Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

Labor promised before May 2022 they would fix the housing crisis. What are they doing now they are in office? Pile in more people. Immigration is up to 1.7 million, up 200,000 from the last budget, because 'Chalmernomics' is not based on supply and demand; it is based on government and more government. Labor's central housing policy, the Help to Buy Scheme, is not a homeownership policy; it is a home nationalisation policy, a scheme passed using a gag motion, like we saw today when the government gagged debate on the national vehicle efficiency standard.

The Albanese government is an arrogant and secretive government hell-bent on delivering a big government agenda and avoiding any scrutiny while doing it. Labor gaslights Australians, saying, 'Things are getting better,' but they are not. The Australian public know it. They have figured this government out in record time for a first-term government. While the Australian dream of buying and owning your own home is disappearing, Labor is living it's best life, living its dream of big government, controlling people's lives. Now they are taking equity in people's houses.

Construction of new homes is in freefall under this government. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has highlighted the weakest two quarters of construction in more than a decade, with just 38,397 homes commencing construction in the December 2023 quarter, and 163,836 in the 2023 calendar year. Peak bodies have confirmed the government will miss its promise of a 1.2 million homes by 2029. The State of the Housing System report estimates that by 2029 just 943,000 homes will be built, while others say it could be as low as 800,000. The Centre for International Economics Modelling recently showed four out of five new homes that could have been built under Labor's housing policies will never see a shovel hit the ground due to productivity-sapping industrial relations changes and volatile conditions which will erode 80 per cent of the gains in projected housing stock.

Housing approvals for the detached homes are already at their lowest level since the Gillard government. New homes starts have sunk to an 11-year low. The Domain first home buyer report earlier this year indicated that it takes almost five years to save the 20 per cent deposit to buy a home. Under Labor, house prices are at record highs, with only 13 per cent of homes being sold considered affordable on an average income. Real disposable incomes have collapsed by 7.5 per cent per capita since Labor came to power through price increases outpacing wages, rising taxes and rising mortgage repayments. In the two years since the election, Australians have paid an extra $2,000 per month on an average mortgage, and lending for the purchase or construction of new homes remains at a 20-year low. Under the former coalition government, interest rates were cut nine times and only rose once, but, in just two years, rates have risen 12 times under Labor.

The fact of the matter is that Australians are being locked out of the housing market. Labor's federal budget housing announcements offer no new money, no new ideas and no new homes—nothing for first home buyers and nothing for renters. Labor is clutching at straws and completely out of ideas. By contrast, when the coalition was in government we created the Home Guarantee Scheme, which is now supporting one in three first home buyers. No matter how often Labor tries to take credit for it, it's actually our deal. Since 2019, the coalition's housing policies in government supported more than 300,000 Australians into homeownership. On our watch, there were 160,000 first home buyers in 2021, a 70 per cent increase on the average of the previous decade. The coalition is the party of housing affordability, private home ownership and supporting first home buyers, and we are proud of it.

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