Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The shadow minister thinks he knows more than the industry. Each time the shadow minister refers to the HomeBuilder program as not supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs in the residential construction industry, he says he knows more than the Master Builders Association or the HIA. The HIA have said that the HomeBuilder package will support the delivery of tens of thousands of new homes or renovation projects.

This shadow minister has got form. What we know will happen is that in three or four or maybe even two months time—certainly in six months time—he'll say, 'We never opposed HomeBuilder.' He'll say to the more than 20,000 people who buy their first home, a house-and-land package or an apartment, or to those people who undertake a substantial rebuild: 'No, no, we never opposed HomeBuilder. We just wanted to improve it. We never opposed giving you a $25,000 grant to purchase your first home.' We saw it with the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme. Through Kristina Keneally, the Labor Party called the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme 'socialism' and criticised it. They adopted it shortly thereafter; I note that the shadow minister has very forcefully adopted the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme, put in place by the Morrison government, and lauded what a wonderful program it is. So we know where this will end. We know that in the end the Labor Party will say: 'No, we always supported HomeBuilder. We always supported it. We just wanted to improve it.'

Let me tell members opposite what the HomeBuilder program is already doing. Rory Costelloe, from Villawood Properties, who deals predominantly in the first-home-buyer market, has said that since the HomeBuilder announcement numbers have dramatically risen to reach their highest levels since the boom days of 2017. They've gone from single-digit weekly sales in March, and they have increased exponentially since the announcement.

Now, at the end of the day, what do new-home sales for those builders mean?

Yes, of course, it means that there's a very happy young couple, possibly, or single person who's purchasing their first home, or a family who might be upgrading from their unit or townhouse to that family home, with the assistance of the Morrison government's HomeBuilder program. Yes, there'll be those good stories. But every single one of those sales that Villawood Properties refers to—or Oliver Hume, as I referred to earlier, or Simonds Properties—means jobs in the residential construction industry.

The Labor Party are no longer the party for those people who work in residential construction. They've got no idea about the lives they lead and they've got no idea about the pipeline of work that they need to sustain them. As I make the point each and every time I rise in this chamber, the hundreds of thousands of jobs are not just the jobs that we think about when you're pouring a slab or when the carpenter's putting up the frame or the bricklayer is laying the bricks, or the sparkies or plumbers or the roofers come on site. There is an entire ecosystem that the HomeBuilder program will support. Graham Wolf from the HIA said, 'The HomeBuilder Program will unlock up to $15 billion of activity in the residential construction industry'—$15 billion, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs in the industry. A great benefit will be that there will be more than 20,000 people who get to purchase a brand-new home, and the majority of those will be first home buyers realising that dream of getting a property of their own for the first time in their lives. We estimate there will be another 7,000—but it's a demand-driven program—who will undertake a substantial rebuild.

Let me address a couple of the points that were pretty woefully made by the shadow minister but I think were highlighted by the PM in question time. HomeBuilder, much to the chagrin of the Labor Party, is not intended to be pink batts 2.0. It is not pink batts 2.0, where 'Dodgy Brothers' are going door to door and getting vulnerable people to sign up for a new flat-pack kitchen or bathroom. That's what the Labor Party are suggesting every time they criticise this policy. This is for substantial projects that employ Australians—multiple trades. This is not for projects that arrive in a flat-pack box from IKEA and that were manufactured in another country and don't create any jobs in this country. Is that the program that the Labor Party think supports residential construction jobs in Australia? It shows they haven't learnt their lesson. They haven't learnt the lesson from pink batts. The shadow minister should have learnt his lesson—many of the members opposite weren't here then, so I don't blame them. But the shadow minister was a member of that government, and he should know better.

This policy provides a $25,000 grant for new home buyers, a $25,000 grant for substantial rebuilds. It's a program that will work seamlessly with state and territory based programs. I'm very pleased to report to the House, for those that don't already know, that the Western Australian Labor government have strongly backed in the HomeBuilder program and put in place their own $20,000 grant for new homes—not just for first home buyers but for new homes—to mirror, to a large degree, the federal government's HomeBuilder program. A new home purchaser, potentially a first home buyer in Western Australia, will be able to add all of those grants together to assist them to get into a first home. The Tasmanian state government has added a $20,000 new home buyer grant similarly, days after our announcement, to do the same thing. Again, we see governments at a federal and state level working in concert to support an extraordinarily important industry for this country. The workers in that industry have already benefited, to a large degree, from the JobKeeper program—120,000 registrations through JobKeeper have been from the construction industry. But, again, the one area that the shadow minister and I can agree on is that there is a cliff. There is a cliff face as the pipeline of work ends. Residential sales almost fell off a cliff in March—there were almost no sales. And that pipeline of work will hit in the second half of this year.

That is why another important part of the HomeBuilder program is to ensure that it's time-limited and that it brings forward that demand to when the shortfall in work is going to occur: in the second half of this year. We have seen so much evidence that the urgency that that has created means that it has been the catalyst for first home buyers, like the ones I referred to in question time, to say: 'You know what? Let's do it now. We've been trying to save that deposit. This is going to, firstly, help us with our serviceability. It's going to bring down the total amount that we have to put towards a home. Let's do it now. Let's do it before 31 December while this program is in place.'

Again, I fully suspect that the shadow minister and members opposite in a few months time will be furiously supporting this policy, just as they now furiously support the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme. As I said, HomeBuilder works with not just state based programs but other Morrison government initiatives. The First Home Loan Deposit Scheme allows eligible first home buyers to purchase a home with a deposit of as little as five per cent. It has been extraordinarily popular. As I said, Senator Kristina Keneally referred to it as 'socialism' when it was first announced, and now the shadow minister enthusiastically supports the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme.

Well, what I am excited about is: on 1 July, when another 10,000 places under the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme become available, we will see first home buyers who utilise the Morrison government First Home Loan Deposit Scheme so that they only require a deposit of five per cent also getting a HomeBuilder grant because they purchase a new home—a house and land package or a new apartment. Those people will be utilising the full spectrum of support that the Morrison government has put in place to get people into a home, because, in the end, the coalition's parties are the parties of home ownership. The coalition's parties are the parties who support the residential construction industry, who support our tradies and who support the timber mill workers who supply the frames and the trusses. And I look forward to the shadow minister coming in here with his tail between his legs in some months time saying, 'Oh, yes, we always supported the HomeBuilder program.' (Time expired)

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