Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I had the misfortune of sitting through those 15 minutes. I know that it's good for members to try speaking from notes or speak off the cuff, but I think next time that bloke needs to get his staff to write him a speech and he should read it out faithfully. It was just rhetorical, circular nonsense.

Let's focus on what the bill actually does as opposed to the fantasy island or Enid Blyton interpretation over there. The Help to Buy Bill 2023 is a hugely important bill that will change lives. It's part of the government's ambitious agenda to improve housing affordability, including the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the $3 billion Social Housing Accelerator payment, the largest increase to Commonwealth rent assistance in 30 years, action on homelessness, the expanded Home Guarantee Scheme and the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee. Initiatives have already helped more than 100,000 people into homeownership since the election, delivering $25 billion in new housing investments over the decade.

It is appalling that, yet again, here we are observing the Liberals and the Greens political party teaming up to try and block action on housing. The only things standing in the way of this important reform to help 40,000 Australians into homeownership—people trying to buy their first home—are the coalition and the Greens.

What does the bill do? It's the first national shared-equity scheme of its kind. It will help 40,000 Australian households to purchase their own house. It would include a Commonwealth equity contribution to eligible participants of up to 40 per cent of the purchase price for new homes and 30 per cent for existing homes. Over four years, that's 10,000 places available per year. Homebuyers would need a minimum two per cent deposit. This will mean lower ongoing repayments while people are in the scheme, and that means long-term relief.

There are numerous people in my electorate—in Dandenong, Endeavour Hills, Hallam, Doveton, Narre Warren, Berwick and elsewhere—who stand to benefit from this scheme. It'd be delivered in partnership with all states and territories. States will pass their own legislation in 2024 for the scheme to operate in their jurisdictions. It went through National Cabinet last year.

The benefits of a well-designed, well-delivered shared-equity scheme are enormous. For those participants who are eligible, it'll help them to overcome both the hurdle of saving for a deposit and the hurdle of servicing a large mortgage. The Commonwealth equity contribution means that scheme participants will have lower ongoing repayments from a smaller home loan. The financial risk and benefit—the capital or losses—will be shared between the participant and the Commonwealth proportionate to their interests.

This should be a no-brainer. It's not a magic bullet. It's part, as I said at the start, of the government's ambitious housing agenda to improve housing affordability. It's a practical, responsible scheme which will help up to 40,000 Australians. Let's be frank: the housing market has been stuffed over recent decades. Homeownership rates between generations have decreased significantly, particularly for lower-income households, and it's lower-income households—people without the bank of mum and dad to help them into the market—that this scheme is intended to help. The average time to save for a deposit on a house in Australia on the median income now exceeds a decade. As I said, there's no magic bullet. The ultimate answer is to increase housing supply, but the government also needs to actively work to help people enter the market and to bring homeownership back into reach for thousands of Australians who've been locked out.

It should be a no-brainer, but, yet again, the unholy alliance of the Liberals and the Greens political party are teaming up with Peter Dutton and Barnaby Joyce—the Leader of the Opposition and the member for New England—to block action on housing. The Prime Minister has rightly described their repeated efforts to block action on housing as 'incomprehensible'. The last time that they tried this, with the Housing Australia Future Fund, he said:

… it is incomprehensible that at a time when housing is an issue and where everyone knows that housing supply is the issue … they continue to block this legislation.

And they're doing it all over again.

Now, Australians wouldn't be surprised that the Liberals say no. That's all they do. They say no to jobs, no to wage rises, no to fairer tax cuts and no to better working conditions. No. They vote no to lower energy prices. And now they're voting no to action on housing. The Leader of the Opposition has nothing to offer Australians but negativity and anger and division—literally, not one positive plan.

The Greens, however, are trickier, as the member for Wills well knows. They give fiery speeches about supporting social housing. There are lots of memes on social media because, if you're from the Greens political party, judging by their behaviour the only purpose of being in parliament is to wedge the government or the opposition and get a meme up on social media. It's 'Stunts R Us'. Once a week, there they are, getting the meme. Every bill, every debate, is an excuse for another meme, for the Greens. But when it comes to the crunch, when it's time to actually put their hands up and vote for action on housing, they put their own political posturing and product differentiation before the right outcomes for Australians, particularly the most vulnerable people in our society.

And it's not just here. Greens political party councillors on councils right across the country constantly vote no to more housing. They constantly oppose new development which would increase supply. The Greens in the federal parliament constantly vote to block action on housing. The Greens care more about prosecuting their own housing agenda than about helping Australians in need.

But let's have a look at the opposition—the shadow minister. He was offered a meeting to discuss the points which he raises in the media, but he's not prepared to actually meet with the minister. It's all stunts and press releases. Perhaps the silliest of his claims is that this scheme is 18 months delayed. He's outraged, the shadow minister, because the scheme's 18 months delayed, according to him. Well, the scheme didn't have a start date, but it's little bit ironic that he's complaining the scheme was delayed when he's actually delaying it by refusing to vote for it, stringing it out and locking out more low- and middle-income earners from owning their own home. The government has been working carefully over the last 12 months with all the states and territories on the design of the scheme. As I said, it was ticked off by National Cabinet, and the states will be passing parallel legislation this year.

The second complaint, which we heard from the previous speaker, the member for Groom, was this: 'People aren't taking up those state schemes, and states have these schemes anyway. Why do we need a national scheme?' It's true; some states do have shared-equity schemes, including the formerly Liberal state of New South Wales and the formerly Liberal state of Western Australia. Those schemes have provided useful insight into the design of Help to Buy. But there are large states that still do not have a shared-equity scheme. Also, some state schemes are very tightly targeted. They're all different. This is a scheme that would be open to a larger number of eligible Australians.

Those opposite also complain that the technical detail, like the eligibility criteria, has not been provided. Like most legislation like this, that's just a nonsense argument. The legislation doesn't provide every bit of technical detail. It sets up the framework to allow the Commonwealth to offer a scheme like Help to Buy. It's entirely appropriate and indeed entirely normal that the detail of these kinds of schemes is set out in program directions, to allow for flexibility. Ironically, that's exactly how the former government designed the Home Guarantee Scheme that it set up. Our government was very clear in the election campaign what the criteria would be. We'll be consulting soon on the detailed program directions, and of course the shadow minister is welcome to be part of the consultation. I wouldn't hold my breath, given he likes to complain about things and not actually turn up for the briefings.

We also heard the previous speaker say that Australians don't want this scheme. There are a lot of people in my electorate that do want this scheme, that would be in a position to access it and, indeed, that have contacted my office, asking when Help to Buy is starting. The only response we can give them is: 'Ask the Greens political party and the Liberal Party, because they're the ones blocking this scheme.' It's incredibly disappointing.

The other nonsense that's spread is 'we've seen nothing on first home buyers from this government'. Since the election, we've helped more than 100,000 people into homeownership through the Home Guarantee Scheme. And, when the government were elected, we acted quickly to improve and expand the Home Guarantee Scheme and to introduce the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee three months earlier than promised.

Importantly, with those changes, the government also expanded the guarantee to non-first-home buyers who haven't owned a property in Australia in the last 10 years, which is really important to help those who have fallen out of homeownership often due to financial crisis, time out of the labour market or relationship breakdown. We also expanded the existing scheme in July this year to allow friends, siblings and other family members to apply for the First Home Guarantee and the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee. Under those opposite, they were locked out. The only people who were eligible when they were in government were married people or single people. There will be a huge boost in take-up thanks to Labor's changes.

I will finish by picking up on some of the comments of those opposite. I wrote one down. The previous speaker was calling out policies that seem to have at their heart good intentions and things which might actually push up prices. Possibly the stupidest housing policy ever is the only policy they had on housing—to let people access their superannuation to buy a house. It would do two things. It is quite genius if you're going for the gold medal for stupidest policy. It would push house prices up by putting petrol on the fire of house prices. People would turn up to an auction with all their superannuation in their pockets and bid up the cost of housing. The only person that wins out of that is the person selling the house. The second genius move it would cause is to trash people's retirement savings. A low-income earner with 20 grand or 50 grand in their super may as well put the vacuum cleaner into their super account and suck it into the pocket of the guy selling the house. Just throwing the cash away is all it would do. That's their genius policy.

They want to vote against action on housing. They want to vote against everything the government is doing, and yet they want to push up the cost of housing. Here's a tip for them: you don't make housing more affordable by making it more expensive. If they were really serious about housing policy, the first thing they'd do is march into their party room tomorrow and say, 'We are going to drop this dumb policy we've got to push up the cost of housing.' I don't think they're going to do that. It is interesting, isn't it? The current Leader of the Opposition said back in 2017 in relation to the policy that they're pushing:

… you don't want to fuel the prices. You don't want to create a situation that is worse than what we have got at the moment.

He should follow his own advice, shouldn't he, and dump his policy? The shadow finance minister and then minister for superannuation in relation to the policy of letting people suck out their super and push up houses prices admitted it. She said, 'It'll probably push up prices.' She should listen to herself. Even the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, that well-known property investor in the Gold Coast, had something to say. She agreed with those comments and said:

Young people need their super for retirement, not to try to take pressure off an urban housing bubble …

It's not a serious policy. There's a reason why even Mathias Cormann when he was finance minister and every previous Liberal prime minister ruled this out. It's a nonsense policy. It would make the problem worse. It's the kind of policy you have when you want to take focus off the fact that you have no serious housing policy. It's a little bit like suggesting having small modular nuclear reactors everywhere to take attention away from the fact that you have no energy policy and you just destroyed the last three prime ministers by fighting about the lack of an energy policy. A small problem also is that there are no small modular nuclear reactors in the world, but they don't let that get in the way of their talking points.

So the only policy we have from those opposite, who are voting against the government's action on housing, is to let young people raid their own retirement settings, which, as the Grattan Institute said, would do little if anything to increase homeownership rates. I commend the bill to the House, and I encourage those opposite to march into their party room tomorrow and say: 'We've got it wrong. We need to dump our stupid policy and we need to actually vote for the government's legislation which will do something for 40,000 Australians to help them into the homeownership market.'

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