Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is nothing as important as housing. It is the first tick in the box when you want a family or a human being to feel secure. You need a roof over your head. That is one of the aspirations of just about every human being around the world. As governments, we are very responsible and have a responsibility to ensure that we can provide, through the policies in this place, for people to be able to buy affordable housing or to rent or to get a roof over their heads.

I was quite surprised when I sat here and heard the shadow minister, the member for Deakin, open his speech. He started off with something like, 'No new money for housing, no new ideas, no new programs, no new money.' For a moment, I thought he may be making a confession about the last 10 years of the former government where there was no new money, there were no new ideas and there were no new programs. We remember the minister and others back in the Abbott-Turnbull years saying that it was not their responsibility. This was a government wiping their hands of housing, saying it was not their responsibility but the responsibility of state ministers. After 10 years of inaction, they want to come in here and move a matter of public importance such as this. It's shameful. You look at their actions for 10 years—wiping their hands of housing and saying it's not their responsibility but the responsibility of the states. They do nothing for 10 years, then, as soon as they're in opposition, they want to talk about housing.

We saw the cost of housing in the last 10 years rise by approximately 49 per cent and by 30 per cent in the last three years of their government. There was absolute inaction by them then. What did they do? They came up with a botched plan about getting people to use the savings of their superannuation to spend on housing. Not one single house would be built through their proposal, but it would destroy superannuation. It would destroy people's retirement funds, and that's the real reason they want that policy, because they've always been against superannuation. They've never liked it, because it assists workers to retire with dignity. This is a backdoor way of absolutely destroying workers' accumulated funds for their retirement.

They voted against the Housing Australia Future Fund again and again, and now they're blocking the Help to Buy scheme. They've done nothing to boost supply but are now planning to increase demand with policies that all experts say will make housing less affordable. In fact, we heard the Assistant Treasurer say that, through their policies, all that will happen is that approximately $79,000 will be added to each property that's sold and there will be a longer line of people competing for housing, which will do nothing for one new house. Absolutely nothing. It's a policy which won't build a single house, a policy which will push up prices and a policy which will ruin people's retirement. That's the plan from those opposite—a plan they themselves have roundly criticised. We heard other speakers quote the Leader of the Opposition, the then housing minister and others.

We know that, as I said, housing is so important. Since coming to office, the Minister for Housing on this side has brought the state and territory housing ministers together seven times because we know it is a real issue and an issue that needs the attention of government to do all that we can. They never brought the housing ministers together at any point in time. The former government's legacy of inaction and poor policies saw housing construction costs increase by 49 per cent in the decade up to 2022 and over 30 per cent just in the last three years. The HomeBuilder program is a case in point. This poorly designed policy, which cost five times what was originally planned, brought forward a surge in construction costs and renovations that stretched supply chains already impacted by the pandemic back then. As the Reserve Bank government pointed out, the results were spiralling construction costs and growing delays.

To quote the Leader of the Opposition:

I'm good at the sort of pulling down and wrecking part, and then I need to get the builder to clean it all up.

They were the words of the Leader of the Opposition. (Time expired)

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