Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a shameful day we have had here in this parliament, a day that will go down in our nation's history as the greatest betrayal by a government of the public's trust since Federation. We have had the sickening spectacle of this government's self-congratulation by wilfully damaging our economy and wilfully dishing out more pain to Australian working families. I am sure tonight, as many struggling small business people arrive from home from work from a 12-hour-plus day, turn on their TV and see the events here earlier in this chamber, they will feel physically sick. What we saw in this chamber today was the Prime Minister pulling the pin on the suicide vest she strapped on when she decided to doublecross the Australian public on this carbon tax. Not only is she going to blow herself up; in doing so, she is going to take many members who sit on the other side of this chamber—the same members that clapped like trained seals today—with her. She has also done irreconcilable damage to the Labor brand that will last for a generation.

In the remaining time of my speech tonight, I would like to address the issue of housing affordability. Housing affordability is a major contributor to the cost of living and also a contributor to our standard of living because the cost of housing represents the largest single item in most household budgets. I draw the House's attention tonight to the 7th annual demographia international housing affordability survey for 2011. This makes very sobering reading. Its introduction by Joel Kotkin of the Chapman University in Orange County, California—and I congratulate him for his work—notes the following:

The most remarkable shift in housing affordability has been in Australia. Once the exemplar of modestly priced, high-quality middle-class housing, it is now the most unaffordable housing market in the English-speaking world.

That is right. We now have the most unaffordable housing in the English-speaking world. And for Sydney, the survey shows that Sydney is the city that has unaffordable housing second only to Hong Kong. We need to think carefully about the dangers to our economy, our society and our nation in having the most unaffordable housing in the English-speaking world.

Firstly, there is the risk with this unaffordable housing of the bubble valuations bursting, bringing down with it the entire economy. Secondly, there is the damage that it does to the rest of the economy, as severely unaffordable housing leaves families simply with less money to spend on many other goods and services. And thirdly, and I think most importantly, is what having the most unaffordable housing in the English-speaking world does to our next generation. It destroys the Australian dream of home ownership. It essentially promotes a form of neo-feudalism which reverses the great social and economic achievements of dispersing property ownership that we have seen over the last 200 years.

While we have this problem of severe unaffordable housing in our nation, what is this government doing about it? Firstly, it is slugging the economy with a carbon tax which will simply make the cost of housing more unaffordable, making the problem worse. Secondly, the report also discusses the underlying causes of housing affordability including zoning and land release issues, and it concludes with a dire warning, which says:

The housing and mortgage stress that is experienced in the severely unaffordable markets could worsen materially, if today's mortgage interest rates should return to the higher averages of the past 30 years or even to the peak rates, which were double or triple current rates.

What is this government doing to keep a check on the nation's interest rates? Absolutely nothing. We are seeing more borrowing, more waste, more excessive big government putting pressure on the nation's interest rates. Effectively, this government is doing everything in its power to bring new and unheralded levels of pain to Australian families and they stand condemned for their actions in this House here today.