Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Help to Buy Bill 2023. This scheme is like throwing a bucket of water onto a house fire. This scheme acts like a lottery, with availability for just 0.2 per cent of those eligible. It should go without saying that Australians shouldn't have to win the lottery in order to have a secure home. What's more, this scheme adds to demand, not to supply. It's actually going to push up house prices even further for the other 99.8 per cent of us. This Labor government acknowledges that we're in the middle of a housing and rental crisis, and we are, but it responds with this. It's a smoke and mirrors policy to make it sound like something substantial is being done when, in practical reality, it's a drop in the ocean.

The median house price in greater Brisbane is fast approaching $1 million, and it's already well over that in my own electorate. We're at even greater risk of unaffordable housing worsening due to the upcoming 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which have been shown to increase housing costs in host cities around the world. There are people lined up around the block for rental inspections with plenty of Australians now only one rental increase, one mortgage rate increase or one insurance rise away from homelessness. So where is the sense of urgency?

It was just under two weeks ago that the housing minister walked around my question on negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions to instead speak about increasing supply as the golden ticket out of this housing crisis. Well, Minister, where is this increased supply? Recent ABS data shows that new housing commencements have hit a decade low and are predicted to keep dropping even further. In fact, Labor's own Housing Accord looks like it will fail to meet its own targets.

The bottom line here is that Labor cannot keep expecting private property developers and banks to fix the housing crisis. The role of a private company is to make profit. Dramatically increasing supply to the extent that we actually need will reduce the profit margins of these companies. They're not going to do something that will reduce their profits. Property developers are not going to build enough houses to stabilise house prices, because they make more money the way things are.

This Help to Buy scheme allows people to purchase existing homes. It's what's called a demand-side housing support. This type of assistance adds demand; not supply. Economists and the Productivity Commission alike agree that this type of assistance has the effect of pushing up house prices and, as a result, lowers homeownership overall. What's worse is that, even if the government wanted to increase the scheme beyond the measly 10,000 households it has at the moment, it would only worsen these inflationary impacts.

It's called Help to Buy, but how will it actually help? There are over 4½ million renters in Australia who may be eligible for Labor's Help to Buy scheme, yet the scheme would only be available to 10,000 households a year. That means it would end up being available, as I said, to 0.2 per cent of those people while leaving behind the other 99.8 per cent. It goes without saying that this does not address the enormity of the housing crisis we are facing in this country.

This bill gives no details on eligibility outside of income thresholds. Who of the 0.2 per cent are eligible? Who will be prioritised? Will certain regions be prioritised over others? Are there selection criteria? None of these questions are actually answered or addressed in this bill.

In terms of current supply, what we're seeing in the market over and over again is property investors buying existing homes that could have been purchased by a renter as their first home, driving up the cost of housing and locking millions out of basic housing security. This cannot keep going unchecked. We saw during the GFC, in very recent memory, what happens when the housing market collapses as prices soar and the market destabilises. Change must happen. We cannot just wait for this bubble to pop and hope for the best. This is going to require a multifaceted approach beyond just increasing supply.

The Greens are proposing to phase out the grossly unfair tax concessions, like negative gearing and capital gains taxes, for the government to directly invest that money into building affordable housing. Recent Parliamentary Budget Office modelling shows that, in total, property tax deductions and the capital gains tax discount for investment properties will cost the federal budget $38.9 billion in forgone revenue in this financial year. The latest Tax expendituresand insightsstatement outlines that the majority of the benefit of these tax handouts goes to the highest incomes. In fact, the top 30 per cent of income earners get 65 per cent of the benefits.

It wasn't that long ago that we built tens of thousands of new public homes in this country, but now it's next to nothing. We're propping up property investors at the expense of people being able to call a home their own. This injustice is glaringly obvious, but, because Labor and the coalition are so beholden to their donors—to the banks and to property developers—we're led to believe that the status quo must be maintained and that we have no other option. The reality is that negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount mean that it is often easier for a property investor to buy their second, third, fourth or fifth home than it is for someone to buy their first. This is just incredibly, deeply unfair. How can these major party ghouls look in the face of young Australians, knowing that they are costing them their future of owning their own home? Without the ability for young people to own the roof over their head, how are the major parties expecting them to have any faith in our political or economic system?

The Greens went to the 2022 federal election with a policy of phasing out negative gearing and mortgage interest deductibility for landlords with more than one investment property over the next five years, along with scrapping the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount, to be replaced with indexation of the asset cost. We could save billions by doing this and use these funds to mass build good-quality public homes in the same way that governments used to do in the 20th century. This is a commonsense remedy to get back to where we need to be. Just imagine: instead of billions of dollars going to property investors each year, we actually use the money to build houses. But we shouldn't have to imagine; we should have a government that actually does that.

This Help to Buy proposal is the last of Labor's announced housing policies to enter this chamber. Is this really Labor's final effort to deal with the housing crisis before the next federal election? The Greens want people to be able to afford a home and be able to pay their rent. The reality is that more people are being locked out of homeownership than this scheme could ever remotely hope to address. More people are experiencing rental and mortgage stress and more people are being forced into homelessness. That's why the Greens are fighting for an end to unfair tax concessions for property investors and for a massive build of public housing. This is how we tackle the crisis, with the courage that the Australian people actually deserve.

Labor's public refusal to negotiate on their housing lottery bill will be short lived. They cannot go to a federal election telling people that they did everything they could for housing when almost everyone feels worse off than they did three years ago. The Greens were able to secure $3 billion for public and community housing during our negotiations with the government on their previous housing bill, and I am hopeful that Labor will come to the table on this bill as well.

Our communities are not asking for the world. They are asking for shelter—for the most basic of human rights—and for the government to have their back. Right now, there are millions of renters struggling to keep their heads above water. House prices are soaring. Mortgage rates are soaring. During times of crisis is when we expect our governments to step up, not tinker around with bandaid solutions that really do nothing and expect everyone to thank them for it. Australians deserve and need more than a housing lottery bill where 99.8 per cent of renters get nothing.

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