Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

'Our house, in the middle of our street. I remember way back then, when everything was true and when we would have such a good time, such a fine time'—Madness. I'm referring to the band that actually recorded that song, although it might apply to the policies of those opposite as well. Way back then, when a lot of young Australians could buy their own home, we didn't have a cost-of-living crisis and supply was closer to keeping up with the number of people coming into the country. But that's not the case now.

Homeownership has never been further out of reach, and loan and construction data points have gone down to the lowest level of activity since the GFC in 2008. What's causing this? What's causing the homeownership crisis and housing crisis that we're debating today? Well, it's the cost of living, obviously. The cost-of-living crisis doesn't help when you're trying to save for a home. If interest rates are going up, electricity prices are going up, food is going up, and your disposable income is going down, down, down, then it's very difficult for young people to save for a home.

There's supply. We've talked a lot about supply, and it's not getting better on the ground, that I can see, in my electorate of Nicholls. Even though the government says, 'Oh, we're working on supply; we're working on this; we're putting this into place; we're doing this,' all I'm seeing is added bureaucracy.

To be fair, the added bureaucracy is not just from the federal Labor government. In my state of Victoria, it's from the state Labor government. And if you want to come and see what a poor government looks like, get a flight to Melbourne and have a look around!

Now, the problem is that it takes a long, long time to turn a paddock that has been zoned residential into something that someone could pour a slab on. Sometimes it's six to eight years. That is not helping with supply. The causes are ridiculous bureaucratic delays: red tape, green tape—every kind of tape you can imagine. Developers are telling me it's so hard to be able to develop new estates, with the services and all of the things. It should be much easier. The federal government should be supporting state and local governments to streamline these processes. Instead of putting money into building new homes, put the money into making sure that state and local governments have the ability to streamline their approval processes, and we'll see more houses get built.

Labor has some ambitious targets, but I don't see any credible plan to achieve them. There are some plans that I think are fairly dubious. I mean, take Help to Buy—I'll go back to Madness for a while: 'Our house, was our castle and our keep'. Well, under the Labor plan Help to Buy, 'our house' will be the Albanese government's castle and their keep—that's how that's going to work!

I think there are a lot of good ideas that can be put forward. One constructive idea I want to throw out there is the rise and rise of modular housing development. There's a company in my electorate of Nicholls that's aiming to set up a factory that will build modular houses and go out and drop them on blocks and plug them in. I think that's a great advance and a way we can get more people to have a roof over their head. With modular building, you take away a lot of the delay and cost that come from having to be out in the elements to build, as you're doing it in a controlled environment. So I'm really excited to see this company called JMB Modular Buildings set up their facility in Nicholls. I just hope that they can fast-track their housing build and reduce the costs of actually building the houses. But can the governments reduce their planning and bureaucracy delays so we can get more houses on the ground? 'Our house, in the middle of our street'—we need more houses and more streets. (Time expired)

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