David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

It's good to contribute to this important debate on the Help to Buy Bill 2023. It's unfortunate that the debate on this bill has been delayed for so long. It was back on 1 May 2022 that the Prime Minister made what was billed at the time as a very important announcement about the so-called Help to Buy scheme. The scheme was going to come in in early 2023, and it was going to be a wonderful scheme. But what we actually find is that we're here in February 2024 and it is only now that the government is bringing on this debate on the bill. If it's such a crucial issue and such a centrepiece of the government's proposal, why has it taken so long for this bill to come forward?

It really goes to a general question of competence. Really, there's nothing more important than competence. If this is such a crucial matter as the Prime Minister said, why has it taken the minister so long? It's good that the minister's here to participate in the debate, but it's a very slow-moving area of policy under this government. We see lots of, frankly, very shallow headlines about housing and housing accords and all the things that the government is going to do in relation to housing, but what actually happens? The answer is: basically nothing. Virtually no homes have been built or contributed to by this government, and we see this extraordinary delay and drift.

I think it's really quite characteristic of the general delay and drift that we're seeing under this government. Of course, in 2023 so much of the government's energy was absorbed in the Voice debate, with the very substantial expense of more than $400 million that went into that Voice debate and a lot of distraction, unfortunately. What that meant was that on issues like housing policy, which I think we'd all acknowledge are very important—it's a very important issue in my electorate and right around the country—basically nothing has happened.

If the government can point to tangible things that have actually happened as opposed to broad, generic statements, press releases or self-congratulatory talking points, that is fine. But that's not the case. In recent times, we've heard the Premier of New South Wales say that the government's housing targets certainly won't be achieved in the largest state, or even get close to being achieved. We've seen that the government has made an announcement about how many homes it's going to build, which will require the states to do a lot of the heavy lifting, without the states making the same commitment. It's really a bit of a debacle, because so little is actually happening. I would really welcome the government pointing to something and saying, 'This has actually happened in housing policy,' because so little—virtually nothing, in fact—has happened. It is an indictment on this government.

An honourable member: They had a lot of roundtables.

This is a government that never saw a roundtable that it didn't like. They love roundtables, consultative processes and forums, but what about Australians who are struggling to get into the housing market? That's a lot of Australians. This is a really important area, and it requires a seriousness of purpose that we're just not seeing. We saw such an extraordinary lost opportunity through 2023, with so much time lost by this government.

The specifics of this scheme are very troubling. The first important point is that, even on the government's own calculations, this scheme would only be open to 10,000 households per year and would cost $5½ billion. That's a very substantial cost, and a very, very small number of people would benefit. Of course, that 10,000 is the number in the press release. What we know of this document is that, if they say a number, you're going to want to apply a discount to that number. It's probably not going to happen.

Of course, the most infamous example of that is the Prime Minister's statement some 97 times before the election that the cost of electricity would decline for the average family. That the cost of electricity would decline by some $275 is an important issue—

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