Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

The Senate committee inquiry into the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 heard stakeholders ask the Australian government to consider changes to the annual cap on disbursements from the Housing Australia Future Fund. The government has agreed to amend the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill to provide the $500 million will be dispersed annually from the Housing Australia Future Fund from 2024-25 onwards.

We have listened to feedback also in relation to the recommended amount to be dispersed from the Housing Australia Future Fund be indexed from 2029-30. The government has therefore agreed to amend the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill to protect the real purchasing power of disbursements from the Housing Australia Future Fund by indexing the fixed disbursement amount in line with the consumer price index every year from 2029-30 onwards. From 2024-25, the transfer requests related to the Housing Australia Future Fund will be tallied on 1 June each financial year. The difference between this amount and the fixed disbursement amount of $500 million, or the indexed amount from 2029-30, will be transferred to Housing Australia prior to the end of the financial year. These funds must be spent on social and affordable housing or acute housing needs. Transferring a fixed amount of $500 million per year, or the indexed amount from 2029-30, from the Housing Australia Future Fund provides further legislative certainty that long-term commitments will be met, regardless of the earnings generated from the investments of the fund.

Applying indexation from 2029-30 will help deliver improved housing outcomes over the long term, as it will ensure that the Housing Australia Future Fund payments do keep pace with inflation. This supports the government entering into long-term contracts with housing providers to deliver on the government's commitment of 30,000 new social and affordable homes in the fund's first five years. The government will monitor the fund's balance and trajectory to ensure it remains well placed to provide meaningful and sustainable disbursements over the long term. This will occur as part of the annual budget cycle when considering proposals to access disbursements from the fund and as part of the statutory review process.

The government is also introducing amendments to provide the flexibility for the Minister for Finance and the Treasurer, as the responsible ministers, to increase the fixed $500 million disbursement amount in the future by making a determination via a disallowable legislative instrument. This would allow the government to increase the annual disbursement amount in response to investment, market or policy considerations, including if a decision was taken to make additional credits into the fund into the future, as permitted by the bill. The amendment will also provide the flexibility for the determination to provide for the indexation of the designated annual amount in future years.

Prior to issuing a determination, the responsible ministers will be required to consult the future fund board of guardians on a draft determination that proposes an increase to the disbursement amount. This will allow the board to consider whether any proposed increase will impact the board's ability to continue to comply with its obligations under the Housing Australia Future Fund Act 2023 and the Housing Australia Future Fund investment mandate. The responsible ministers must take this advice into account when making the determination to adjust the disbursement, and the board's advice will be tabled in parliament alongside the disbursement. The ability to update the disbursement limit by legislative instrument is similar to the framework in place for the Disaster Ready Fund. I thank the crossbench members for their engagement on this amendment, particularly those in the Senate.

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

The coalition won't be supporting these amendments. We've seen that the government, as part of these amendments, has finally paid the ransom that the Greens have been demanding for many months. The government talked a big game, and it was quite entertaining to see the two bedfellows, the Labor Party and the Greens, arguing so ferociously for months on end. Then in the end the government buckled.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They capitulated!

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

The government capitulated. But it's very surprising that one of the amendments here, one of the things that the government cannot explain—and they certainly couldn't explain it in the Senate—was how on earth a fund will maintain its corpus if the return it generates in a year is lower than the legislated dividend of $500 million, which was not there originally; it's only there because the government has capitulated to the Greens. They can't explain how on earth that won't diminish the fund.

Here we've got a government that has done nothing on housing for 15 months—nothing, absolutely nothing. Their signature policy, if you call it an agenda, the Housing Australia Future Fund, has now been whittled away by the Greens. We've got no clarity from the minister. I doubt the minister really understands it. But, when you borrow $10 billion, there will be $400 million to pay at a minimum. The government bond rate is 4.07 per cent. So the government's going to be paying more than $400 million on this borrowing. The minister has not explained what the management fee for the future fund will be. It has typically been in the order of one per cent. That's been the management fee, in addition to $400 million of interest. Australian taxpayers are being asked each year to fund $500 million of cost just so the minister can set up a fund that could lose money. Then, if it loses money, the minister has capitulated to the Greens to pay out a minimum of $500 million, and she's somehow arguing that that would not reduce the corpus of the fund.

Finally, we've seen 15 months of this government, and the minister has not been able to deliver an investment mandate. Where on earth is the investment mandate? This has been held up by the Greens for months. You were begging the Greens to pass this for months. You capitulated to the Greens, and we still don't have an investment mandate. We do not have an investment mandate after 15 months. That should be a source of embarrassment to everybody there. What on earth have you been doing? You clearly haven't been delivering the Help to Buy Scheme, which was supposed to start on 1 January. It's now 13 September and we don't have it, so you haven't been distracted by the Help to Buy Scheme. That's why we cannot support these amendments.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Excuse me, Member for Deakin; please direct your comments through me as the chair and do not personalise those comments.

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

I've been seeking to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker. How on earth could the government now come back with amendments that undermine this 'money-go-round' of a Ponzi scheme—the signature policy of this government—that will not deliver one house before the next election? It will not deliver one house before the next election. Unless I'm entirely wrong—I'll be very generous—you will build 30,000 homes over five years at the same time as you're bringing in 1½ million migrants. Explain that to your electorates. Where will those people live? So we've seen nothing—

The minister's very chirpy. I suggest the minister gets to work on the Help to Buy Scheme—do some work, get to work on the investment mandate that should be here for this parliament to consider today. What have you been doing for months? Clearly not delivering housing policies. No matter how much you try to take credit for our Home Guarantee Scheme, that's a coalition policy, not a Labor government policy. We will not be supporting these amendments to this terrible bill. (Time expired)

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition will not be supporting the amendments that the Senate has requested to this bill, because this bill seeks to put into place what is a cynical ploy directed at the Australian people, which, as the shadow minister for housing has so articulately pointed out on many occasions around the country in a whole range of forums, will not deliver the promised benefits. When you consider the basis on which the Labor Party, when in opposition, dreamt up this policy, it's pretty clear that they started by saying: 'How can we have a really big number that we can roll out anytime we're asked about housing? How about 10 billion? That's a great number. That's a big number.'

The problem is that, despite the way that Labor parliamentarians repeatedly refer to a '$10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund' in media interviews, they're not going to spend $10 million—or anything like it—on housing. It's a cynical exercise in coming up with a big number and being able to quote the big number repeatedly. Once you dig into the details of this policy, it becomes clear that it is nothing like the impression that the Labor Party is seeking to create in the minds of the Australian people. What is being spent is not $10 billion; it's the returns earned—if earned—in certain circumstances.

Let's remind ourselves that this is money which is being borrowed by the Commonwealth under the careful economic management of the present government. In fact, it's very far from careful; it's highly irresponsible. What they've decided to do is to borrow $10 billion and go and punt it on the stock market. That's the plan. They're going to borrow $10 billion and punt it on the Stock Exchange.

As the shadow minister for housing has pointed out on a number of occasions, if that had been done last year, how much money would have been available to spend on housing under this ripper scheme? It would have been zero. What we don't actually know is whether the losses to the scheme first have to be recouped before any earnings can be spent in years to come. If that were a requirement—and, in any business-like arrangement, that would be the requirement—then we'd be waiting even longer before this ill-conceived scheme made any impact at all on the provision of housing for Australians.

What we also know is that under these arrangements you can have no certainty each year about how much money is actually going to be available, how much money is going to be earned, because that will depend upon the vagaries of market returns. So, when it is repeatedly claimed by this minister that this will produce a reliable, dependable stream of earnings out of which the construction of housing can be funded, that is entirely the opposite of the truth. It will not be clear, from year to year, how much money will be available. On the contrary, it will depend entirely on the vagaries of market returns, so the downstream consequences for the provision of housing will be that there will be a lack of certainty when it comes to the amount of money that can be provided to community housing providers, to state governments or to others who are promised funding under these arrangements.

This is a deeply ill-conceived scheme. It is the kind of thing you come up with when you want to have some talking points about housing, when you want to be able to throw around a big number, when you want to be able to pretend that you have a solution to the issue and when you want to be able to say something to people who point out that the number of new housing starts under this government has collapsed. What you're looking for is a distraction, because it's very inconvenient to have to respond to the truth, which is that new housing starts under this government are collapsing. We have rarely seen housing policy more badly administered than under this minister and this government. For this reason, the coalition will be opposing these amendments.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join my colleagues in articulating the need for these Senate amendments to the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 not to be accepted. I start by congratulating the Greens—the member for Brisbane is in here. This is one of the great humiliations of the government that I've seen in this parliamentary term. Well done to the Greens for meting out such a spectacular humiliation upon the government, who now, as media reports indicate, have spent $3 billion to purchase the Greens party's support for this lemon of a policy in the Senate.

The government's whole point of having this policy was to look like they were doing something about housing, off balance sheet. They conjured up and concocted this policy position, which had absolutely no cost, for the purposes of an election campaign policy, so they could say, 'We've got a policy,' without actually putting any money behind it. The position that they now find themselves in is that this policy to cost them no money has now cost them $3 billion, through compromise to the Greens. So, in effect, they're spending $3 billion of actual money, because of the Greens, in exchange for the Greens supporting their policy that probably involves no money whatsoever.

What a spectacular success for the Greens, and I wish them all the very best in making that point in their electorates, and the ones that they're hunting from the government, when they point out that the only people that have put any actual money into housing, through this whole process that we've gone through, are the Greens. The government, who effectively had a policy to spend nothing at all, because of the Greens are now spending $3 billion worth of actual money to get support for this lemon of a policy, which, as previously speakers have pointed out, is likely to spend no money whatsoever on social housing. The $10 billion future fund, thanks to the $3 billion that the Greens have negotiated in exchange for their support, will see $3 billion spent on social housing, maybe. But it is nothing to do with the policy that is being brought before us, which was purchased for $3 billion from the Greens.

As the shadow minister points out, the principle of this policy is borrowing $10 billion at a cost of about half a billion dollars a year, hoping to make more than half a billion dollars by investing it, and whatever that gap is will be the actual amount of money that is spent in that year on social housing and on these housing initiatives. There's no real money whatsoever except the $3 billion the Greens have been able to bludgeon out of the government in exchange for supporting the bill. Potentially, in fact, the fund could lose money. If it doesn't make at least half a billion dollars a year from investing the $10 billion, the fund goes backwards. That means the government might be spending more than $3 billion when they put this whole policy process together, but it will not all be spent on social housing. There will be $3 million for housing thanks to the deal they have done with the Greens, and then whatever the loss that this fund makes. This loss could be who knows how much, hundreds of millions of dollars perhaps, and that will go to the people that successfully bet against the government in whatever investment framework or the return to the people who get the fees from managing the funds.

What a joke of a situation we have here. The government wanted to have a policy to take to the last election without it costing them anything, so we now have a situation where it has been put to this House that we accept this amended bill, which sees a separate deal for its support in the Senate putting extra money into social housing via successful negotiations with the Greens and the successful humiliation of the government by the Greens. They did the deal so that they could salvage a policy that was never going to be passed. If the policy goes through, we'll probably have a situation where the government loses money. When you net all this out, you have this money-go-round of borrowing $10 billion, paying interest, paying fund managers, hoping to make more than that on the market, and when you do not it costs you money, so this policy puts nothing into housing. It will probably lose money when they meet all the costs of borrowing and managing the fund versus how much they do make to cover the investment out there in the investment world where they deploy these funds.

Congratulations to the Greens because you have had a fantastic success. You have humiliated the government to salvage a political outcome, and it has cost the government $3 billion. It's an absolute humiliation, but this House should not be supporting this amended bill because it is the most fraudulent policy. Give the Greens their $3 billion, but don't create the fund that will cost more money still.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we go! Members opposite will be interested to know I just googled 'lovers getting back together in songs'. They're 'Whatever it Takes' by Lifehouse, 'Reunited' by Peaches and Herb—I like this one—'Let's Stay Together' by Al Green, but the best one of all is Katy Perry's 'Never Really Over' because it never was really over. The relationship between the Greens and Labor was always there and was always strong. They were just pretending they had a little lovers' tiff, and we know that, on housing, the Greens pretended they were going out on a limb. They have rolled over, the government has capitulated and it is embarrassing for all concerned.

We as a coalition are not going to support these amendments to the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023. The former minister for housing in the coalition government, who sits behind me here, the member for Deakin, put in place three very responsible measures, three programs which assisted 300,000 people to get homeownership. They are the Home Guarantee Scheme, HomeBuilder and the First Home Super Saver Scheme. Those policies were effective. They worked. What we have now is the Greens, who have never been in favour of building anything, and Labor, who puts in place reviews of everything that ever was going to be built, coming together to put a scheme in place that is not going to build a single house. It's just not going to. When Labor took government I heard promises of a million houses. Now it's 30,000. What is it going to be? Is it going to be a house? Is it going to be 30,000 houses? Is going to be a million homes?

What I'd really like to know is: what are you going to build those houses with? We've got a Labor Victorian government. They're totally against any timber being extracted or used. They want to turn off all the gas. The Greens are with them. They don't want any fossil fuels used. Are they going to be straw houses, so, when the wolf comes, he's can huff and puff and blow them down? These are questions that need to be answered, because those opposite don't want to build anything. They want to review absolutely everything.

The other thing too—and this is pertinent—is that, as of late June 2023, ASIC data shows 2,023 construction companies have gone into liquidation since mid-2021. This figure dwarfs the next industry sector, the accommodation and food sector, with 1,013 companies, and makes up the lion's share of 7,231 companies in total that have folded over the same period. You've got housing and construction companies throughout Australia shutting up shop. They can't find labour. They cannot find the materials to build houses.

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can yell at me all you like, but it's the truth, and it's particularly the truth in regional Australia. It comes down to local government planning. It comes down to the sheer ineptitude of state governments that want to close down the timber industry, and then it comes down to the federal Labor government, which doesn't want to build anything, unless it's with the Greens. Then they make this faux policy that they claim is going to build tens of thousands of houses. Good luck with that! It's just not going to work.

If you look at the housing construction companies that have gone to the wall, some are not small companies.

Honourable members interje cting—

You shouldn't laugh at this, because this is very, very serious, because it's people in jobs. It's tradies. It's those people who you claim to be supporting through fee-free TAFE. I said the other day that sparkies and plasterers and all of those people who go to TAFE and earn that certificate should be admired and applauded every bit as much as anybody who holds a tertiary degree from university. They should, and yet they are being put up against the proverbial brick wall by those opposite with their policies, with their embarrassing coercion by the Greens, who pretended for months they were going to pull the trigger for the double dissolution. Now what have we got? We've got these amendments which the coalition will not and cannot support. You all ought to go and take a good long, hard look at yourselves, particularly the minister.

Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a joy it is to speak on this, following the magnificent member for Riverina. I've got to pick him up though. He missed the best song that would cover this return of the two lovers. It is of course 'Two of Us' by the Beatles, because of that second line, 'Spending someone's hard-earned pay':

Two of us riding nowhere

Spending someone's hard-earned pay.

Can you think of anything that better describes this wonderful collaboration that we're seeing? It's absolutely magnificent! It is a shame that we don't have the other minister for housing, from the Greens, here with us, but we'll make do. The member for Griffith has done a fantastic job, because, let's be clear, the issues we're having in housing supply are caused by the deployment of Greens policies at a local government level. Then he comes on top and pulls this through! It's the greatest move that the Greens have pulled. But there is nothing in these amendments that will do anything at all to take away from the hairs that are on this terrible, terrible policy in terms of reliability and sustainability. It is simply the wrong model to deliver capital works with. This has been gone over many times. The member for Deakin did a fantastic job of this. It's not $10 billion. It's a borrowed $10 billion, at a cost of some $400 million a year. We need to add to that the magnificent promise of $500 million into housing every year. I want to dig into this a little bit. Grab your calculators out. This is really great because I get the opportunity to talk up Toowoomba. There's $500 million, at, let's say, $700,000 a house. That's fair. How many houses are we building? It's about 700 houses—less than the number of houses built by Toowoomba. With this grand scheme, this $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, you almost catch up to Toowoomba. You're almost catching up to a country city. Wow—magnificent! We do that every year, and this grand scheme, this thing that we're all talking about—this huge investment, the biggest investment ever, that's going to do so much for Australian housing—means you're almost catching up to Toowoomba. It's absolutely fantastic, guys. I don't know what to tell you.

Let's go to the commitment of 30,000 houses. It was a million. It's close. It's in the ballpark! There's a margin of error there, but we'll allow it, because accounting is hard. Numbers are tough. Remembering numbers is tough. But we'll allow it. We'll allow the 30,000 to sit, and we're going to add to this 1.5 million people—

An opposition member: How many?

We're adding 1.5 million people! But don't worry, guys, it's fine, because we don't already have a housing crisis—oh, sorry; we really, really do. We were sitting with the heads of the big four banks in the economics committee, and the one thing that they repeated over and over again was we have never had a worse issue when it comes to housing supply. This is an important area, so what are we going to do about it? We're going to add 30,000 houses, and 1.5 million Australians are going to come and join us here. How on earth does that address this? In this situation, it is an appalling policy that will not make things better for anybody.

Let's go back through the wrong-headed details that sit with this fund. Why would you deploy a fund like this that requires you, year on year, not just to meet your repayments but to beat them, to stay ahead? And what happens if you don't meet your repayments? Is $500 million magically going to be sprinkled down? Are we going to magically fairy-dust some money on? No. We're going to deplete the pool, surely. This is taxpayers' money, which will be depleted. This is not a sustainable model. Quite frankly, we might as well just spend the $10 billion. Put $10 billion into housing and walk away, and be happy you've done something. This has no reliability, it has absolutely no sustainability and it is completely the wrong model.

Forgive me if I take the opportunity to double-dip and point out just how great Toowoomba is. Toowoomba will be building more houses than this model will. This model will build fewer houses than Toowoomba will. What a great city we are! Without any help, without $10 billion, without all the fanfare, without all the excitement and the newspaper stories, we can just get on and do our job. In spite of that, Labor are sitting there and are going to make the biggest story they possibly can about how great their model is. It's an absolute stinker.

Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It should come as no surprise that I also want to speak opposing these amendments to the government's Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and related bills which are coming back from the Senate. This is not $10 billion that is going into housing. It sounded great during the election and it sounded great for their first few months, but these amendments and the minister speaking on these amendments today show yet again that the Labor government has no idea how to address housing affordability and the shortage of housing within this country. This is not $10 billion going into housing. This is $10 billion that you are borrowing, and then you're hoping—relying on the vagaries of market returns—that you obtain a return that is greater than the amount that you will have to pay out. You'll have to pay fund administrators. There is no guarantee this is going to build one single house. This is lazy and irresponsible economics. It's lazy and irresponsible policymaking. It's lazy and irresponsible drafting of legislation. Initially, this was so bad that not even your friends in the Greens could support it, but now, after they've extracted $3 billion more from you, it has come back from the Senate.

But this is not a bill to house Australians. This is a bill to establish a fund and a bill brought about by massive government borrowing. You've caved to the Greens and put forward some amendments, which simply involve more spending. When we looked at where some of that additional money was going to be spent, at last we were hearing that there was going to be some attempt to actually address the shortage of housing in this country, which is the disconnect between many of the state and local governments in changing their planning and bringing about up-zonings and various other reforms. But underlying this is other legislation concerning the government's housing policy that simply says to the states: 'Here's $2 billion. You can spend it however you like. You don't have to tell us where you're going to build the houses. You don't have to tell us what the projects are going to be. Here is $2 billion—no strings attached.'

This is yet again irresponsible spending by a Labor government. This is simply a way that you could ensure that this funding was not shown on the balance sheets. This is just a lazy attempt to try to address what is a massive crisis in this country, and there is absolutely no talk here about what you're going to do for private home ownership and how you are going to get more Australians, particularly young Australians, into their own homes. When Australians own their own homes, the country does better. So there is no attempt here to assist private home owners. There is no attempt to assist those under 40, who are now at their lowest rates of home ownership since the end of World War II, to buy their own homes. Again, this is simply borrowing money, establishing a fund and hoping that it makes some money, but it is not going to deliver a single home.

We heard questions from the member for Riverina about where the labour is going to come from to build these homes. There has been nothing said about that. There has also been nothing said about how you're going to deal with the various state governments, particularly that one down in Victoria, who are now trying to say that you can't even have any gas appliances in a home. So we do not support these amendments, and we do not support this bill in general.

Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to congratulate my friends who have spoken before me. I note that many brought up the Beatles, and the Beatles took me back to 1966, a time before I was born.

It is relevant. I'm glad the minister has interjected, which she did throughout the speeches today. In 1966, there was a very interesting statistic, which the minister should listen to.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to hear the relevance to the amendment.

Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Home ownership was at its peak in this country in 1966.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's got nothing to do with the Housing Australia Future Fund.

Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It certainly does. Also, at that time a certain Beatle said they were more popular than Jesus. There's a certain prime minister who likes to think they're more popular than Jesus, but that's certainly not the case. That's the only way you can explain what is happening in this parliament when we have this syllogism that occurs again and again, where the government gets up and says: 'Here is a problem. Here is a crisis.' The word 'crisis' can be overused, but it is not overused in housing. There is a genuine crisis in this country.

Then you say we must all do something about it. And then you present a bill where you've put more work into the title than the actual contents of the bill, and say: 'Well, here's something. Let's do that.' Let's read the title. It's called the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023, 'a bill for an act to establish the Housing Australia Future Fund, and for other purposes'—and for other purposes. That is what the purpose is here. Houses are constructed with materials, with things that cost money—with tiles. But the only tiles that you've turned your mind to are social media tiles, because that's all this is really about.

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I see what you did there!

Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've heard certain arguments used as a crutch in the answers to questions and in the speeches that are given on this. I note that my friend the member for Spence has interjected. We are both the co-chairs of the Parliamentary Friends of Veterans. Veterans have been used in this argument as a crutch. A crutch is a lazy tool to back up a premise that you don't have and that doesn't make sense. I want to go to veterans and housing, because that's where we got to the highest rate of home ownership under the prime ministership of Robert Menzies. Robert Menzies, during World War II, when Australians were fighting and dying overseas for this country, turned his mind to housing. He turned his mind to housing because he knew it was a fundamental thing to secure the prosperity and future of all Australians. Under his leadership and his government, home ownership in this country went from 46 per cent in 1947 to 72 per cent in 1966. That was not just during a time when veterans came back—and they weren't just offered a talking point; they were actually offered an actual home of their own—he did that during some of the greatest migration booms in this country. Migrants from throughout the world came to this country and had a home of their own and a home for their children and their grandchildren.

There are many quotes that have been given to Robert Menzies during that time, but he talked about homes material, homes human and homes spiritual. When we talk about homes material, it's that sense of owning your own little bit of Australia, your own garden where you tend to your own vegetables. That means so much to Australians. When we talk about homes human, it's the idea of raising your own family in a home. Homes spiritual is the sense of freedom, self-reliance and responsibility that comes with your own home. These are powerful things that both sides of this chamber should agree on. They're not just Liberal values, but sadly it has only been Liberal governments that have instituted the policies that reinforce them.

That is a great shame because what Robert Menzies showed is that you can actually manage population growth and housing. You can manage that problem. That're what we're talking about here. We're talking about managing a problem, and right now you are not managing it. You are creating problems with a bill like this. It's not providing solutions. It's not looking after veterans. It's not looking after families. It's not looking after migrants. That is your responsibility. And there is a housing crisis. We should all agree on democratising prosperity. We should all agree on democratising home ownership. Part of that is democratising the Australian dream of owning your own bit of this country. That is something that we must all agree on, and it starts with doing something about it. I hope that the minister does finally do something about it.

Question agreed to.