Fifty years ago, the Whitlam Government was swept from power, leaving a policy legacy unmatched by any administration, before or since.

“The Platform” — as it was known — envisaged a fairer more equal Australia.

In the years since, successive governments have progressively introduced most of Whitlam’s key policies, or something akin thereto.

Decentralisation is the glaring omission. Whitlam foresaw the problems we now face as a consequence of the unabated growth in our capital cities.

The internet has finally made decentralisation viable. And, with it, provided a solution to one of our most pressing domestic political issues – housing affordability.

To understand the genesis of the current housing crisis we need to think back a few hundred years to the Industrial Revolution.

When factories began to spring up — initially in rural England — the “owners of the means of production” required a ready supply of reliable workers.

Most people lived on small subsistence farms scattered across the countryside. The motor car was yet to arrive. So “commuting” to work took time – on foot or horseback.

In response, factory owners started building rows of terrace houses which they rented to their employees. Problem solved.

Fast forward to the tertiary revolution, where paper transactions made it necessary to create “central business districts”. Back then we didn’t even have fax machines (Google if you are unfamiliar!)

The design of modern cities, based on a centralised white-collar workforce living in suburbs radiating further and further out, has created a problem for which there is, thankfully, a relatively simple solution.

As houses near the CBD have become premium real estate, they have increasingly been priced beyond the means of most workers.

Let’s not keep making the mistakes that led us to the current crisis.

Stop cramming 80% of the population into a handful of already overcrowded capital cities.

It’s an economics 101 supply and demand issue. The biggest single element in the price of a house is the “unimproved land value”. The more congested the city, the higher the value of the plot of land on which we build new homes.

There are around 350 million Americans and they live in 300+ towns and cities. Only a handful are anywhere near the size of our capital cities.

That’s why a comparable house in most parts of the US costs around half to a third of our city prices.

We need to encourage businesses to move jobs to regional centres where pretty much everything, not just housing, is more affordable.

According to the Regional Australia Institute, “Regions can offer people a lifestyle and quality of life that is beyond the reach of most in the city. In turn, the communities that people return to, and become part of, benefit from new skills and resources that can be vital to their future”.

Decentralisation is happening, whether we are ready or not. There’s currently an ongoing net outflow to regional areas. This exodus is being led by millennials who are coupling up and having children. They clearly don’t fancy bringing them up in an apartment, which is apparently the only thinking in government circles right now.

We are creating a future where, increasingly, only people with high-paying jobs or rich parents will be able to afford a house with a backyard. And, as the cost of apartments continues to rise, as it will, a higher proportion of our population will be condemned to a lifetime of renting.

Without some innovative thinking, the disparity between those with wealth and those without will keep growing – regardless of age.

So, enough of the “intergenerational theft” posturing, please! We need solutions, not more handwringing. Bashing Boomers and discouraging optimism in our emerging generations is unhelpful and counterproductive.

Australia ranks around 14th globally in “average nominal GDP” – meaning we are one of the world’s richest countries.

We need to find solutions to the disproportionate distribution of wealth and its obvious relationship to the cost of housing.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.