Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

Whilst the government is opposing the suspension of standing orders from the member for Calare, I do appreciate his concerns and understand the issue he is seeking to address here. Although, I don't believe that this proposal will address the housing challenges confronting Australia, and many may actually make them worse.

While investment in building new houses is welcome, foreign ownership of existing houses is generally prohibited, as I'm sure the member appreciates. This boosts the nation's housing stock and assists in the long run whilst ensuring we have enough homes to house Australians. Only in very limited circumstances are foreigners allowed to purchase an existing home. We do, however, want to ensure that foreign investment in housing is in the national interest, which is why we recently introduced a bill in this place to raise the fees on those seeking to purchase an existing home and to increase the maximum fine for those that do not sell or rent out their property when they leave Australia or when they leave the property vacant. Funds raised from these fees and fines will support greater monitoring by the Australian Taxation Office to ensure greater compliance with this measure and our rules and to ensure any investment is in the national interest. Indeed, the changes in our bill do three things. The bill triples the foreign investment fees for the purchase of established homes, doubles vacancy fees for all foreigner owned dwellings purchased since 9 May 2017 and enhances the ATO's compliance regime to ensure foreign investors comply with the rules, including the selling of their residence when required.

Our government does take seriously the task of helping more Australians into home ownership. Last night in this place, we were able to take another step forward on that with the passage of our Help to Buy legislation, which will help people into home ownership, particularly low- and middle-income Australians—and I thank the member for Calare for his support for that. Once passed by the parliament, the scheme will support 40,000 low- and middle-income Australians to access home ownership with smaller mortgages and lower deposits. As I have said, we did design this scheme carefully to ensure that it does support the low- and middle-income households while having a minimal impact.

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