs more social housing, better planning outcomes, stronger support for community housing providers, and a much clearer public strategy for land. But this inquiry matters because it opens the door to a different way of thinking.
Karl’s sharpest point may be that land rent is not just another housing subsidy dressed up as reform. In his words, it is “certainly one of the more innovative housing affordability packages that can be rolled out,” and “much more effective than the help to buy model because that is inflationary. It does push up prices, but a land lease model, a land rent model works the other way. It actually reduces prices.”
That distinction matters. Too many housing responses simply add more credit into an overheated market and hope affordability somehow improves. Karl’s argument is that land rent starts from a different premise altogether. It recognises that land is the key pressure point in the housing system and that governments cannot keep allowing its value to rise unchecked while wages fall further behind. As he put it, “every time governments do a tax inquiry of some sort, they always say, look, land is the key thing. Lease it or tax it, do something. But don’t let it keep rising in value over time because wages can’t keep up.”
This is also why land rent matters beyond the first buyer. It is a way of preserving land for public purpose, not private speculation. “Speculators can’t come in,” Karl said. “It’s only for community. It’s only for workers. They’re the ones who are going to benefit from this.” That is the deeper value of the model. It keeps land working for long term community benefit rather than feeding the short term boom and bust cycle that has pushed so many households out of secure housing.
The committee is due to table its report on 19 November 2026. Between now and then, there is a genuine chance to shape a practical reform that speaks to the reality facing ordinary households across the state.