Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Republic) Share this | Hansard source

We are supporting this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 3) Bill 2021. It contains five Treasury measures, including two measures from the 2021-22 budget. Schedule 1 implements changes that increase various thresholds relating to the Medicare levy. This is the most significant component of the bill, and it is expected to have a negative impact of $250 million on the cash balance over the forward estimates. The Medicare levy low-income threshold, beyond which the Medicare levy is not required to be paid, is currently $22,801 for individuals. That will increase to $23,226 following the passage of this bill. Consequently, a number of other thresholds will change for families, for individuals subject to seniors and tax pension offsets, and for dependent children and students.

The measure of this bill will be that it reduces tax earnings from the Medicare levy by around $50 million a year. In that respect, I say to the government: how are you going to replace that vitally important funding that goes to funding health care in Australia, particularly in our hospital system? At the moment, in many states of the country, the hospital system is under enormous pressure. In recent times I've spoken to nurses that work at the Prince of Wales Hospital, in the electorate that I represent, and they've been telling me how overworked and underpaid and under pressure they are. Nurses that are leaving the profession are simply not being replaced because of budget constraints put on them by the New South Wales Liberal government. We're seeing stories that have been exposed in newspaper investigations about the health system in New South Wales—in particular, of people dying in regional hospitals from infections because there were no doctors on duty at the time and the basic checks weren't done. Hospital waiting lists for elective surgery are blowing out once again, and Australians are facing the prospect of having to deal and live with unacceptable levels of pain.

We all know that, when Liberal governments are in office, they don't spend the requisite amount to run the health system properly. That's why you get these cutbacks in our hospital system through funding and budget constraints which result in these tragedies. So my question to the government is about this particular element of the bill: how are you going to replace the funding of that $50 million a year for Medicare?

Schedule 2 implements the Family Home Guarantee measure from the 2021-22 budget. This measure creates for single parents with dependants 10,000 new places in the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation's First Home Loan Deposit Scheme. The measure will allow single parents with a household income of less than $125,000 to purchase a home or build a new home with a deposit of only two per cent, subject to the individuals to service the home loan. While housing advocates have welcomed this change, they have indicated that benefit will only really flow to single parents who are earning between $80,000 and $125,000 a year. This measure leaves many of those who are less well off out of the system. It will apply to first home buyers and those single parents re-entering the market after a family breakdown.

My question for the government is about housing being out of control in Australia. Not a week goes by where someone doesn't approach me in the street and ask the question, 'How are our kids going to be able to afford to buy a home in the future?' House prices are out of control. Housing is at one of its most unaffordable levels that it's been in Australian history. Real estate agents that I'm consulting with on a regular basis tell me they're seeing an unprecedented growth in prices. Already this year we've seen an eight per cent increase nationally on house prices. Australia's household debt-to-income ratio is one of the highest in the OECD. The household debt-to-income ratio is at 200 per cent. The evidence with schemes like this—with first home loan deposit schemes that have been implemented by this government where people can put money into their superannuation for a deposit; in New South Wales, we have the First Home Owner Grant, which provides support for people to buy their first home—is that they don't help with affordability. In fact, unfortunately, they do the opposite; they increase prices. It's like pouring fuel on a fire. The real estate agents that I speak to say that every time one of these programs is introduced, you can bet your life that over the next six to 12 months prices are going to go up. It makes it simply more unaffordable for Australians to buy a home. And what's that leading to? That's leading to unsustainable rates of unaffordability of the most important thing that we can give every Australian—that is, a roof over their head.

There are unsustainable levels of housing unaffordability throughout the country, and that's leading to homelessness and an increasing prevalence of rough sleeping. The Daily Telegraph published a startling statistic in a recent article—that one in 10 people who are rough sleeping in Sydney is a veteran that served this country. It's also been highlighted that 10,000 women are turned away from homeless shelters in Australia every year, because those shelters simply can't cope.

Is that how we are treating our veterans and how we are treating our homeless in this country—when we can't afford to put a roof over their heads because housing has become so unaffordable? Yet we still continue to generate these schemes that simply push up house prices beyond the reach of the average Australian worker and the average Australian family and certainly way beyond the reach, both in rental terms and in buying terms, of people who may be sick or injured at work who are receiving JobSeeker or a veteran who's got a mental health issue. It's out of the question for them. We're not providing the support that Australians need to make housing more affordable.

That is why Labor is targeting this issue. That is why our leader, the member for Grayndler, emphasised in the budget reply speech last week the announcement of a Housing Australia Future Fund to increase the supply of affordable housing in this country for people who need it the most, including those veterans that I spoke of, women leaving domestic violence situations and people who have fallen on hard times and have lost their jobs—and there are plenty of those in the wake of COVID—putting a roof over their head and providing the necessary government support to ensure that all Australians can live in dignity. That is what we need to do as a country. If we're going to have a budget deficit of $150 billion and debt of $1 trillion, we'd better make sure that we spend it on the right things. To date, this government has done nothing to ensure that there is government support for affordable housing in this country for Australians who need it. Their solution is to come up with these schemes that just push up house prices and make it more and more unaffordable for Australians—and that's a great shame.

The other element we need to look at is dispersing the population out of capital cities and into regional centres. To do that, you need proper infrastructure and public transport links. It's beyond me why we can't work together in this place and come up with a workable plan for high-speed rail, particularly up and down the east coast of Australia, where we are providing opportunities for people to move out of cities, to base themselves in rural and regional areas up and down the coast and inland, particularly on the way to Canberra and on the way to regional centres, yet have access to high-speed rail that gets them to their place of work within 20 or 30 minutes, as it should do, instead of having to drive for a couple of hours or, even worse, try and get a train that takes three hours. A modern country like Australia should be able to come up with a plan to deliver this for our citizens. But we haven't been able to, and that's a great indictment on us as a parliament and governments of all types. We need to come up with a plan for high-speed rail to disperse that population so that we are taking pressure off, in particular, our capital cities and off house prices and we are opening up more supply in rural and regional areas.

In conclusion, I want to again highlight the fact that we need to do more around affordable housing. It's a great indictment on Australia at the moment that there are too many people that are sleeping rough, that can't afford the rent and simply can't afford to buy. Many parents say to me every week when I walk down the street in my electorate, 'How on earth are our kids going to be able to afford to buy a home?' That is the question that the government have failed Australians on over numerous occasions when they have had the opportunity to use the funds in the budget to build more affordable housing. If there is one thing that comes out of this bill and out of these measures that have been put in place by successive governments to support people to get a deposit to buy a home, it should be that we need to look at and study whether or not these schemes are actually making things worse for Australians by pushing up demand and therefore pushing up prices, particularly in capital cities.

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