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

What you don't hear in question time from this government is anything about the housing crisis facing Australians. What you see in question time from this government is a very self-satisfied Prime Minister and frontbench who basically come in here every day and tell Australians that they've never had it better. We hear the litany of statistics from the Prime Minister basically telling Australians that they are so fortunate to have us as a government. And they never mention the housing crisis as being failed.

The most recent example of that was in question time when we had the Prime Minister blatantly refuse to answer what I thought was a very reasonable question of the government, and that question asked: why on earth, in the last two years of the Albanese government, did we have the number of migrants coming to this country running at the very least twice and on some statistics up to four times as many homes being built? Think about that—twice to four times the number of migrants coming in than homes being built.

We saw statistics reported in the Australian last week from Simon Benson, who outlined that 900,000 migrants had arrived from the time this government won office until 31 December, and in that time, when 900,000 migrants arrived in this country, 265,000 homes were built. May I say, Madam Deputy Speaker, a figure of 265,000 homes is delving into record lows for this country. Under this government, under the Labor Party, we now see new home builds at their lowest level since the global financial crisis. We see the number of first home buyers at its lowest level for over 10 years. Since this government came to office, the rents that Australians are paying have increased by 26 per cent. Sadly, we see data that shows approvals are at their lowest level for over a decade. What that means is that, if the housing crisis is bad now, it is just getting worse. That's because approvals data is the canary in the coalmine for home builds later this year, 2025 and 2026. If homes aren't being approved now, they won't be getting built over the next two-year period.

What do we hear from the government in response? Obviously, we don't hear anything about it in question time. We have heard the minister talk about the Housing Australia Future Fund.

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