James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 2) Bill 2023, which obviously has a number of elements. The previous speaker gave a general contribution on Medicare, and indeed my understanding from the second reading speech of the minister is that the relevant Medicare provision in this TLAB is an increase of 3.9 per cent to the low-income threshold for single, families, seniors et cetera, which is effectively achieving a CPI increase on that threshold, which is good and which we support. Of course, CPI is running at twice the rate of wages growth right now, so, unfortunately for those low-income earners, the threshold is going up by CPI but their incomes are growing at half the rate of CPI, which means low-income earners are going backwards in real terms. This will help more people avoid the Medicare levy, but it doesn't help them meet the costs of putting food on the table, filling up car with a tank of petrol or paying the electricity bills they receive, their ever-spiralling rents and so on and so forth. We are in a very difficult time for the cost of living for low-income earners in particular, and under this government we are seeing a dramatic erosion of income and wealth for the Australians doing it the toughest. The government in this bill are increasing by CPI the threshold for the Medicare levy to be put in place, but we regret that there's not an opportunity for us to support a lot of other things that could be helping people who are struggling with a whole range of cost-of-living pressures, not just saving those that are currently paying the Medicare levy but might drop out of that bracket because of this increase.

Like I say, there will be people who currently pay the Medicare levy that don't, because even though the threshold is increasing by CPI their own incomes are not growing by the same amount. So, even though that's a good thing, it's a stark situation when people are in a position where their real wages are going backwards so dramatically. It would be great to see some kind of broader plan from the government on helping these low-income earners, because what this does on the Medicare levy is nowhere near as much as what people need right now. They need a lot of help because all their costs are going up and at the same time their real wages are going down.

There are a few other matters that come up, but the one I want to contribute on is the NHFIC provisions. It's currently called NHFIC; I think it's having its name changed to Housing Australia. This is one of the real focuses of the government: changing the names of agencies. It's apparently really important. We've done it to things like Jobs and Skills Australia. It's very Humphrey Appleby, the way all these pieces of legislation we're talking about seem to have renaming agencies as one of their core elements. That doesn't really have a big impact in achieving anything meaningful or practical on the ground for people that are facing challenging circumstances.

Nonetheless, on this amendment around NHFIC's remit, I make the point that this is a good opportunity to talk about just how dire the housing situation is in this country right now. In particular, there are things we can do at the Commonwealth level in housing. In serving on the housing affordability inquiry that was held in the last parliament, I certainly found—we all understand this instinctively, but it's worth reminding people—that there are some very significant levers around housing that are available to the state and territory governments. There are significant levers with local government, and we too at the Commonwealth level have levers. Those policy levers are on the supply side and the demand side.

We've just seen a state budget in Victoria which has shown how dramatically a state government can change for the worse an entire housing market and housing outlook with significant, dramatic and outrageous changes to the investment certainty environment for investors. The worst part about that is, with rents climbing as dramatically as they are right now in the state of Victoria, as surely as night follows day, if investors' costs on their investment properties increase they will pass those costs onto the poor people that pay them rent for those properties.

The market is very tight. It is growing dramatically, and the Andrews government in Victoria have now effectively put in place a series of measures that are going to dramatically aggravate and increase rental pressures on people that can least afford to meet those costs right now. The other frightening thing with wall-to-wall Labor governments is that no doubt some other state Labor governments will look at what Dan Andrews has done and say: 'That's a good way of bludgeoning more money out of the lowest-earning people in our economy. We might have a crack at that as well.' The Andrews government are bragging about the fact that, through the tax deductibility of these higher state taxes, investors can pass on these taxes where they're offsetting those costs of property investment on their income tax. I'm sure the Treasurer is looking forward to also wearing those bills on behalf of the state Labor government in Victoria and potentially other state Labor governments around the country that like the look of this policy.

We do regret that while the government are doing some things in housing this TLAB bill, they're not looking at doing anything serious that could assist people that are really struggling dramatically and substantially in that area. One of the opportunities that the government has is to cooperate with their state government and local government counterparts, who, as I say, hold significant policy levers. I've certainly indicated in the past that I think there's a big opportunity to apply the city deal concept of three levels of government working together, federal, state and local—to think about how a city deal model could potentially be applied to the huge challenge of the housing crisis that we have all round the nation that manifests itself in slightly different ways, depending on the part of the country you're in.

We've got 1½ million people coming into our nation through the migration program, and we see no plan to accommodate those numbers. Housing is the obvious and most acute challenge right now. There are obviously broader, significant social and economic infrastructure challenges around that growth as well. We know that, when these enormous migration numbers are put into the Treasury modelling, a very good dividend comes out—from the models that Treasury use in their budgets. That money should be used to invest in the services that are needed to support that growth in population, and we're not seeing that. So that is a missed opportunity in this bill as well. With those comments, I conclude my contribution.

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