Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Secure and affordable housing is fundamental to the wellbeing of Australians. Homeownership continues to be a widely held aspiration in Australia, as it affords owners with security of housing tenure and long-term social and economic benefits. Now, while the government has lots of impressive-sounding headlines, the reality is that little is actually being done.

Let's start with Labor's Housing Australia Future Fund, which will be capitalised with $10 billion of additional Commonwealth government borrowing and conveniently categorised as off-budget spending. With the 10-year government bond rate approaching four per cent and rising, the $10 billion borrowing will cost the Commonwealth approximately $400 million per year in interest servicing costs on this debt. And this increased borrowing will add to the already severe inflationary pressures in the economy, leading to higher interest rates—exactly what we don't need right now. To make it even worse, not one dollar of the $10 billion in new debt will be spent on housing. It is essentially a bet on the stock market.

Despite the rhetoric of those opposite, the coalition had the highly successful Home Guarantee Scheme, which it established in 2020, and the former coalition government's Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee. These guarantees were limited to the build or purchase of new homes. This increased the supply of housing into new areas, along with encouraging new home buyers into the regions. Labor's policy applies to all homes, including existing dwellings, which will simply put more pressure on regional housing markets that already don't have enough supply. All this will do is pile on more demand for housing in the regions. Without increasing housing supply in regional areas, the government's scheme fails to reduce housing affordability pressures.

The Treasurer and the minister announced with great fanfare the Housing Accord last year. While this sounds impressive and has got their big standard numbers to deliver, the interesting part is always about the details. We all know superannuation funds have the responsibility to deliver value for money on investments in their members' best interests. This leads to the real question that the government hasn't answered and won't answer: in a time of rising inflation, a time when the costs of building houses are going up every day, how does it make financial sense for a superannuation fund to invest in housing that by definition will deliver a low return? So the capital has to go into the low-cost housing. There's no way they can meet their obligation with rising costs and a low return on that capital. Again, this is another impressive-sounding headline from this government that doesn't stack up when you look at the detail and that won't deliver for Australians.

The coalition had a strong record, with support for homeownership along with funding for social and affordable housing. We supported more than 21,000 social and affordable homes through the establishment of the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation. This was a landmark coalition achievement, and, since its creation, it has delivered $2.9 billion in low-cost loans to community housing providers to support 15,000 social and affordable dwellings, saving $470 million in interest payments to be reinvested in affordable housing. We also unlocked 6,900 social and affordable and market dwellings through the coalition's $1 billion infrastructure facility to make housing supply more responsive to demand.

We supported more than 60,000 first home buyers and single-parent families into homeownership through the Home Guarantee Scheme with a deposit of as little as five per cent and two per cent, respectively. Of these 60,000 guarantees issued, 52 per cent were taken up by women—well above the market average of 41 per cent of women entering into homeownership. One in five guarantees went to essential workers, almost 35 per cent of which were nurses and 34 per cent of which were teachers. Eighty-five per cent of the family home guarantees were used by single mums.

These are real results that have made a difference to thousands of people. From what I can see, the Labor government is congratulating itself for setting up more bureaucracy to advise on more plans, more advisory councils and more accords without actually delivering more houses for those who need them.

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