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

Right now Middle Australia is breaking under a housing crisis. Rents are up 23 per cent. Home prices around my electorate are up 20 per cent also. Yet all the while Labor are in here filibustering about housing they're yet to deliver a single home from their housing package. After 2½ years in government, they're behaving like they're in opposition. Their promise to build 1.2 million homes over five years has ground to a halt. Industry leaders now confirm the coalition's earlier prediction that they would fall short of up to 400,000 homes. The number of loans provided for the purchase or construction of new homes remains at a 15-year low, almost going back to before the time the coalition was last in government. In 2023-24 we saw the lowest home-building commencements in over a decade. In this last year we have had the lowest number of starts in over a decade. There has been a lot of talk, with $32 billion being promised as a package—a lot of announcements, a lot of media and a lot of fanfare—but there have been the lowest home-building commencements in over a decade in the middle of a housing crisis. I would invite the next government speaker to address that. How can you preside over a government in the middle of a housing crisis and have the lowest home-building commencements in over a decade?

Do you know what wasn't the lowest in over a decade? Net migration. Net migration was at 463,000 people last year, with only 158,000 new housing commencements. This massive imbalance between immigration and housing has seen prices soar. Home prices are soaring. They're unaffordable. Rent prices are soaring. They're unaffordable. This government is overseeing a reckless immigration boom directly at the time they've made housing unaffordable.

And, yes, we are not bringing in, amongst this immigration boom, migrants who can actually help with this construction crisis. Nine bricklayers—there have been well over a million immigrants, but there have been nine bricklayers. We're bringing in more than a Canberra, the city we're talking in here now, every single year, but there are only 158,000 more dwellings.

While Labor is fuelling housing demand with runaway migration, they are not addressing housing supply at all. The Housing Australia Future Fund, a $10 billion funding mechanism, sounds good, doesn't it? There is $10 billion providing availability payments over a 25-year period, but it has still failed to construct a single dwelling. We're gearing up for the next election, and a signature announcement—

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