Oh, there’s a surprise. The massive hit to Victoria’s budget that was Baillieu’s stamp duty cut has, exactly as we predicted, utterly failed to make life any easier for first home buyers:
Duty cut fails to help first home buyers
…The number of first-time buyers entering the market has fallen to its lowest level in seven years despite the 20 per cent discount becoming available about five months ago.
New figures also show the savings on offer – amounting to $5800 on a house at the median price of $565,000 – have been cancelled out by price rises in the city’s more affordable areas over the past year.
And there were some people who didn’t grasp how a stamp duty cut could result in housing being less affordable?
But don’t let its utter failure to help housing affordability stop Baillieu from throwing more money at it:
Slashing stamp duty for first home buyers is one of the cornerstones of the Baillieu government’s plans to improve housing affordability, with the cut set to increase from 20 per cent to 50 per cent by 2014.
So that’s even more money from schools and hospitals to make property developers and real estate agents rich and push housing even further out of the reach of young Victorians.
Well done, people who voted for a Baillieu government.
Moved On 
In fairness, I think you’ll find that first home buyers and holding off due to the falling market – there are likely many that only entered due to the stamp duty cuts.
If at first you don’t succeed, do the same thing again, it might work next time.
these cuts are baffling. anyone would think Baillieu had a $463 million property trust or something.