In 2015 Joe Hockey told people that if they wanted to own a house the first thing they needed to do was “get a good job that pays good money“. New research by The Australia Institute has shown just how out of touch that statement was then, and how even worse it remains now.

We looked at the median salary of a range of occupations from surgeon to principal, electrician down to the low-paying checkout operator to test Joe Hockey’s claim that they would be able to save for 20% of the median established house in Sydney. We estimated them saving 15% of their after tax income and also earning the average interest on those savings.

The result is that no one – not even surgeons would have been able to save 20% of a deposit in the past 10 years. Even worse, most occupations would actually be further away from the goal.

In June 2015 the target deposit was $159,925 representing 20% of the median house price in Sydney of $799,625. By December last year they would have saved $96,069 and yet because the price of houses has risen so fast, they would now be $187,871 short of the goal of a $283,940 deposit on the median house price of $1.4m.

This was not the case in earlier times. In the 1980s, someone on median male full-time earnings would have been able to save for a median-sized deposit in Sydney in well under 10 years.

But we know that many people save for a deposit as a couple, so we investigated how couple of various occupations would be doing.

Shockingly even a couple of a school principal and a teacher, or an accountant and a nurse, or an electrician and a bank worker and many other couples would be still waiting to afford a deposit a decade after starting to save.

The crisis of housing affordability did not just start in the past few years – it has been an issue for more than a decade now. The old lines and advice about saving and working hard and cutting back on luxuries no longer make sense – if even a surgeon cannot save for a hose in Sydney, then what hope does anyone?

This research just shows how urgent is the need for significant changes to housing policy – the need to end taxation breaks for investors that have set fire to the house prices and for the government to increase the number of public-sector housing construction to supply low-priced housing and more rental properties.