Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Griffith for his passion on this issue and his work over recent months to extract the concessions that he has out of the government. Of course, we have very different views as to how we tackle Australia's housing crisis. The member for Griffith talks about a rental freeze. I think that the key is to get more supply. Unfortunately, the amendments to the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill do not go anywhere near what we need to do in this country to actually address the housing crisis we're facing—not just in the rental market, not just in social housing supply, but across the housing continuum.

Unfortunately, despite the amendments, which we can't change, this bill is a fundamentally flawed way of delivering more supply. We have seen that increased borrowing will add to inflationary pressures in the economy, which will of course lead to higher interest rates, and the amendments can't paper over the fact that Housing Australia Future Fund will be capitalised by $10 billion of additional Commonwealth government borrowing. It's not a $10 billion fund; it's $10 billion of additional borrowing. We've now seen a guaranteed minimum for what will be invested in social housing, but, unfortunately, these amendments provide no long-term certainty as disbursements from the fund will be wholly reliant on the financial performance of the fund's investments in equity and other financial projects. We're borrowing and we're going to have to bank on the fact that we will beat the market and then that investment will go from there if we're lucky. We know that recent history has been that we haven't been so lucky with those levels of investment.

When you look at the numbers directly, if we take the government's best case scenario, we end up with 30,000 additional homes over five years. As the shadow minister, the member for Deakin, pointed out, that's barely going to touch the sides. That's not a lot of homes when you put it over five years, particularly when you consider that we're going to be facing, according to the government's statistics, an extra 1.5 million migrants over that period of time.

These amendments cannot guarantee that a single home will be built before the next election, if at all, and we will only see the housing crisis get worse. The legislation will do nothing to help those first homebuyers struggling to get into the property market—it's only looking after one segment of the market—and on every measure this legislation won't even scratch the surface when it comes to Australia's challenging housing crisis.

When we look at the broader government objectives around the Housing Accord and the other policies they have in place, there is an ambitious target there of a million homes by 2030. Unfortunately, NHFIC is telling us that we actually need 1.7 million homes to be built by 2030 because that's the number of new households that will be built—and I don't believe that figure included the government's ambitious migrant policies either. When you think about the government's ambitious target, it's not getting anywhere near to the number of new homes that we need to get built and we know that by the end of this decade the crisis will be even worse. We are facing a significant crisis in this country. We're facing a massive rental crisis in my electorate, in Brisbane's bayside, and I know, from talking to my colleagues, that we're facing it across the board as well.

It's important to remember that investor interest has never been an obstacle to housing supply in Australia. Supply is currently not being constrained by lack of capital, but by a lack of land, and it's our states and territories that control most of the policy levers that currently restrict supply. The Albanese government's approach does very little to put pressure on the states and territories to actually increase housing supply. And I'm not just talking about social housing here, I'm talking about housing supply across the continuum. We need more supply. The government can't just be offering the carrot; they've got to be offering the stick as well. I'm hoping that now this bill will pass that the government can focus more on those broader planning and tax reforms that are needed to boost housing supply across Australia.

The government's approach to housing has so far created multiple strategy documents, multiple new bodies, and we'll end up with multiple new funds and amended financial facilities. And while I think the Commonwealth has a role to play here, it certainly isn't this. The point I always try to make is that more government is not going to be the answer to the challenges facing our nation's housing market.

See this speech in context