Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation and I refer to the minister’s previous answer. I refer the minister to his previous comments on the ABC, when he said in relation to the first home owners grant:

… simply throwing subsidies at people, like increasing the first home owners grant, would tend to feed straight into prices and be counter productive.

I also refer to similar comments of the Minister for Housing on Meet the Press:

We don’t want to start handing out more lump sums because in the past that has had an inflationary effect and we don’t want to make the patient worse with the medicine we give.

…            …            …

… very soon after the first home owners grant was introduced, within a couple of years, house prices had in fact doubled. So, I guess you could argue that it wasn’t much use at all …

Does the Minister for Finance and Deregulation still believe that increasing the first home owners grant would be counterproductive and feed straight into higher house prices?

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