Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for that bit of advice. He is one of those who shunted someone else out—and that makes for two of them in the room. The fact is that I did not refer to him as anybody. I said, ‘I don’t know his seat.’ I did not call him ‘Bill Smith’. The point of order was frivolous. I was saying that the member over there, whose seat I cannot name, was shaking his head when I said that if you live in Sydney or Melbourne and you have a mortgage then you are not rich on a gross family income of $150,000—particularly when you look at the tax rates that are applicable at those higher levels. I make that point as an example of how difficult it is for people to acquire homes.

There are no practical responses to addressing the cost of the building block for a new house. We all know that the cost of a finished new home package flows through to those houses previously constructed. Unless governments are prepared to find alternative means, I put it to this House that providing people with leases that can be converted to freehold as their financial circumstances improve is a sensible proposition and not one warranting an interruption to my speech. I think it is a very positive idea that people should think about because it removes what has become the most expensive part of the process. If state governments went back to their responsibility for providing services and not trying to be paid in advance by 50 years for some of them then in fact this particular proposal would have some meaning. I point out that an aggregate amount as mentioned by the member for Deakin would be half what the state government rips out in the development of a building block.

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