Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Is it not the case that, by not addressing what the Treasurer calls excesses or enthusiasms in negative gearing, the Prime Minister is choosing to protect tax breaks for people buying their seventh house instead of protecting older Australians from cuts to their pensions?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. She raises, by inference, the very important issue of housing affordability. All Australians are concerned that all of us—our children; our grandchildren; everyone—should be able to aspire to buy their own home. There has been an enormous amount of work done on the issue of housing affordability over many years—not just in Australia but elsewhere as well—and it is very, very clear that the problem is a lack of supply and that is because of zoning. There is plenty of demand for housing; the problem is that there is in sufficient zoning—and that of course is a failure of state and local governments.

I want to address the honourable member's question very seriously here. The Treasurer spoke earlier about apartment developments and the fact that most of the buyers for apartments in most of our cities, particularly those close to the centre, where the member for Sydney's electorate is and where my electorate is—are investors, because the properties are typically rented out. So they are rental properties—and this is very important, obviously. The opposition's policy will have a very adverse effect. The opposition's policy would mean that investors would be able to buy an apartment off the plan from Meriton or Mirvac or somebody like that but, when they chose to sell that apartment, they would not be able to sell it to an investor—yet that is the market. That would have the consequence not only of reducing the value of those apartments on the re-sale but also of starting to progressively reduce the stock of housing that was available for rental.

This is something that the honourable members opposite have simply not thought through. Their policy has the logical consequence of reducing the number of properties, particularly apartment properties, that are available for rental. I cannot believe that that was the honourable member for Jagajaga's intention when she agreed to this policy. This is a classic example of not thinking important policy through, not working through the consequences, and recklessly aiming for a political announcement rather than taking due care to get the big questions determined correctly. That is what we are committed to do.