Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

As has been said by previous speakers, there are seven schedules to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Responsible Buy Now Pay Later and Other Measures) Bill 2024. I only plan to speak to two of the schedules, with one being schedule 1. Schedule 1, along with the Capital Works (Build to Rent Misuse Tax) Bill 2024, implements tax incentives for build-to-rent developments, and an associated misuse tax as a compliance measure for incorrect claims. I don't have a problem with this, in the sense that this is a policy to give incentives and tax incentives for people to build houses that are then going to be rented out. You could say, 'Well, that's good.' I'm not saying that's bad. What I'm saying is, 'Why are we limiting this, and why is this a rent-only policy?' What I read into this is that this government is not interested in people who would like to build and/or buy their own home as owner-occupiers; it is only looking to assist people who are happy to build places to be rented out.

Again, the way this is designed is really for big investors. This is about corporate funds or industry super funds that would then look to invest heavily in this market to then rent those places out. You might say, 'Well, why would Labor only be interested in helping those like industry super funds invest in housing so that they can rent these houses out, but not in helping people who want to be owner-occupiers get these same types of advantages?' Do you know what the answer is? The answer is: it's because the people who run those industry super funds are the unions. What the Labor government is doing here is setting up a vehicle and an incentive to make it easier for the industry super funds. I don't have a problem with industry super funds and the role that they play for people's retirement. But, again, what this shows is that the industry super funds—which are basically run by the union movement and, as we know, the Labor Party is also run by the union movement—have come up with a scheme and said: 'Well, we want to get our industry super funds into home ownership. Let's set up a scheme that makes it easier, so we have incentives to do that, and then we'll build them and rent them out.'

You might say that's okay. You might say that's not okay. But for those people who say it is okay, I would say, 'This is selling out the Australian public who want to be owner-occupiers.' That's what this is doing. This is ignoring mums and dads out there or people who may be single who want to buy and invest in their own home. This does nothing for them.

Why have they designed a scheme like that? I highlight that, again, this is the industry super funds, run by the union movement, and the Labor Party, run by the union movement, coming up with a scheme that is good for the industry super funds, which are the unions, which are run by the Labor Party. There's a whole little circle here as to why this is focused solely on that.

On the housing issue more broadly: the member for Fisher, who spoke earlier, raised some very good points. With all due respect to the government, we have some huge issues with housing. Deputy Speaker, I'm sure it's the same in your community. We've had, I think, 800,000 people come to Australia under this government in the last 12 months. Again, I like migration. I don't mind. We've been a country that's been built on migration for a long time, and I think it's been a great thing for our country. But this government has allowed so many people to come in so quickly that we haven't had the infrastructure and the housing built to maintain that. That's been a huge issue that this government has contributed to.

To point the finger at someone other than the current government, as an opposition member, I'd also raise another point here, and I'd like to put it on the record. As to the housing shortage, this government, through its migration program, brought in many people, without having a plan to build more houses or incentives for people to build more houses. While that is a problem, I'd also point the finger very squarely at the two other levels of government: state and local government.

I find that, across the country, the big problem for housing, for us, is local government. Every house and every apartment that you want to build in this country has to go through a local government DA approval process.

I can speak of my own patch. I have a housing development that's 2,000 or 3,000 houses on a beautiful hill overlooking Lismore. Do you know how long that's been on the books, Deputy Speaker? I know you can't say anything, but, if you said to me, 'Ten years,' I would say, 'No—more,' and you'd go, 'No!' and then if you said, 'Twenty years,' I'd say, 'Deputy Speaker, no, it's more,' and if you said, 'Thirty years,' I'd say, 'Yes. Right on it.' That approval, to get those 2,000 or 3,000 houses, has been on the books of the local council for 30 years. This is outrageous! The green tape and red tape around this proposal has held it up. It's been referred to state planning. It's come back from state planning. There's been another process because people don't want it to be built. The local council itself—a Labor-Greens council—at the start didn't want to approve it anyway and didn't want more homes for families. Work that out! That dragged on for years and then suddenly they changed their mind.

I think you could almost say it, I agree with the Prime Minister. He had a go at the Greens crossbench one day and said that he didn't know of any housing approval in his electorate that he's ever seen a Greens local council member vote for! I could say the same. I don't think I've seen a Greens member of my local councils—and I've got six of them within my electorate—who's said, 'Yes, I vote to approve that development proposal to go through.'

And what, we've got a problem with lack of housing. Yes! This whole NIMBYism has to be called out. You can't have someone who lives in the country who thinks, 'When you build my house, that's good, but once you've built my house I don't want one built next door in the paddock! I like looking at the cows, so let's not build anymore, because you've just built mine.' That obviously isn't sustainable for our country and for our communities. Obviously, in the city—I don't live in a city—you can't say, 'I'll build a high-rise but don't build a high-rise next to me.' This whole NIMBY attitude that once I'm here nothing can happen around me is not sustainable for our country, and it's a big problem.

Anyway, moving on from housing, the next thing I would like to talk to is schedule 7. While I'm not opposed to this, I think the government should be doing more. Schedule 7 extends the instant asset write-off at an asset cap of $20,000 for the 2024-25 financial year. Deputy Speaker, you've been a member of this chamber for a long time—and I congratulate you on being here for such a long time—and you've seen a lot of things happen. The one thing that I think we'll all remember—I was here for the period—were the COVID lockdowns. I think we all went into the COVID lockdowns thinking, 'How is this going to work? We're all going to send everyone home, we're not going to work, what's it going to do to businesses, and how's this all going to roll out?' There were obviously a lot of things we, as the previous government, did. There was the job payment, and when everybody started going back to work and we were trying to keep things together, we did something else.

We'd already instituted the instant asset tax write-off earlier and we had it at $20,000 and we'd increased the size of businesses that could apply for it. Almost the day that we implemented this as a policy in the previous government, I had businesses around my electorate saying, 'Kevin, this is a really good policy. This is a really good incentive for us.' Then what happened during COVID was—and I think this was the game changer—we made it unlimited. There were businesses that were making significant capital investments and being able to have an instant asset tax write-off for it. You had things like people buying big machinery worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, and the order books just started to fill up. The incentive that gave to invest in this country was a very big life changer. Without exception, travelling the country at the time as an assistant minister, people were telling me, 'Kevin, this is the thing that has saved my business.' JobKeeper was great. JobKeeper was essential, but post JobKeeper when everybody started to say, 'We're allowed to come back to work,' with limited things they could or could not do, the instant tax write off was it.

We have put an amendment to this. We think the instant asset tax write-off should be higher. We've indicated that we would make it $30,000. I think, and some other speakers have made the claim too, that this needs to be a permanent fixture within what we do, because—Deputy Speaker, you'd know this—as a country we succeed. We make money in this country and that's a good thing. I don't see making money, increasing your income as a family, making money as a small business, making money as a big business or making money as a country as a bad thing. That is a good thing because the more money we make as a government and the more money we generate as a government the more money we have to spend on social services and government services.

What are the four or five things that we make our money from in this country? We make money out of coal, we make money out of iron ore, we make money out of gas and we make money out of farming. They are the four biggest exports in this country.

I'll take the interjection.

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