With his performance, at best, lacklustre, the NSW Coalition leader Mark Speakman (who leads the Opposition and needs some good policies and fast) has come up with a good policy to kill stamp duty for older Australians in big houses. Many of these, who’d like to downsize but the stamp duty on buying something new makes the deal prohibitive, would cheer Speakman’s “happy hour for empty nesters” policy.

This is seen as a policy to win over older voters, while making younger voters like the potential greater supply of houses being put on the market when downsizers sell their big homes.

Of course, let’s get real here. This only helps a small part of the housing crisis that actually needs more affordable homes in areas where people want to live. However, the idea is a good start.

The policy is only for empty nester downsizers, which has extra appeal because the Federal Government’s super rules make it possible for someone who is 55 or over, and who has owned a home for 10 years or more, to put $300,000 into their super with no strings attached.

While many older Australians would love to bolster their super and move to a smaller more manageable home, after selling and paying real estate fees and then stamp duty on the new buy, they find they aren’t much better off. Some can barely make any new contribution to super, let alone the $300,000 a single person could make, or the $600,000 a couple could bump up their super by.

Stamp duty on a $2 million home is $87,000 in NSW. Agents fees could be anywhere between $20,000 and even as high as $80,000, depending on the area, the agent and the consumer savviness of the seller!

Recently, The Daily Telegraph reported that the “Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock labelled stamp duty a barrier to downsizing and economic ‘dynamism’.”

OK, let’s hail this as a good idea that other state governments should consider, but the big question is: How do cash-strapped, deeply indebted state governments pay for this?

Well, that raises the red flags and the alarm bells, because when Speakman’s former Premier Dominic Perrottet talked about killing stamp duty for all first homebuyers, he bankrolled it by, wait for it, a land tax on these new players in the property market.

While Perrottet lost the election for other reasons, I suggest the very mentioning of land taxes on principal property owners is like a crucifix to a vampire for voters.

And it gets scarier when you realise my economist buddies argue that a land tax on all property owners would help kill stamp duty for all buyers and help fix the housing supply problem.

The Telegraph looked at what former ANZ chief economist Saul Eslake argues when it comes to killing stamp duty. He argues that stamp duty exemptions, say on first homebuyers, will simply push up prices. “A better option … is to get rid of stamp duty altogether and replace it with a more broadly based land tax that in particular includes the so-called family home.”

This is the problem. If you really want a solution to our housing crisis, you need to look at the overall economics that always asks: How do you pay for it?

Saying goodbye to stamp duty can mean saying hello to land tax on all homeowners, which is a hard sell to voters.

The Telegraph found another economist, Chris Richardson of Rich Insight, who said stamp duty “holds a big red stop sign in front of people who want to move”. And he added that replacing stamp duty with a smaller land tax was “one of the smarter and simpler things that we can do” to help housing affordability.

While this is all true, try selling this land tax idea to the voters of Australia who own properties, which is about 66% of all households. That’s a lot of votes!