Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great privilege to talk on this bill, the Help to Buy Bill 2023, with the minister present and the shadow minister present as well. I think the minister and the shadow minister might disagree about a lot of things, but I'm sure the one thing they do agree on is this, and I certainly understand that. They have a big job because housing affordability is a massive issue in our country, as is rental affordability.

Just in my own family, actually, my eldest daughter couldn't afford the rent on her place, so she had to move back home. I was very happy about it, so was my wife, but I don't think my daughter was as happy. The point is she had to move back in with us, and we're delighted that she's there, but she moved back in simply because she couldn't afford the rent where she was. My son moved to Sydney and is furiously saving to try and save enough money for a deposit. It's almost like he can't catch up because the prices keep going up and up. It is a massive issue. I know the minister understands that and I know the shadow minister understands that.

I won't go into some of the failings of the particular model that Labor have proposed. That's been done very articulately by other speakers on this side. I'll just mention that I think the number of households and people that this will help is quite minuscule, and, obviously, the money's quite huge for the number of houses and the number of people that it will potentially or maybe help. So I think it's poorly designed.

But I want to focus a little bit more on supply. The previous speaker, the member for Wright, touched on it as well. For the Commonwealth government, this issue, with all due respect to the government, has got a lot worse in the last couple of years. This issue is all about supply. Housing affordability is getting worse and rental affordability is getting worse because we simply do not have enough of a supply of homes in this country, and that's the issue. We just need more supply on the market. I don't think that this particular bill or policy helps increase supply anyway, so that's not necessarily going to help many people either.

To flick it a bit, to absolve both sides of the chamber on this issue, supply often is in the hands of local government, and I encourage the minister to work at both the state government level and the local government level and put conditions on them to actually force councils, whether it be by tying it to grants or whatever, to increase supply—especially given that we have 1.5 million people arriving in this country over the next few years. This policy isn't going to get anywhere close to helping with that.

I'll give you one example. I have a housing development proposal in my electorate called the North Lismore Plateau. Do you know how many years that's been on the books? Have a guess, Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou. How many years do you think the North Lismore Plateau has been on the books of the local government authority? Twenty-five. I don't think you were thinking it was 25, Deputy Speaker. You didn't speak out loud, but I reckon you were thinking it was less than 25 years. How can you sit on a housing proposal for 3,000 or 4,000 homes for families for 25 years? It's now going through some state government process; people are appealing it; people don't want it. I'll make an aspersion on the Greens here: most of the people who come to me to talk about the lack of housing—

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