Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I think it was a very good question asked by the member for Goldstein: What is the objective of the government? Why such little detail? Not only has the question of who the government are seeking to assist here been asked on multiple occasions but a succession of other questions have gone unanswered. Again, I reiterate the point that I think people would understand, if the government was particularly swift in bringing this legislation forward shortly after the election, that there could be some holes in the bill but here we are, now 20 months into the government.

This is more than 12 months later than when it should have started and there is a succession of questions that lead one, as the member for Goldstein has, to ask: What is the objective and expectation of the government under this scheme? The questions that have been asked by this side of the chamber that have gone unanswered include the following: What is the assumed return on equity over the medium term of this measure, particularly the way it has been budgeted for? Will the income thresholds be indexed? That will obviously be on the authority of the minister. What are the instances in which the government would force a sale? What are the instances in which a government would say to a homeowner, 'We require repayment of our 40 per cent of equity'? Will that occur when that person gets a pay rise of $1 over the threshold that was an eligibility requirement to begin with? Will it be when the person potentially goes into arrears on their loan? What are the circumstances in which the government will demand its equity back?

Because if the government is going to budget for this the way it has, it must be expecting a return on its investment. In order to obtain a return on its investment, there must be circumstances in which the government will essentially foreclose on a homeowner and say, 'We want our 40 per cent back now.' Will that occur at a time when a homeowner is in negative equity? Will it be in an instance when there is a downturn in the economy? When house prices reduce, where you have negative equity, will the government foreclose in those circumstances?

In the end, the way the government is budgeting for the measure, it will get a return on its investment, a return on the $5.5 billion of equity that it is borrowing. Mind you, what are the debt costs associated with that $5½ billion? We know the government will have to draw down $5½ billion for the 10,000 places per year. What is the government bond rate it will pay on that? How many hundreds of millions of dollars in debt servicing payments will be attached to that? And that gets us to the next question: If we have seen throughout the country that these schemes are chronically undersubscribed for all the reasons we have outlined—that people don't want the government forcing them to sell their home—what has the department modelled in relation to the uptake of this product? Because, again, the scheme in New South Wales has only been able to deploy six per cent of the available places.

Even though we've got a headline of 10,000 places being available, does the government promise that every single one of those 10,000 places will be taken up? For budgetary purposes, have they modelled that every one of those places will be taken up, or does their modelling reflect that it's very unlikely that anywhere near 10,000 places will be taken up? Again, to go back to my earlier questions, we need clarity about the responsibility of the Commonwealth, as a co-owner of the property, for repairs and maintenance or for improvements. What is the experience that we've seen from state based schemes? Whilst we're in the midst of a housing crisis—first home buyers at record lows, new home starts at record lows, approvals at record lows, rents rising at 26 per cent—the priority of this government needs to be much bigger than replicating programs that already exist at a state level in this country and that are already going unused.

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