Peter Tulip, Chief Economist at the libertarian-leaning Centre for Independent Studies, prefers the Coalition's plan to boost housing supply.
Both Labor and the Coalition have acknowledged a "housing crisis" and have pledged big spending in service of building more homes for Australians.
If elected, a Peter Dutton led Government would launch a $5 billion infrastructure improvement fund.
That means building roads, sewers and the like to make it viable to build more new properties in different areas, particularly the outer suburbs.
Mr Tulip said this was "maybe the best policy" this election campaign, and that it's not being talked enough about.
He thinks it would be more effective than Labor's $10 billion for the construction of up to 100,000 new affordable homes.
"If you talk to developers, a lot of them will say, I could build 1,000 homes in this suburb, but Sydney Water won't connect the sewerage, or the council won't build the road," he told the Savings Tip Jar podcast.
"The government doesn't need to build new homes to increase housing supply because the private sector is busting to do it.
"You just need to remove a few fairly simple roadblocks to get out of the way and the private sector will do all the work for you."
Mr Tulip said this would likely give "much better bang for the buck" than the Government doing the construction itself, as Labor is proposing.
"Even with doing it more efficiently than normal, public housing is still going to cost you three or four hundred thousand dollars to supply an extra public housing unit," he said.
The Albanese Government says this $10 billion investment will be carried out in conjunction with state development and industry.
According to a Labor media release earlier this month, construction has already begun on 28,000 new "social and affordable" homes.
For Mr Tulip though, the Government is still likely to be too involved.
"The way they're talking about it, it sounds like the government will be doing a lot of the building... it doesn't need to do that," he said.
"You just remove the obstacles and the private sector will do it for almost no charge to the taxpayer."
Read more: Labor v the Coalition on housing
Deductions for owner occupiers 'worst of campaign'
Mr Tulip's analysis isn't all praise for the policy proposals coming from Peter Dutton's Opposition though.
He said the Coalition's plan to make the interest for some first home buyers tax deductible is "one of the worst" of the election campaign.
"The common story we hear is that buyers can make the repayments, but it's the deposit that is really difficult to get together," he explained.
"This doesn't address that, it helps on the repayments, which is not the real obstacle to home ownership.
With more money in the pocket of buyers, prices are likely to go up, so it could end up doing more harm than good to housing affordability.
"The big problem... is that it's a subsidy for demand," Mr Tulip said.
He also said it benefits higher income earners most, as they are in a higher top marginal tax bracket and can deduct more than lower income earners.
Boring policies the answer?
On the other hand, massive new subsidies for first home buyers are a lot better for snappy political messaging and generating headlines than building new sewage systems.
It's arguably an example of genuinely useful policy proposals playing second fiddle to shiny pre-election promises aiming to win over big groups of voters.
On housing, Mr Tulip believes a big problem for both Government and Opposition is selling less flashy supply side policies, like breaking infrastructure bottlenecks, to undiscerning voters.
"Supply restrictions are a little bit harder to explain to the public," he said.
"When first time buyers are told, here's $60,000, go and buy a house with it, that's immediate, and the benefit is direct and easily understood."
Picture by Social Estate on Unsplash
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