Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to second the motion of the member for Calare.

This is an eminently sensible bill that's following on from Canada and New Zealand, and I thank the member for Calare for his great work in this area. We know that we are in a housing crisis. We also know that we need to do everything possible in this place to look at taking the heat out of the market, because in one generation we have taken away the dream of home ownership. I would argue that part of that is the fact that we have allowed foreign ownership. We know that post-COVID, anecdotally, this has increased dramatically. And, as the member for Calare rightly says, in just one year, that's 4,000 homes that could have gone to Australian buyers. It is not easy to build 4,000 homes. It takes time. We have a huge housing shortage. It is going to take decades for us to boost the supply.

An issue that's related to this is the rapid increase in population that we have allowed, with respect to migration. We're 20 years ahead of where we should be with our population. That's 20 years of housing supply that we haven't done; that's 20 years of infrastructure, social infrastructure, roads that we have not done. This is an incredibly sensible thing to do.

As a member for Calare said, Canada has done this. Canada has extended their two-year pause. Canada, another liberal democracy that we have a lot of public policy symmetry with. New Zealand is the same. There are many nations in the world where, if you are a foreigner, you cannot buy real estate. We're not saying that; we're saying that there needs to be a pause. We need to boost our own supply. We need to do this sustainably and we need to make sure that we don't have people living in sheds.

I receive so many emails every week from people who are absolutely desperate, who are on every possible app, who have gone to every real estate agent in their area. They're desperate for a home to rent or to purchase. They turn to me and say: 'Rebekha, what can we do? Do you know anyone? Do you know anywhere we can live?' That's ridiculous. Yet at the same time, in the year to July 2023, we had net migration of over half a million people. That's bigger than the population of Tasmania or, indeed, Canberra. We can't be doing that year on year and then saying: 'Oh, gee. I wonder why we have a housing crisis. I wonder how we could fix this.'

So I think that this is a very sensible bill. It is not xenophobic. It's not racist. It's just saying, 'Let's pause this, have a think about it, and see if we can take some of the heat out of the market and get back to the Australian dream.' Most Australians over generations have managed to buy their first home in their 20s or early 30s. We've taken that away in one generation.

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