Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We're in the eighth year of this government, that's a fact they don't actually like to talk about. They like to pretend the Prime Minister's all shiny and new and forget that bloke called Malcolm Turnbull and that bloke called Tony Abbott. How many treasurers? You'd need fingers and toes to remember how many defence ministers and Muppets have been through other portfolios. But it would be stiff competition you'd have to say to pick one of the greatest failures, the greatest matters of neglect, in this eighth year of this failing government.

I want to make a few remarks on the scandal of ever rising house prices and worsening house affordability in this country. It's a tricky thing to talk about, to call out the problem that is rising house prices. The fact is many Australians own homes and people quite like their house prices going up, especially people with more than one house. Of course, like most Australians, if you only own one house generally it doesn't matter. You buy and sell in the same market. A bit more equity can help you leverage and get another house. But it's really only the people with multiple properties who love this bonanza of rising house prices, because no society should ever want to see prices rise as fast as they are in this country while wages flatline. The fact is wage growth has not kept up with the cost of housing and the goal of many Australians to own their own home is increasingly unattainable. Shockingly, a fact the government doesn't like to talk about—I've never heard them talking about it—Australia is now the third most unaffordable housing market in the OECD. Amongst all the developed nations we're the third most unaffordable housing market. This is the Liberal's record of failure. When you take away the spin, the marketing, the announcements and the crocodile tears—whatever other distraction and stunt they'll come up with today—it's a record of failure.

We've had record low wage growth in this country. Real wages under this government fell in real terms between 2013 and 2019. We're the third last place in the OECD for wage growth. Out of 35 developed nations we're the third lowest wage growth and the third highest house prices—the most unaffordable housing market. We've seen the market take off again. We had a brief pause last year with COVID but off they go, two per cent a month in Melbourne and Sydney. This is a crisis. This is a problem. This is not something to get up and go, 'The economy is going gangbusters. Look, house prices are going up.' This is a problem for our society. Housing markets—it's a longer speech, you know, demand and supply. It's not rocket science. The government has nothing to say on supply. I get that a lot of those levers sit with the states and territories but that's why you need a partnership and why you need nationally coordinated policy. You also need to invest in social housing.

There's a trillion dollars of debt under this mob—these great economic geniuses over there, these great economic managers. There was $100 billion in new spending in your last budget and nothing on social housing, nothing to show for it. Commonwealth land—a lot of talk. They keep re-announcing the same things, to develop the same pieces of land—nothing. No land released. Nothing but pork-barrelling in marginal seats for their so-called cities program, nothing to really deal with housing affordability.

On the demand side some days you wish they'd do nothing, because I think the prize for the dumbest proposal, the gold medal for policy stupidity, goes to the idea of letting people withdraw superannuation to buy houses. It's a triple whammy. It would be hard to think of any policy that is so profoundly bad. Not only would it trash people's retirement savings; it would push up house prices—pour petrol on the fire that is now raging in the housing market in capital cities. It would also transfer enormous amounts of wealth from the younger generation to the older generation, because the only people who are going to benefit from this dumb idea are people who are selling houses, particularly those who own multiple properties.

To be very clear, Labor thinks superannuation is good and home ownership is good—and you don't have to choose between the two. Labor's out there every day, every year, trying to protect the superannuation system that provides for the long-term dignity and retirement of working Australians. It used to be the province of the elite—the very top few, in banking, the top of the Public Service, the military and whatever, who got super. But we extended it to everyday working Australians. The Liberals are out there trying to destroy it. But the great lie of this policy is that it's not about first-home buyers. The only people who benefit are the vendors. Say there are two young couples bidding in an auction. Let's say they withdrew $30,000 each from their superannuation account. These two young couples turn up to the auction, and all they do is bid up the cost of the housing by that 30 grand. You might as well get a vacuum cleaner and stick it in your superannuation account and suck all the cash out into the pocket of the person selling the house—it's usually a guy, but whoever it is. All this policy does is get your superannuation balance drained into the pocket of the house seller.

The latest modelling that I've seen from Industry Superannuation Australia—independent modelling, with the assumptions all out there; the government decries it, because they don't like the answers—shows that if we saw this policy adopted, if the government was loony enough to adopt this idea from their nutty backbenchers who are trying to get their names in the paper, there would be an eight to 16 per cent increase in the median house prices in the five biggest capital cities. Joe Hockey even floated this idea back in 2015 but within a couple of days had ruled it out as a very dumb idea, as Mathias Cormann told him, as the Grattan Institute told him and as leading economists like Saul Eslake told him.

And the facts haven't changed, but it's come back, because of attention-seeking Liberal backbenchers like the member for Goldstein. He's got a great advantage over most of us in this place, you must admit. It's not his great intellect. It's not his extraverted nature—a few of us have that. It's certainly not his judgement. It's not his respect for parliament, after he was found misusing parliamentary committees last term. It's that he has no shame. He has no shame in prosecuting any idea that will get him in the newspaper. But he's pushing a stupid idea, desperately hoping someone will make him a minister—there might be some vacancies soon. But the great nonsense, the untruth, is the lie that super would make it easier to get a home. I do accept that he's interested in increasing home ownership. But the Liberal MPs who are pushing this idea should be honest. The only people who benefit are homeowners. He and his husband between them own five properties; it's on his parliamentary declaration. He'd stand to benefit from this policy, but first-home buyers would not.

You don't make housing more affordable by making it more expensive. It is a ridiculous policy to pour more cash into people's pockets as house prices are already rising—petrol on the fire. It's also bad for taxpayers. The early withdrawal would see billions more dollars spent on the pension. To his credit, the Treasurer said no to the request by the member for Goldstein for an inquiry. But he needs to go the whole hog and rule this out—rule it out now and go and find a real answer to housing affordability, not fake promises to young people. (Time expired)

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