Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

The government capitulated. But it's very surprising that one of the amendments here, one of the things that the government cannot explain—and they certainly couldn't explain it in the Senate—was how on earth a fund will maintain its corpus if the return it generates in a year is lower than the legislated dividend of $500 million, which was not there originally; it's only there because the government has capitulated to the Greens. They can't explain how on earth that won't diminish the fund.

Here we've got a government that has done nothing on housing for 15 months—nothing, absolutely nothing. Their signature policy, if you call it an agenda, the Housing Australia Future Fund, has now been whittled away by the Greens. We've got no clarity from the minister. I doubt the minister really understands it. But, when you borrow $10 billion, there will be $400 million to pay at a minimum. The government bond rate is 4.07 per cent. So the government's going to be paying more than $400 million on this borrowing. The minister has not explained what the management fee for the future fund will be. It has typically been in the order of one per cent. That's been the management fee, in addition to $400 million of interest. Australian taxpayers are being asked each year to fund $500 million of cost just so the minister can set up a fund that could lose money. Then, if it loses money, the minister has capitulated to the Greens to pay out a minimum of $500 million, and she's somehow arguing that that would not reduce the corpus of the fund.

Finally, we've seen 15 months of this government, and the minister has not been able to deliver an investment mandate. Where on earth is the investment mandate? This has been held up by the Greens for months. You were begging the Greens to pass this for months. You capitulated to the Greens, and we still don't have an investment mandate. We do not have an investment mandate after 15 months. That should be a source of embarrassment to everybody there. What on earth have you been doing? You clearly haven't been delivering the Help to Buy Scheme, which was supposed to start on 1 January. It's now 13 September and we don't have it, so you haven't been distracted by the Help to Buy Scheme. That's why we cannot support these amendments.

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