Peter Van Onselen: The one issue that will shape the next election - and why ... trends now

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The housing crisis will be front and centre at the next election, and both major parties are clamouring over themselves to present 'solutions' to the problems Australians are facing. 

One very senior Labor strategist told me that housing will be the policy debate that wins or loses the election - that is how important they think the issue is shaping up to be.

But the problems Australians face vary widely depending on their personal circumstances.

If you own your home, you're worried about interest rates and inflation. The former making your mortgage repayments harder to make, the latter putting more pressure on the cost of living.

Then there are concerns that the economy might slow, putting downward pressure on house prices. This could see hundreds of thousands of Australians owning a mortgage which costs more than their property is worth.

Naturally, many Australians are also worried about keeping their jobs to be able to continue paying for everything.

If you rent, a number of these factors are impacting you too, with higher interest rates forcing investment property owners to put rents up to satisfy their own self-interests. 

Of course people who rent are also struggling with cost-of-living pressures. But the situation is even worse for many renters than it is for property owners due to the lack of available housing stock to service demand. 

This situation is made worse by sky-high immigration, at rates now well above the natural average in decades gone by. And Australia has long been a high immigration nation.