Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are times in your life that you simply never forget, whether it's meeting your partner—remembering that first time you saw them or your wedding day, if that's a path you choose—or the 'sold' sticker going up on your very first home. Those are very important times that you don't forget. Those four letters on that sign are a culmination of years of hard work, saving and sacrifice for a place to call your own. It's the great Australian dream, and it's still very much alive, but there's no doubt that that dream is under extreme pressure right across the country, including in my electorate of Casey.

Australians of all ages are working hard to take their first steps on the property ladder. We know that 85 per cent of renters aspire to own their home. As policymakers, we have a responsibility to do what we can to help all Australians reach their potential and reach that great Australian dream. As a first principle, we as a country need to create a situation where any Australian that wants to own a home should have the opportunity to own a home. However, this scheme that we are talking about, the shared-equity scheme in the Help to Buy 2023 Bill, is not going to achieve that for the Australian people. We know it's not the answer, because the uptake of shared-equity schemes in state jurisdictions shows that.

Labor's plan is for the federal government to contribute 40 per cent of the purchase price of a new home, or 30 per cent for an existing dwelling. They talk about their policy saving homebuyers up to 40 per cent of the money needed for a deposit. However, what they fail to mention is the upwards of 40 per cent tax that homebuyers will face upon selling their home, or throughout the life of the loan, in paying the government back their 40 per cent share. Under Labor's scheme, you own part of your home and the government owns the percentage that they contributed. Australians want to be able to own their own home, but they don't want Anthony Albanese and the government sitting at the kitchen table waiting for their slice of the profits in years to come.

There are a lot of challenges in the Help to Buy Bill 2023 that I'm going to talk to, and this bill is another example of this government promising a lot and not delivering on it. They promised, with all its flaws, that this scheme would be introduced by 1 January 2023, and here we are, in February 2024, 12 or 13 months later, and it's finally been introduced in the midst of a housing crisis. It's a bad bill that's not going to make a difference, but they didn't even live up to their promise to bring it in over 12 months ago.

It relies on working with the states to make these schemes work. However, as I said before, we already know that there are no full uptakes of these schemes in states. In Victoria, where I live, the Homebuyer Fund, which is a shared-equity scheme, was anticipated to assist up to 13,000 households. So far, there have only been 2,874 successful applicants—a significant gap in Victoria. In South Australia, their HomeStart shared-equity loans began in 2007, and a total of 705 loans have been offered in total. According to the 2021 census, there were 14,254 dwellings purchased under a shared-equity scheme. This comprises 0.13 per cent of the 10.8 million private dwellings in Australia.

This is what we see time and time again with the Albanese Labor government, and the Australian public have worked them out. There's a big headline, a big announcement, but it's actually not making a difference to improving people's lives. They're spruiking this scheme like it will solve all of the problems of the Australian people when it comes to housing affordability, but we know it won't and we know there's not an appetite for schemes like this, because we see it in the data and uptake in states all across the country. This is one of the challenges we have with this government. They talk about this being the solution. We've seen that the uptake is not there. But, even if the uptake was subscribed fully, it's 10,000 Australians each financial year at a cost of $5.5 billion to the Commonwealth government. Even if it was fully taken up, it's only 10,000 people, but we know it's not going to be.

But there's an even more significant challenge with this scheme and these bills, and it is in the detail and the unintended consequences that we need to look, and should be looking, as lawmakers. I was recently contacted by a constituent who purchased her first home using a shared-equity scheme in Victoria that's similar to this method that Labor is proposing. She is a professional woman who works in the finance industry, and I'd like to share, with her permission, a part of what she wrote so we can understand the unintended consequences of these schemes:

I was fortunate to buy my first home using the Victorian Home Buyer Fund program with a 15% equity share with the Victorian Government.

It put me in a position to create a home for myself and my two children, providing security and safety. I have a good understanding of my budget and accounted for interest rate rises when purchasing.

I am proud of the way I have managed my money as a single parent in the face of rising interest rates and cost of living. Unfortunately, I have recently discovered that I need to have brain surgery for a tumour in my brain. I anticipate I will need around 2 months off work, with full recovery to take up to 12 months.

I have been proactive in preparing for this unexpected event and recently contacted my bank about getting assistance with my mortgage. I qualify for hardship, but when going through the options for hardship, it was limited due to the Shared Equity Program. Both options available to me meant that once I was out of hardship, my repayments would increase to recoup the lost time and payments. I was advised that my repayments would increase by $29 a fortnight to keep me within the loan term. I know that might not seem like a lot, but for me, it is a significant amount.

The other option I had was increasing the loan term, which wouldn't impact my repayments. However, this option isn't available to me under the Shared Equity Scheme.

Being a single parent, I am already finding cost of living difficult. We don't go on holidays, we don't have subscriptions, I cover the basics and that is it.

I feel that I should have the same options available to me as other mortgage holders and not be disadvantaged for participating in a program designed to make homeownership easier.

I want to thank my constituent for sharing that story. It's an example of why the details matter when it comes to programs like this. It is not about putting it through so the Prime Minister and others can stand up and talk about how they're trying to make a difference, and we saw that in the state Labor shared-equity scheme. This person has been caught up because the details are not clear.

That's the reality of Labor's scheme. It leaves us with more questions than answers. What happens if you make improvements to your home? Will you have to send an invoice or ask for approval to renovate your bathroom or to fix your roof? Will the ATO be auditing your income to ensure it doesn't rise above the eligibility threshold? What happens if the market falls? Will you be forced to sell your house for less than you paid for it? What lenders are participating in the scheme? And, importantly, can the government guarantee that people taking up this scheme won't be caught in the same situation as my constituent, being limited in the hardship options when they desperately need them? These are questions that the government aren't able to answer, and that's why the detail matters.

There's really only one certainty about Labor's Help to Buy scheme: when it comes time to sell, homebuyers will be hit with a housing tax of 40 per cent as the government takes back its share. It doesn't seem fair and reasonable that, if you own a property jointly with the government, it's your responsibility for all the repairs, maintenance, rates, bills and everything else associated with the house—you've got to pay for all of that—but when it comes time to sell the government comes and takes its 40 per cent back. It's not a bad deal for the government: all the perks and none of the responsibilities.

We hear those opposite talk about the coalition and the last 10 years, and they like to say that nothing was done. The problem with that statement is that it isn't borne out in the facts. The coalition has a proud record in helping Australians into homeownership. Our approach is to support aspiration and help make homeownership a reality. In the last three years of the coalition government, our policy saw more than 300,000 Australians purchase homes. Under the coalition, first home buyers reached their highest levels in 15 years. We established the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation, now Housing Australia, which supported over 21,000 social and affordable homes. More than 60,000 first home buyers and single-parent families picked up the keys to their first home through the coalition's Home Guarantee Scheme, avoiding costly lenders mortgage insurance.

We took to the election a suite of homebuyer policies which would have delivered, including the super homebuyer scheme, which would have allowed first home buyers to invest up to 40 per cent of their super, up to $500,000, to help with the purchase of their home. The great thing about this scheme is that you would own all of your home. But some argue that it's a trade-off for your retirement savings by putting it into housing. Under this scheme a homeowner, when they sell that house, would be required to put that equity into their superannuation and into their retirement.

Let's compare and contrast the policies. The coalition believes that superannuation is your money. We believe that homeownership is crucial to security and safety and engagement with your community. We want to allow Australians to take some of their money, their savings, out of their superannuation to put into homeownership—40 per cent, which is the same amount as the government scheme. But then we're saying that, when you sell that house, you get to keep 100 per cent of the equity increase in that house, and you're required to put that 40 per cent growth into your superannuation to look after your retirement.

What does the government say? They say: 'You can't do that. You can't touch your money in superannuation. We will give you that money. We will give you that money, but we'll take 40 per cent of your house. And, if that increases in value and you sell it, we'll take that 40 per cent back.' How does that help Australians with their retirement? And they say, 'Any costs you have accrued along the way, any maintenance and any improvements you've made, we will just take our 40 per cent on top of that.' That's the reality of this scheme.

We're seeing people understand this. That's why the uptake is so low at state level. This is a new scheme that is not required because there are so many places already available. The Australian people have spoken with their feet. If they wanted these schemes, they would have already signed up to them at the state level, but they have not. They don't want the Australian government owning 40 per cent of their home. This is a policy that is designed to allow the Prime Minister, in his campaign launch, to stand up and talk about cheaper mortgages when the reality is mortgages have gone up 12 times under this government. It's not going to deliver a tangible difference for the Australian people. We've seen that and we know. That's the reality of this government. It's all spin. It's all politics. It's not providing tangible solutions to the housing crisis for the Australian people.

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