Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the First Home Saver Accounts Bill 2008 and related bills. The first home saver accounts initiative, which was announced by the Labor Party during the election and delivered in the 2008 budget by the Rudd Labor government, fulfils an important promise made to the Australian people.

This is an exciting and innovative initiative that will make a difference to many people’s lives. During 2006 and 2007, while meeting people on doorsteps, at mobile offices and at many public forums around the electorate of Petrie, the message was clear. Young adults were concerned that they will never be able to afford their own homes. Parents of young children, like me, were equally concerned about their children’s future ability to own their own homes. And many older Australians expressed deep concern about their children’s and grandchildren’s future opportunity to own their own homes.

I heard this message, as did Wayne Swan, Kevin Rudd and the entire Labor team. It was clear that more needed to be done. That is how this initiative came about—listening to the community. That is how many great ideas originate—from the local community. It is a practice that I strongly support. The benefits of community involvement and the gathering of ideas were recently evidenced when I held a 2020 schools summit in my electorate. Twenty-three schools, over 70 students and over two dozen principals, teachers and parents came together to discuss important national topics and also topics that were equally important to our local community. This forum once again reinforced the overwhelming benefit of gathering ideas from your local community. There is no doubt that it is government’s responsibility to make the hard decisions, but there is no reason why such decisions should not evolve from the ground up. That is what consultation is about—not just talking but listening to our communities. At the Petrie 2020 schools summit one of our discussion topics was housing affordability. I thank all of the students, principals, teachers, parents and chairpersons for their fantastic efforts and contributions not just to this topic but to all of the important topics that were discussed at that summit.

The First Home Saver Accounts Bill 2008 has come about through extensive consultation with the Australian community. The benefits of the bill now before the House are unequivocal. Many of us in this chamber had the benefit of buying our homes at a time when house prices were much lower and overall cost of living was much lower. Saving for a deposit for your first home has never been easy for the majority of workers. It was and is still not uncommon for couples to call upon their parents to assist with the raising of sufficient funds to cover a five per cent deposit, even when your first home may have been only $100,000.

According to the Real Estate Institute of Australia, the median house price for outer Brisbane is now $355,000, which is a 24 per cent increase in the past year. For other dwellings, such as units and flats, the median price is $276,800. These prices are as at the December quarter 2007. While these prices are good for existing homeowners, these rapid price rises make it harder than ever for aspiring first homebuyers to break into the market because they cannot save a big enough deposit in an ordinary bank account. That is why the Real Estate Institute concluded in Brisbane:

Housing affordability continues to decline

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... leaving many would-be first home buyers locked out of the market.

Focusing even more on my electorate of Petrie, which is in outer northern metropolitan Brisbane, there are 12,639 rental dwellings within the electorate, according to the census data. According to the ABS 2006 census data, the median gross weekly income for individuals within the electorate of Petrie was only $484 and for families it was $1,196. When you consider the median price of houses or other dwellings and the median gross weekly income, it is understandable that many people in my local community are facing financial pressures.

In addition to the everyday cost of living, many people saving for their first home are currently renting. According to the Real Estate Institute of Australia, for the December quarter 2007 the median rental price in Brisbane was $300 per week. Individuals and families seeking to save for a deposit for their first home are paying these rental prices on the incomes identified. This and other costs facing families and individuals create significant impediments to people raising sufficient funds to have a deposit for a first home. These figures show the immense financial pressure that people in outer northern metropolitan Brisbane are facing.

First homebuyers have been shut out of the housing market. In March 2008, across Australia, first homebuyers accounted for only 16.4 per cent of all home purchases, which is less than one in six of all home purchases. This compares to 26.1 per cent, or over a quarter, of all home purchases in July 2001. In Queensland the proportion of first homebuyers is now only 15.3 per cent. This rate has halved since August 2000, when 30.4 per cent of all home purchases were by first homebuyers.

The first home owners grant and the first home savers account will assist those most in need in our community to obtain their own home. This is despite the views we have heard today from the member for Fadden, who is praising the credentials of the member for Higgins and the previous government. This is the government that did nothing to encourage or to assist individuals to save. What they did do was provide consecutive interest rate rises and irresponsible spending. Although the member for Cowan thinks it is good to have somewhere for the kids to play and the dog to run, it is a little bit more basic than that. It is about actual home security; it is about having a roof over your head for you and your family.

My concern is also for our young adults coming out of school now and into the future. Those of us who are a little bit older remember the days when we left school. We did not have mobile phones and we did not immediately get credit cards. We had little debt for the first few years of our working lives other than maybe paying board to our parents or possibly paying rent in a shared house or unit. Times have certainly changed. Most young adults have a mobile phone before they leave school. Many are committing to phone plans at the age of 18 and credit cards are very much a part of our society now. The damaging effects of early debt that young people are accumulating are multiplied for those who progress from secondary school to further education. This is why many young adults are staying at home longer.

Only last week the Courier Mail ran a story about more and more young adults choosing to live at home. The story appeared on Tuesday, 27 May. I would like to read to the House some of the opinions of these young adults:

After living independently in Japan for nine months in 2005, Rhiannon Holland returned to Australia with little money to support herself.

Knowing she wished to pursue a university degree, Rhiannon’s parents, aware that the average price for a rental property was $220 a week, invited her to move back into the family home at Aspley.

“The advantages are not having to worry about the money expenditures,” Rhiannon said. “I haven’t come across any disadvantages, bar the occasional privacy issues. But I see this as my parents’ house, not as my own.”

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Alana Wells, 18, of Scarborough, is a full-time university student studying business and earns $292 a week as a part-time receptionist.

“My weekly income goes towards paying off my laptop for university, which is $100 a week,” she says.

“I save over $70 and the rest of the money pays for my entertainment and travel.”

According to Donna Wells, Alana’s mother, most parents don’t have a problem with their adult children living at home.

“As a parent my role is to support Alana so that she’ll have a career and a stable lifestyle,” she says. “The workforce is competitive and living at home allows Alana to save money and devote time to her studies.”

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Twenty-year-old Dean Muller moved out of his family home in Bracken Ridge to a flat in Newmarket, closer to his university, but discovered he did not have enough time to concentrate on his studies. After six months, he was back living at home. “I was working two jobs at the time and it just became too much,” he says.

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“You can save much easier living at home. Moving out was a nice awakener to reality, with bills that you’ve never heard of before, not to mention shopping for groceries, cooking your own food every night; all little things you take for granted when you live at home with your parents.”

Celia Lucas, 19, works full-time as a marketing and events coordinator and graphic designer for Sherrin Group in Brisbane and lives in Redcliffe with her parents, despite the fact she has to drive 35 minutes to work.

“I like where I live and it’s convenient,” she says. “I live right on the beach, near my friends and it’s cheaper than moving out.”

Celia earns $630 a week, $80 of which goes to her parents for board, which is a fair deal, she says.

“Mum and Dad do so much for me. Paying board is really good training because I know to allocate a specific amount of money each week.”

The article talks about four young adults, who all live in the electorate of Petrie and who also make the point that anyone who labels them as bludgers is misrepresenting them. The article talks about the benefits of young adults staying at home for longer or, in some of the cases that I have referred to, moving back home. I can certainly relate to their circumstances as I am also one of those people who, as a young adult, moved back into my parents’ home at the age of 18, because of the costs of renting on a low income. I congratulate their parents for ensuring that these young adults get the support they need, and also, as the article reflects, the parents are ensuring that these young adults are learning the life skills that they will need once they are out of the family household. I do hold concerns about how equipped our young adults are to plan and save for the future with such debt that I have referred to building up at such a young age. I am very supportive of schemes that assist people in saving. We need to teach our young adults and people saving for their first home the importance of personal responsibility. Teaching people to save teaches them to be responsible with their income, and it teaches them to be independent and self-sufficient.

The First Home Saver Account scheme not only assists people in saving for a first home but it teaches people the important life skills of budgeting and saving into the future—something that the previous government failed to assist with. This is not a skill that we should presume everyone has. Juggling financial obligations is not easy. The less money coming into the household, the harder it is to balance the competing costs; thus the importance of budgeting is heightened. The benefit of learning to save is that it will also equip these people to balance their finances better once they are in their own home. As we all know, the costs do not end when you buy your first home. There are new costs—of maintaining the home and paying rates—that previously the individuals or couples have not had to manage. The Rudd Labor government’s first home saver accounts do more than simply help people to save and teach them the importance of saving. The government itself contributes to the savings, further assisting them in achieving the aim of homeownership. This is achieved through the government providing additional assistance through a government contribution of 17 per cent on the first $5,000 of contributions for all individuals. The first home saver accounts are low-tax accounts to help young Australians realisethe dream of homeownership.

With housing affordability an issue that needs short- and long-term solutions, having these accounts offered from 1 October 2008 will allow immediate savings to be accumulating from this year. One of the key changes that the Rudd Labor government made to this scheme, since the release of the discussion paper and based on the community consultation, was to ease the criteria to open accounts. The new first home saver accounts will allow individuals to open an account without having existing savings and will allow parents to open an account for their children. In addition, parents and grandparents will be able to make contributions to their children’s and grandchildren’s accounts—with all benefits flowing to the home saver. As I said at the beginning, this initiative is exciting. It gives opportunity to those that otherwise were struggling to see a future that included them owning their own home. The Rudd Labor government, Treasurer Wayne Swan and I understand the anxiety that the uncertainty of not being able to own a home creates in young adults, parents and grandparents. This bill is a Labor bill—a bill to provide long-term benefits to people in our communities and a tangible benefit to deal with the increasing cost of living and the difficulty this places on the potential for homeownership. I have pleasure in commending this bill to the House and I look forward to encouraging many in my electorate to take up this opportunity.

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