Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023. Housing is no doubt one of the most significant issues across Australia and also in my electorate of Flynn in Central Queensland. However, all this legislation and amendments provide a bandaid solution which over time will only make this problem worse. Let me be clear: this is another desperate, dodgy deal that's been done by the Labor Party with the Greens. The Labor Party and the Greens are working together so much that I wonder when they are going to form a coalition.

It should come as no surprise that the actual coalition, the Liberal-National coalition, will not be supporting these amendments. These amendments attempted to paper over the cracks of the Albanese government's crumbling signature housing policy. The amendments can't change the fact that the Housing Australia Future Fund will be capitalised by $10 billion worth of additional Commonwealth borrowing. These amendments can't change that that increasing borrowing will add to inflationary pressures in the economy, leading to higher interest rates overall.

Last October the Albanese government announced an aspiration to build one million homes over five years, yet multiple housing industry groups have since confirmed that this building activity is falling off a cliff. This target will not be met. Now the government has plucked another figure out of the sky, 1.2 million homes over five years. This figure is out of thin air too, knowing full well that these homes will not be built. The outcome of August's National Cabinet meeting has cemented the harsh reality that this housing crisis is going to continue and get worse under the Albanese Labor government, who has absolutely no plan on how to deal with this problem.

What this bill and the amendments fail to do is provide incentive for private industry and business to build homes. Labor is doing the Oprah Winfrey of politics, saying, 'You'll get a house, you'll get a house, you'll get a house.' Why isn't the Labor government encouraging private businesses to build with more incentives, rather than copying and pasting the Karl Marx manifesto? While I understand that social housing must be provided by governments, where do we stop with this policy? According to Master Builders Australia, the Flynn electorate has almost 4,000 small-size building and construction businesses, the largest number in any electorate across Australia. What we are seeing is business after business go bust with no plan in sight from the government.

In a desperate last-ditch attempt to get its troubled housing bill through the parliament, the government was forced yet again to cut another deal with the Greens on 11 September 2023. An agreement by the government to allocate an additional $1 billion towards the coalition's highly successful National Housing Infrastructure Facility just reiterates that investments of this kind should be made directly, not through Labor's convoluted HAFF money-go-round. The NHIF was set up by the former coalition government, and Labor continues to adopt coalition initiatives as its own.

Let's be clear: Labor's housing legislation does nothing to ease the supply pressures on first homeowners seeking to buy their first home and get into the property market. It will only see Australia's housing crisis worsened, with the added inflationary pressures on the economy ultimately leading to higher interest rates and more difficulty for those Australians looking to enter the housing market. Despite all of this, Labor is still planning to bring 1.5 million immigrants to Australia over the next five years with no plan on how to house them on top of housing our own growing population. It is clear that Labor's recent deal with the Greens is nothing more than a political stunt, which is typical of a government reliant on Greens preferences in order to be re-elected. More disappointingly, this is a government that is completely out of touch with Australians facing the current real hardships and painful cost-of-living pressures.

The housing crisis is an issue that needs cooperation on all three levels of government, local, state and federal. States and councils need to introduce policies that unlock land for development and not make development of new housing stock more expensive. All too often we have seen local governments lock up land and prevent housing development while continuing to adopt policies of ongoing cost. We need to be thinking about policies that support the Australian dream of homeownership. I wish to conclude by saying that I will not be supporting these amendments.

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