David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Incentivising Pensioners to Downsize) Bill 2022 is a good bill. I have many seniors in my area of the country, the beautiful Lyne electorate. In fact, we have double the average number of Australians aged over 65. The last time I looked at the Department of Social Services figures, I saw that I have over 31,000 people receiving the age pension, let alone those on veterans pensions, single mothers on parenting payments, and other people on government assistance.

We have the phenomenon of really major housing shortages in regional Australia since COVID came along, because people in metropolitan Australia started buying up country houses which were historically long-term rentals to turn them into Airbnbs, short-term rentals, and so that they could have the ability to escape lockdowns. Subsequently, many more metropolitan people have discovered the joys of living in country Australia, so a lot of the rental market has dried up for long-term renters.

This bill amends the Social Security Act and the Veterans' Entitlements Act so that, when people sell their primary residence, their own home, to downsize to a smaller unit or a smaller house, they have two years of exemption before they purchase their next primary residence, as opposed to the current situation where they will only get that leave pass for one year. Those existing arrangements mean that, in the current housing market, you really have to be very efficient and know what house you are going to buy pretty much before you sell your own home. With the housing shortages and the rampant, runaway market over the last two to three years, that has proved problematic. With a 24-month window, there will be many more people that will take up the idea of downsizing. That means that bigger houses and bigger apartments that are available for young people will come on the market as a result, with potentially even more coming on the long-term rental market if investors buy properties to let them out—rental properties.

This bill also applies only the lower below-threshold deeming rate to these asset-test-exempt principal home sale proceeds when calculating deemed income. At the moment, with deeming-rate limits $56½ thousand for singles and $93,600 for couples combined, it will be a significant change. The 24 months mean that, while they are trying to find a house, they will get some reasonable income assistance—because they will have to rent somewhere in the meantime, with rents ridiculously expensive.

This bill receives our support because it was our policy, and I compliment the members of the new government on taking up good policy. We're never going to obstruct good policy. But it's copycatting; you've got to admit that. I think I should just give you a quick summary of all the other good things we did in the housing market to help people get into their first home. Property prices are very hard for first home buyers. Whether you're in a metropolitan or rural setting, house prices have gone up incredibly over the last three to four years, and some of them in my area have gone up 30 or 40 per cent. But there are corrections happening in the marketplace as interest rates rise.

In the 2017-18 budget, we announced that people over 65 could make a non-concessional contribution of $300,000—from the proceeds of selling their home—into superannuation. We introduced further changes this year, in the last budget, to lower this to people over 60, rather than the 65 age limit. A lot of people took that up and created a healthy buffer in their super fund to see them through their senior years. There were 36,800 people who took up that idea, and $8.9 billion has gone into super. In the last budget, we proposed that the reduction that we had made to 60 would come down to 55 to encourage what is good behaviour for freeing up housing. We hope that that will increase the number of people downsizing so that young families have more houses to choose from.

The other thing that we did on a macro scale during our time in government was to set up the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, and that has allowed cheap government loans to community and social housing providers to build many more community and social housing units. There are thousands of people who have moved out of long-term rental into community housing because it's generally available at a cheaper price than the open market. The other thing that we have done is initiated the super saver scheme. We increased the potential size of it in the last term of government so that it allowed people to put 40 per cent of their superannuation up to a maximum of $50,000 to help with either the deposit or the purchase of their first home. Australians, when they eventually sell that home, obviously have to put that money—and pro rata it—back into their super fund, but they avoid paying interest and it means they get their deposit a lot sooner. That has been a great initiative.

We also, as I said, allowed people, at the age of 55, to put $300,000 per person into their super fund on the sale of their first house. We also had the home loan deposit scheme and the new home and family home guarantees so that people could borrow to buy their first home with only five per cent of the deposit. Generally a 20 per cent deposit is required by most lenders, but this scheme allows them to get an insurance policy to guarantee the missing percentage. Thirty thousand or more people got into their first home as a result of that. They're out of the long-term rent trap. The most important thing is that this has helped many single-parent families buy their first home, and we have found that single parents are the most resilient first home buyers. Because they have finally got their own home, they are very dependable repayers of their mortgage. It also means that, in the long term, they can become much more secure, because having your own home in your senior years is a great asset.

The amount of money that was put aside for this low-cost financing of social and affordable dwellings started off at $2 billion, but, by the time we left government, it had risen to $5½ billion, and that supported 27½ thousand dwellings. So there have been a lot of initiatives introduced, but this particular bill will make it a lot easier for many seniors to make the decision to downsize, cash in the value of their home, put the money into their super and have a smaller amount of capital tied up in their primary place of residence. It will help the housing shortage. It will help people get into rentals, as some of these downsized houses will go into the rental market. It will allow young families who are upgrading to bigger homes to get into the market.

The big issue with the housing shortage is that the supply of homes and land hasn't matched the population growth. Noting that a lot of our temporary residents and overseas migrants have had the right to buy homes here, for as long as I have been involved in politics, we have had a negative balance in new homes. But we certainly had a first home building and buyers boom during the terms of the Morrison, Turnbull and Abbott governments because we on this side of the House believe that the best form of assistance is for people to be in a job and to own their own home. To not be paying off a mortgage all their life, the sooner they can get into that home the better.

I commend this bill to the House and I'm sure others will support it as well.

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