Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Supply, supply, supply. That is the answer to the pressures facing Australia's housing sector. Increasing supply is what the Labor government has been seeking to do since our election in 2022. It's the policy we took to the election: more homes to buy, more homes to rent, more homes period. That's the answer to ensuring more Australians get a roof over their heads and enjoy the security that the member for Macquarie alluded to. But standing in the way is Australia's new coalition of protest and petty grievance. The Liberals and the Greens are chained together to the excavator on home sites across the country, stopping tradies from getting on with the job. It's not Bob the Builder; it's 'Pete the protester'.

This MPI, from the member for Hume, is on negative gearing, which shouldn't surprise us. The shadow Treasurer has brought on a matter of public importance about a matter that is not government policy. It's a Seinfeld debate—a debate about a policy that doesn't exist, except in the cavernous space of the member for Hume's head. It's easier for him, I suppose, than an MPI on the government's actual economic record of more jobs, higher wages, bigger tax cuts, lower inflation and two big Labor budget surpluses. The fact is this Labor government is fixing the mess the Liberals left behind over their decade of neglect. Labor has done more for housing in three years than the Liberals did in 10. If you want to look at the record of Liberals in government, look no further than the bin fire in my home state. After a decade of state Liberal government, Tasmania has 4,700 people on the emergency housing waiting list. It has doubled since the Liberals were elected in 2014. The average wait time for placement is 94 weeks, which is four times longer than in 2014. As for affordability, New South Wales remains the most unaffordable, but a close second is Tassie. That's the legacy of a decade of failed Liberal government in Tasmania and nationally.

Compare that to the progress that's been made after just three years of federal Labor government. Our $32 billion Homes for Australia plan unlocks all parts of the housing ecosystem to build more homes, providing leadership, funding and incentives to state governments to get homes more quickly, training more tradies, funding more apprenticeships and growing the workforce, including through fee-free TAFE, which those opposite opposed. We're delivering the biggest investment in social housing in more than a decade to help reduce homelessness. We're improving affordability, with our $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, our $3 billion social housing accelerator payment and the largest increase to Commonwealth rental assistance in 30 years.

One part of our comprehensive housing plan is the Help to Buy bill being blocked and delayed by the Liberals and Greens in the Senate. Help to Buy will support up to 40,000 eligible Australians, many of them young Australians, to purchase a home. It will do this by the government taking on some of the equity in the property, significantly bringing down the cost of servicing the loan. We know it will work because various states, including Tasmania and Western Australia, already have similar shared-equity schemes in place. A shared-equity scheme even operates under the state Liberal government of Tasmania, and shared-equity schemes are part of Greens policy, but both the Liberals and the Greens in this place are chained together in opposition to shared equity. The naked political pointscoring of this coalition of chaos is stopping 40,000 Australians a year from getting the opportunity to get their foot on the first rung of the homeownership ladder.

The shadow Treasurer has brought on a debate about taxation policy. What he should be talking about is the Labor government's taxation policy. I'm very proud of the changes we made to the Liberal Party's stage 3, which delivered a tax cut for every Australian worker and bigger tax cuts for most. Importantly, they also delivered a tax cut to workers earning under $40,000 a year, who would have received nothing under those opposite. In my home state of Tasmania, 90 per cent of workers—nine in 10—are better off under the Labor government's taxation policy changes. That's what this debate should be about, not the fantasy of changes to negative gearing, which is not government policy.

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