Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week I spoke about housing in my first speech. In the paper today you'll see house prices are still going up, and it's completely a failure of government. Housing new builds have excessively lagged migration, especially my home state of New South Wales and my electorate of Cook. Migration has accounted for 99 per cent of the population growth since COVID, and our population is growing the fastest it has at any time since 1952.

In New South Wales there were 170,000 new immigrants last year for just 47,000 new homes built. This is a recipe for house prices to continue to skyrocket. Whatever way you look at, it as a complete failure of government and there only two explanations for it: either the Albanese government had no idea this would happen, or they knew it was going to happen but they did it anyway. Either way, this is a damning indictment of this government and its ability to manage house prices.

The way to fix it? Start funding states on housing completions. Let's get them competing. New South Wales has taken the lion's share of migration, yet it's had infrastructure funding cut. It also has not been getting its fair share of GST. It takes 37 per cent of the country's migration, but only 27 per cent of the GST. It's time for the Albanese government to give Cook and New South Wales its fair share.

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