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

I want to commend the member for Fowler for her considered amendments. I think her amendments highlight just how little thought has been put into this scheme brought to this House. The member for Fowler's remarks echo some of mine earlier which raised the question to the government that has not been answered. That is: in a city like Sydney in the member for Fowler's electorate or in my home town of Melbourne, has the government modelled how many suburbs and how many homes within those suburbs would be available using the income caps that have been proposed here? I'm sure there'll be many in the media who do this analysis. I suspect that in the member for Fowler's home state of New South Wales there will be very few places where someone on a $90,000 income, as the member for Fowler outlined, with a HECS debt and a car loan and whatever other liabilities they may have will ever be able to avail themselves of this program.

Again, I go back to the earlier point, that is there are an abundance of shared equity places around this country and an abundance of places available to people should they want one of these products. So why on earth in the middle of a housing crisis would the government devote its energies to something where products are already available? If somebody in New South Wales wants a shared equity opportunity they'll own it with the New South Wales state government. For most people, it will make no difference to them whether they jointly own a property with the New South Wales state government or the Commonwealth government. Yet only six per cent of places in the New South Wales scheme are being taken up, so 94 per cent of the places are still available. As well as in New South Wales, there are also places still available in the shared equity schemes in South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria. So in the middle of a housing crisis, what's the government's big idea? Let's create more of these places that are already going unused around the country.

Notwithstanding the very excellent questions raised by the member for Fowler, similar to the remarks I made earlier, we won't be supporting the amendments because this pitiful effort from the government can't be repaired through amendments. It's been a wonderful effort from the crossbench to try and recover this bill as much as possible and to actually put some meat on the bones, but sadly it is so far away from being a fit-for-purpose effort that we won't be supporting the amendments.

As I've said, the member for Fowler rightly raised so many concerns with this bill. We don't often have a process where something like this is brought to the parliament seemingly without any consultation having occurred. The consultation seems to be promised at some point down the track. I suspect members in this place feel quite offended that we've got a bill here—a hollow bill—at a time when the government hasn't rushed this. And I say that with some experience as a former housing minister who established the Home Guarantee Scheme on 1 January 2020. In just a bit over six months we put together an entire complex policy—the Home Guarantee Scheme—that's now supporting one in three first home buyers.

The government has continued with this very proud coalition legacy and we're pleased it has seen fit to support that program now, after criticising it earlier in its inception. I've seen firsthand and I've delivered, as a minister, a policy within six months of an election. Here we've got it 20 months later and, quite rightly, crossbenchers are asking, 'Where on earth is the detail in this bill and how on earth am I going to be able to communicate to our constituents any possible benefits to this scheme?' Notwithstanding that, we won't be supporting the amendments.

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