Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

You find me in a state of absolute shock. I just heard a Labor member stand up and speak ill of throwing money around willy-nilly. I think this is throwing out the entire Labor Party scheme and the building blocks of the whole Labor Party—a government that came in and increased spending by $188 billion and now wants to talk about the ills of throwing money around willy-nilly. Goodness me!

But let's go through it further to the points made in the previous speech about not listening to the Australian people. If the government think that what the Australian people want is not homeownership but homeownership with an asterisk, then they're not listening. They're not tuned in to what the people of Australia are saying. I'll comment further on the last speaker who was making slight jibes about people owning multiple houses. I think that a quick look at the front bench might be useful to see the property portfolio of their own leader. If they want to raise issues like that, I think that's quite easily dismissible. To make what we're talking about clear, it raises the issue of working-class Australians. Once again, we're straight into class warfare from this government in their attacks over this one. What a joy it is to come after such an insightful speech on the true intention of the Australian Labor Party!

I will pick up one issue, though, that was raised about the impacts of government schemes driving prices up. A scheme very similar to this in the UK had exactly that impact. It inflated prices by more than its subsidy values in areas where it was most needed. One of the terrible things that we come across in the great lessons of history is that we take no lessons from history. This has been tried. This results in driving prices up, particularly for the most vulnerable. This is not about helping Australians one iota.

Let's talk about what this is. This is giving up on the thing that I think I've heard every speaker talk about so far: the great Australian dream of homeownership. This is setting out to climb Mount Everest, getting to base camp and saying, 'I got there.' I think that this issue matters—the nature of the ownership of one's house. I think it is important. It's beyond just the physical asset. It's beyond the little piece of paper that says, 'This is mine.' It's what that means as a family setting forth to start their family home, whatever shape that may be. It is some place in Australia that is theirs—a place that they have worked hard for, that they can be proud of and that in every single way reflects who they are and is their base. It's their castle.

I reflect upon my own grandfather coming back from the Second World War and falling in love with his beautiful wife. He raced as quickly as he could—the member for Leichhardt will enjoy this—to build the house with his own hands before his first child was born so that she could come into a house that he'd made himself. That spirit carries on today; you talk to anybody. I had the pleasure of talking to young homeless kids in my electorate, at Base Services, about what they want in life and about what they aspire to. They started off with things like a car or a girlfriend, but inevitably they got to the same point: a home, a place of their own. This isn't going away. This matters. People want to know that this is their home. They don't want to know that it's homeownership in partnership with the government that is subsidised. They want it to be theirs. I think that's a good thing. I think that is the aspiration in Australia that has driven so many of the good things that this country offers to people from all around the world who choose to come here and join this great Australian experiment of ours.

I think it's important to point out that this is not a new thing. This is a scheme that has largely been tried amongst the states in Australia. In the midst of a housing crisis—I think we can all acknowledge that's exactly where we are: a housing crisis—it's particularly hard. Being on the Economics Committee, I've heard over and over again from the RBA and all the major banks that the people getting squeezed the hardest are those young 25 to 29-year-olds who would usually be trying to save for a deposit to get onto the housing ladder. But, with inflation and the cost of everything rising, they're unable to. They're renting and their rents have gone up, and they're unable to get on that housing ladder. Presented with this option, some are taking it up, yes, but these schemes provided by various state governments are undersubscribed. In a housing crisis, they're undersubscribed. The suggestion that what is needed is more of this is an extraordinary step. These measures are being taken and they are undersubscribed, and, for that to be the case in a housing crisis, I think that speaks to the broadness of their appeal.

But, if you're willing to go through those two hoops, if you're willing to forgo homeownership in full without that little asterisk hanging over your head and if this is an option for you, there is an issue that I think is worthy of being raised, and it's about the nature of the contract you are entering into and the high level of trust that you are engaging in. For so many people, this is your family home, this is 30 years of repayments and this is everything that you base your hopes and dreams, your way of life, around. And you're entering that with that need for a high level of trust in an environment, particularly on issues of the economy, where that trust has not been on display from this government.

I go back again to the over 100 times that this Prime Minister promised that he would stick with the stage 3 tax cuts, and he then changed his mind. Now, those opposite can say that he stayed with the tax cuts—that's fine—but the details matter, and they matter significantly when it comes to the issue of homeownership; to how it impacts your household finances, your plans for the future; and to how that will play out as your life carries on. These things are important. So, when assessing this, I think the Australian people would do well to ask, 'Is the basis of trust there to enter into this contract with this government?' Clearly it's not. Clearly, when the politics and the polling of the day make it easy for a government to change its mind, despite multiple promises that it wouldn't do so right up to the death, that trust just isn't there.

To go to the key, the heart of where we're at in the broader context, and to where we find ourselves with this, this is a government that has said multiple times that the key issue of the housing crisis we have is supply. We've heard that, and this certainly is not in any way addressing supply. There's no attempt to pretend it is—nor is it addressing the issue of increasing demand. We've seen 500,000 new Australians join us in the last 12 months, with the prospect of another 1.2 million, I think, joining us over the next five years, all of which will continue to drive that demand up higher. The simple equation of supply—a good outcome at the moment is the supply rates staying the same. Unfortunately they've been dropping, and I'll get to that. With supply not changing and demand going up, we will see prices continue to rise. That's the forecast for us at the moment.

I'll go back again to my opening comments. When this sort of scheme was applied in the UK, the result was that house prices increased by more than the subsidised value, particularly in areas where it was needed most. So those most vulnerable will see those house prices rise. Those who choose to seek full homeownership will watch house prices rise more than the subsidised value of this scheme.

I want to explore the depths of the supply issue we have, and I'm going to start with a column that I hope is more digestible to those opposite. It's in the Guardian, that great bastion of right-wing thought: Australian housing approvals sink to lowest level in 12 years amid rising costs and planning delays. So we have inflationary pressures and regulatory pressures putting our housing supply at over 10-year lows. For the full year leading into 3 February, we saw approvals total 162,200, the lowest annual rate since March 2013, according to the NAB. Clearly, the NAB's comments are quite strong. Unfortunately, they say, 'A supply fix is not coming in a hurry.' What are the issues in front of us? What will help homeownership? What will help people realise that dream in the way my grandfather, my parents and new Australians coming from around the world seeking their own homes did? What are the delays and issues? They're construction costs and inflationary pressures in an environment where we've added $188 billion of spending and tried to pretend that wouldn't be inflationary. At a time when we've got the RBA trying to take money out of the economy by raising interest rates, we've got a government pumping money back into the economy. We've got one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake. We're going nowhere and wondering why, and we're just going to blow out the engine.

It's policies and interventions like these that seem at their heart to have good intentions and the burning desire to address a need in society. But it's their consequences. Unfortunately, what this government isn't doing is addressing those key issues that they can address. They're not reducing demand. They're not reducing the number of people coming from overseas, who are now entering the housing market, driving prices up. They could do that in a heartbeat, but they've decided not to. They made it very, very clear again in question time today when asked about the impact of immigration numbers on house prices. They refuse to address it. They refuse to acknowledge the increased demand their policies are producing in Australia or the impact on young first-home buyers.

I could go further. The ABS shows total dwelling approvals fell 9.5 per cent in the 12 months leading to December 2023. We are on a downward descent in terms of supply issues. We're not going upwards. We're hurting. We're going backwards. As we've seen, when very similar policies were deployed in the UK, it had upward pressure on prices. I go back again to this point. There is a fundamental divergence here around the role of homeownership that I think is being exposed. I think we see very clearly that it is not the view of the government that the nature of homeownership matters, whereas we on this side acknowledge something different. We think it does matter. We think that owning your home outright, in your name, is a worthy ambition. I think it's about being able to say: 'This is mine. I live here. I provide this for my husband, for my wife, for my children. This is what I have created. This is the place where I get to contribute to the continuation of Western society. This is where my family stories will be told. This is where the memories will be made.'

It matters that you own that outright and it's yours. That's the difference. I think the Australian people want to hear that we acknowledge that that difference—that belief that outright homeownership, without a little asterisk—is important. There's a very clear difference being put in this debate. Those on this side strongly stand by those Australians who have that aspiration and want to own their own home in their own name. We stand with those people. We will not give up. We will set out for Everest acknowledging the great challenges in front of us. They are many and will not be solved in the short term, but we will not set up on that ambition, give up at base camp and try to tell people that this is homeownership—that we've taken this first step, and that's going to get us there. The issue is more than that. The issue is more than just bricks and mortar or a roof over your head. The issue is your ability to have a place of your own, in your own name, outright, that you can be proud is yours. It's an ambition that Australians have held for such a long time, and I hope we can continue to hold it. I think it's worthy of fighting for. I don't think giving up on that ambition is worthy of the Australian people. I don't think that's what we're called to this place to do—to get halfway towards a solution, pack it up and start the marketing campaign. I think we should aim for higher ambitions than that.

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