Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

We will not be supporting these amendments, because these amendments highlight the absolute absurdity of this policy. These amendments deal with the potential interactions with state and territory governments, which highlight the fundamental problems with this approach—that is, that we are taking schemes that have existed at a state level in virtually every jurisdiction in this country and bringing them national.

Australians have already voted with their feet on shared equity schemes. Why? Because in states like New South Wales, which had a shared equity scheme, more than 90 per cent of the places available went unused. So what genius in the Labor Party thinks, in the midst of the worst housing crisis ever, 'What policy should we come up with? What innovation, what new thinking should we come up with? Oh, let's take shared equity schemes at a state level and bring them to the Commonwealth.'

Meanwhile we have seen these schemes fail at a state level. Australians watching this may ask: why have shared equity schemes largely failed throughout our country? Because it is all care and no responsibility from the government. The government gets to take a share in your home. There are events that occur, including if your income rises, that might trigger a sale of that property against your will as a co-owner. The government will take their pound of flesh on the upside, but guess what? Even though the government gets to take their pound of flesh at the end, you, as the Australian co-owner of that property with the government, are responsible for every cost on the way through—all the repairs, all the maintenance, all the costs associated with owning that property—yet the government as a silent co-owner steps in at the end, having contributed nothing to those costs, and says, 'We will take our 40 per cent, thank you, including the capital growth in that property.'

So it's no real surprise that Australians have rejected these things. They don't want the Labor Party co-owning their property. It's absurd that, in an environment where this government has brought in 1.4 million migrants with no idea where they're going to live, which is doing them no favours and doing Australians no favours, their answer—their big solution, the new thinking, the innovation in their policy—is to replicate shared-equity schemes that have failed virtually everywhere else. They are bereft of ideas. They've got no idea what they are doing. It's no wonder we see it reflected in every single metric. The scoreboard is very clear. The scoreboard does not lie. We have fewer homes being built. We have fewer homes being approved. We've got fewer first home buyers. On every single metric in this country, housing has gone backwards. And what's the big idea from this government? Replicate shared-equity schemes that already exist elsewhere.

The other part of the story that is inconvenient but highlighted by these amendments is that all of these require state and territory governments to pass their own legislation, again highlighting that these are the province of state governments. The Prime Minister said yesterday that they'd all signed up. Only Queensland has passed their legislation so far. I hate to rain on the minister's parade of this being a heroic moment for her, but this means very little today outside of Queensland because no other state or territory has passed their legislation. This means very little because, until they are passed in state parliaments, this today and these amendments do not take practical effect for any single person who may want one of these products.

Having said that, we know that these have been unused throughout our country. Victoria is winding up their scheme. In New South Wales, again, 90 per cent of places went unused. So again I highlight the point: if you're thinking how you can help first home buyers, why on earth would you replicate a product that's already been rejected? Why on earth would you claim that that is some massive solution to the huge problem that has been exacerbated by the very poor decisions of this government? Quite frankly, we know you've run out of ideas. We know your heart is not in homeownership. Only the coalition believes in home— (Time expired)

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