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

In summing up the opposition's position on this, I'll say: we won't be supporting these amendments. I think it's useful to reflect on some of the specific amendments that have flowed through as part of the government paying the ransom demanded by the Greens political party.

We still have no explanation from the government on the minimum drawdown each year of $500 million, in the instance where the fund does not deliver a return. What I mean by that, for those watching, is that this entire policy is premised on borrowing $10 billion. That will cost about $400 million a year in interest. So they'll borrow that and then hand it over to the Future Fund, who will probably charge the Commonwealth about one per cent to manage that money—so another $100 million to manage that money. That's $500 million, just to establish this fund. And then they hope that the returns in that fund are greater than those costs, and, now, greater than the additional $500 million of minimum drawdown each year. Then take the instance where the fund loses money—and, had this fund been in place last year, it would have lost $370 million, plus the $400 million of interest, plus the $100 million in management fees, so it would have lost close to $900 million. As to the requirement that the Greens have now extracted from the government, of a minimum drawdown of $500 million: does that diminish the corpus of the fund? Therefore, are we now not talking about a perpetual fund but instead about a convoluted money-go-round to get this off the budget bottom line?

The member for Sturt was absolutely right: this policy is simply a policy designed to have a big number in a media release that would not hit the budget bottom line before the election when they were releasing their costings. That's all it is; nothing else. Now the government will be held to account on what they have legislated.

We have significant doubts that this will deliver anywhere near the numbers claimed, and, even if it does, it's a drop in the bucket. To some extent, while the parliament has been looking at this issue—watching the frenemy-ship between the Labor Party and the Greens, and their fights and the Kabuki theatre that the member for Groom spoke about—it's been somewhat entertaining, of course. But, really, we're talking about a policy that's tiny—tiny! If this thing clears every hurdle and if the future fund has a phenomenal next five years, with huge returns, which is a big if, then, they're saying, they'll build 6,000 homes a year for five years—6,000. Over that time, they are seeking to bring in 1½ million new migrants. Just think about that. The government is saying: 'Our signature policy may build 6,000 homes a year, at the same time that we're bringing in 300,000 people for each of those years—1.5 million people for 30,000 homes.' So the fact that we have spent so much time on this—a very small policy, in the scheme of Australian housing—is quite remarkable.

As the member for Sturt rightly outlined, it's a huge humiliation for the government that they've had to pay the ransom of the Greens. My concern is that even the ransom that has been paid will not benefit Australians. The government has handed over $2 billion in the form of a blank cheque to the states and territories—the same people who led us to this disaster; the same people who have seen and presided over public and social waiting lists getting longer by the year.

People don't want to see media releases from the Labor government. They want to see action. Sadly, under this government, we've got first home buyers down, we've got new home starts down, we've got new home approvals down and we've got rents up. We will be opposing this bill, because this bill and this fund will do nothing to arrest that disastrous decline under this government.

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