Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor's Help to Buy scheme, to be established by the Help to Buy Bill 2023, is fulfilling my commitment to the people of Moreton to help make it easier for them to purchase their first home. The Albanese government will support eligible homebuyers with an equity contribution of 40 per cent for new homes and 30 per cent for existing homes. This scheme has received national agreement from the states, who will seek to progress legislation so that the scheme can be implemented nationally. One of the joys of having a federation is that we have different land registrations. Smart states like Queensland and South Australia have the Torrens system, but the other states are a little bit different.

Home ownership is so important to the short-, medium- and long-term economic security of Australians' future, and that is why we're committed to using the tools at our disposal to make it easier for Australians to buy a home. A total of 40,000 places will be available over four years. That's 10,000 places per year. This measure won't overheat the market. It is targeted and efficient relief and will be life-changing for Australians looking to buy a home.

The Help to Buy scheme is one of a raft of measures that we've implemented to make housing more accessible and affordable. Despite the warbling and whinging from those opposite, change does not happen overnight. After 10 years of neglect, we have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to building affordable housing. As all the sensible people who deal with the housing industry know, supply, supply, supply is the solution.

This scheme will give those on low and middle incomes an opportunity to buy a home with at least a two per cent deposit. The ability for homeowners to put down a two per cent deposit will mean that it'll be far easier to save for a deposit and it will help those who are looking to buy a home get into one sooner, especially while paying rent. If you talk to any young people that have moved out of home, it's almost impossible for them to get ahead and get a deposit together to go into a home. One of the biggest barriers to homeownership is saving up for that deposit, so making the deposit as low as possible is a crucial step in making housing more accessible.

Homeownership represents more than just four walls and a roof. It represents stability, it represents achievement, it represents community and it also represents wealth that you can pass on to the next generation. The neglect the coalition showed our housing sector shows the contempt that they have everyday Australians. Help to Buy will make a significant and tangible improvement to housing security and affordability for those most marginalised in the housing market. Anyone who does not support this is not serious about making tangible improvements to people's lives.

The Grattan Institute released an article in 2022 expressing the need for a shared-equity scheme. It said:

A national shared equity scheme would help level the playing field for first home buyers …

This program gives a 40 per cent stake to those buying their first home. Not only is a shared-equity scheme a solid way of lessening the strain; it is also one of the practical measures that will help to ease this issue without any unintended consequences.

The Productivity Commission says:

The bottom line is that rent control is not an effective way to improve affordability for renters.

So, despite the Greens political party attempting to politicise another issue because it suits their agenda, the facts are very clear. If you want to help low- and middle-income Australians into homes, the key is to lower the barriers to entry for that group. Instead of the slogans, spin and ranting of the Greens political party or the negativity and naysaying of the coalition, Labor is offering a solid, fact-driven policy that will have a material impact on everyday Australians.

It's disappointing to hear the Greens political party is out there planning to vote against this in the House of Representatives. It's going to delay the housing dream for so many Australians. It's not millions of Australians. It's only 10,000. But that's 10,000 lives that can be changed and so can the households connected with them. By delaying this legislation, the Greens are saying no to Australians in suburbs and towns across the country, they're saying no to young Australians looking to buy their first homes and they are saying no to the stability of Australia's housing future. I remind the Greens political party that way back in 2019, when Labor candidates like me were out there prosecuting the case for a range of reforms on tax, including negative gearing, the Greens were nowhere to be seen when it came to campaigning on negative gearing. They were busy with Bob Brown's convoy, scaring the hell out of regional Queenslanders and doing all they could to make sure a reforming Labor government wasn't elected. I think as a political party they are experts when it comes to product differentiation, but they're never there when it comes to the hard, realistic reform. Vultures for votes and division, harvesting hatred and saying, 'Divide, divide, divide'—that's their only point.

Participants in Labor's Help to Buy scheme will not be dictated to by the government. Instead, we'll just act as a second mortgage holder. Owner will still be able to renovate without needing special permission from a bureaucrat or Housing Australia. Also, anyone looking to increase their stake in the property is able to buy out the government in five per cent increments if they so choose. These options show that we are dedicated to ensuring that the dream of homeownership can be fulfilled and that the government will not stand in the way of people making their own choices about their own properties. Participants will also be able to seek an adjustment to the proportion of ownership if renovations are made and they reflect an additional capital value added to the property. This means that the government will not be benefiting from your renovations. You can have the freedom to improve your own home as you choose, as circumstances permit.

Homeownership is still an essential part of the great Australian dream, though I do wonder. My older son is 18. When I talk to his generation about the chances of getting into a house without a mum-and-dad bank, it seems an impossible dream, apart from collectivising and all sorts of things. That's why this Albanese government is committed to keeping homeownership in reach for that generation and for as many Australians as possible. The Help to Buy scheme ensures that people on low and middle incomes have a leg-up when it comes to buying their first home. We're providing targeted and efficient support to those looking for their first home. We're encouraging people to build homes, doing our bit for supply, by offering a higher equity share for those who are willing to build. We're making saving easier by requiring only a two per cent deposit. These measures prove our dedication to helping more Australians get a roof over their head.

We're not here to spend our time shouting slogans, like the Greens political party does, nor are we shouting no to every measure that will provide relief to Australians, especially when it comes to housing, like the coalition does. As the sensible government, we're here to implement strong, targeted reform aimed squarely at helping everyday Australians. Here's the thing: the Help to Buy scheme is only one pillar of our broader housing strategy, combined with our $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the $3 billion social housing accelerator payment and the largest increase to Commonwealth rental assistance in 30 years. It is critical that we get housing on track, and that's why we have multiple schemes aimed at various areas of this sector.

If this bill is delayed in the Senate because the Greens political party wants to pay politics, that will only make the situation worse. Delays mean fewer people building their first home. Delays mean more pressure on the rental market and, consequently, rents increasing above market. Delays mean a worse outcome for the Australian people. The Labor government will not delay. We will act in the best interests of the Australian people because we are committed to a better future for all Australians, and giving them four walls and a roof is a big part of that. I commend this bill to the House.

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

I thank the member for Moreton for his contribution, particularly for outlining some of the deficiencies in the policy positions of the Greens when it comes to housing, but I caution the member for Moreton that the last time those opposite did anything on housing in this chamber they ended up negotiating with the Greens and agreeing on half of their crazy policies in the Senate, before the Housing Australia Future Fund came back to be passed with all of the kooky demands of the Greens. Whilst it's nice to hear those opposite currently being cognisant of the frightening approach to housing that is encapsulated by the policy positions of the Greens, I predict there's a very good chance that the government will be negotiating with the Greens on this bill, because they have to—to give it any chance of passing in the Senate, they're going to sit down with the Greens and go through this list of Greens policies, which, as the member for Moreton just pointed out, are dangerous and unsustainable for the market. We'll find out, I suppose, what sort of a price has to be paid by the government to get support for this housing policy, much like we did when the Housing Australia Future Fund came back to this chamber last year.

We in the coalition hold the same concern about the approach of the Greens. Equally, I am greatly heartened to hear the government now saying that their concerns, when it comes to addressing challenges in the housing sector, are those of supply. In the last parliament, I served on the Standing Committee on Tax and Revenue inquiry into housing affordability, and certainly the coalition's position, which can be read in the report of that committee, was that supply was the No. 1 challenge when it came to housing affordability within our economy. The Labor Party members, then in opposition, had a different view back then—and I'm talking about only two years ago—than they do now in government. The housing minister said in question time in the last sitting week that the solution was 'supply, supply, supply'. Well, that was what we had to say in our report, and the Labor Party members disputed that very forcefully through the evidence as it was being heard, the questions that were asked and the witnesses that were being interrogated. The then opposition now government's own position on that inquiry—Alan Kohler quotes their previous position in that report in an essay that he wrote recently with a degree of significance on this topic. The government now say that the challenges are supply, supply, supply.

It would be great to see some policy positions from the government that are about supply, because we in the coalition certainly hold the view that supply is the great challenge, and solving it has a great deal of complexity, and not a lot of it is in the hands of the Commonwealth government. We obviously know that state governments and even local governments have a very significant role to play when it comes to the main levers of supply, which are land release and the rezoning of land, putting blocks out into markets so that hopefully you can get a matching of the supply of housing stock to the demand for it. We certainly have a government that is dramatically increasing migration into the country, putting an enormous amount of pressure on the housing sector not just from a supply point of view but from a cost point of view as well.

There are a lot of things that could be done on those levers. But, as we found in question time today, there are no solutions or suggestions of any adjustments to those policy settings from the answers to the questions that were asked. So we now have a solution where the main lever, that being supply, is not on the government's agenda whatsoever, and we have a housing bill before us here, this Help to Buy bill, which does nothing to increase the supply of new housing stock into the market.

The Liberal Party is the party of homeownership, and it was the great Sir Robert Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party, of course, who in his 'Forgotten people' speech talked about the aspiration of homeownership and the great sense of economic security and economic empowerment that a family gets from owning their own home. Indeed, his government transformed the statistics when it came to homeownership for Australians. That was a great, golden era of prosperity, when people had a reasonable expectation of job security and housing security by purchasing a home, paying it off with a fair degree of stability and therefore having independence for themselves and their family.

We know that the Left of politics—and the Greens are embodying this and at least being honest about it right now—don't want people to have that kind of economic security. They want people to be reliant on government. If you're in the Left of politics and you love big government, you want people to rely on government and you want people to need big government to look after them and do everything for them. If you're in the Right of politics, you want people to have economic independence so that they can make their own decisions about themselves, their family and their future and not be reliant on government as frequently and as broadly as possible.

That's what homeownership achieves for someone. If you've got a stable job and income; if you own your own home, with debt to a bank but at a sustainable level so that you know you're going to be able to pay it off before you get to the end of your career; and indeed—I add the third pillar—if you've got superannuation and savings for your retirement so that you can support yourself comfortably in retirement, then you've got economic security and a great deal of economic independence. That's why the aspiration to homeownership is so important, and it's great shame that we don't have policy measures and bills coming before this parliament that are addressing that in any meaningful way whatsoever.

I commend the lead coalition speaker on the bill, the member for Deakin, for how he has articulated the coalition's position—in particular, what he discussed about the serious drawbacks and concerns that we have when it comes to this shared-equity scheme. There are a lot of questions that he put on the record that maybe the minister might address in the second-reading conclusion speech. We'll wait and see. But we have significant concern about a range of elements of the detail of this, which the lead speaker articulated.

We don't want people to get trapped in this scheme. We don't want people to be tricked into this scheme, not fully understanding what they might be exposed to because we have no idea what the consequences might be for a range of scenarios that are not outlined in any way, shape or form in the specifics of the legislation here and may or may not come in the regulations et cetera that are yet to be revealed to us. We certainly don't want to see people who are most vulnerable economically being trapped and/or tricked by a scheme like this. We know that the states hold the levers in this area of policy, which is why the Commonwealth government needs the states to participate in this. The states are the only ones that can ultimately enact it. A lot of the states have their own shared equity schemes that are dramatically undersubscribed. 'Undersubscribed' is a euphemism for 'not working'. There are plenty of schemes operating around the country that are offering to participate in a shared equity framework from state governments that people are just not signing up to. Why is it that this scheme is going to be any different from the state schemes, one wonders.

There are two essential challenges to purchasing your home: saving the deposit and, of course, meeting the cost of servicing the mortgage. We know that both of those are as challenging as each other for people in the current economic climate. High interest rates mean that, when banks look at serviceability of mortgages, the amount that they can lend to people has reduced dramatically through the interest rate hike cycle that we've seen since this government came to power. Of course, there is a very hot property market, which is driven by a lot of factors, including the very high immigration rate, and running a very high level of demand for property, both rental and purchasing, at the same time that supply isn't matching it means that the growth in the average price of a home makes not only meeting the mortgage but also saving for the deposit very challenging.

This scheme talks about very low levels of minimum equity in a home, and we know that banks are very comfortable when you've saved about 20 per cent of the equity for the capital purchase price of a home. That's how you can ensure you don't get things like mortgage insurance costs et cetera, and it puts people in the best position to be competitive in getting the lowest rate and having the safest level of borrowing and burden on them. When we think of all the other taxes that are put in place, particularly by state governments, like stamp duty et cetera, to save 20 per cent of the value of the average home right now is bitterly challenging for people. Then to have thought, 'This is what I need to save in order to buy a home,' and in the current market find that the sort of home you want to buy has dramatically increased in cost over the last two to five years that you might have been saving that equity and then equally find that the amount you were planning on borrowing is not going to be approved by the bank anymore because the amount that interest rates have gone up in that same period of time means that your income now can't support the mortgage burden that it could a few years ago—literally millions of Australians have had the dream of homeownership evaporate on them over the last 18 months to two years. This bill does absolutely nothing for those people, and some speakers talk about this being a pillar of the government's housing policy. If this is a pillar policy to address something as dramatic as the housing affordability crisis in our economy, that is absolutely shameful.

Even in success—and we dispute the likelihood of success of this bill—this will help 10,000 people a year to buy a home, and this is a pillar of the government's approach to addressing housing affordability and helping all those people with a dream of owning their own home and getting the economic security of homeownership. A pillar of the government's approach is, in success, helping 10,000 people a year buy a home. This problem stretches into the millions. There are millions of people who have dreams to buy homes that are unfulfilled.

We've had all sorts of claims and promises, particularly in election campaigns, about things that this is government is going to do, and they always involve things like hitting all these heroic targets that are miraculously beyond the election cycle. Unfortunately, we can't mark any report card on these sorts of things come the next election. All these things are going to be achieved in the years and years beyond that. This is another example of that. The government has delayed the introduction of this legislation. This scheme was meant to be starting in January 2023, and, just to be clear, it's February 2024 and we're debating it in the lower house, to be negotiated and potentially passed, or not, in the Senate probably in months and months time. That will mean the success of this policy will not be known whenever the next election is held.

The pollsters probably said to the campaign strategists: 'Housing affordability is a big deal; we've got to have some policy positions on it. Think of something that you can say that will sound good on a TV commercial and look good on a billboard, but, of course, has no substance or likelihood of making any dent in the significant challenge of this policy area.' This bill is exactly in that category. I suspect it was dreamt up in the heat of the election campaign because someone said, 'We don't have anything to say on housing and housing affordability,' and this was the best they could come up with when no-one did the hard, dedicated policy work of coming up with genuine, serious solutions to this very substantial, significant challenge we face. That's not dissimilar to a lot of other things that were said by the Labor Party at the last election.

We don't support this bill. We know that there is a huge challenge when it comes to housing affordability and people accessing and achieving the great Australian dream. And it should be more than just a dream; it should be a reality for all Australians to have an ambition to own their own home. It would be good for the government to bring some legislation before this parliament that would actually have a likelihood of making any form of meaningful impact on that. This certainly doesn't. We don't support it, and I won't support the second reading passage of the bill.

Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the things that I'll point out as an engineer in the House is that when you've got pillars you don't have a pillar in isolation; you'd probably call that a pole. When we talk about pillars, you have several pillars when you create the structure of a building. You have multiple pillars, and so we have multiple policies.

One of the things that happened when we stepped into this place was that we saw a decade of sleeping at the wheel and mismanagement. What our housing policies do in the suite of policies we have is look at short-term, medium-term and long-term policies. That's what we've been doing, and this is one of the policies that we can enact in a short period of time that makes a real difference to individuals. This is what we do. We are a government that are not just thinking about tomorrow; we are also thinking about the housing stock in 2030. I am proud to be part of a government that is looking at multiple solutions. The thing that I would say I do agree with the member for Sturt on is that housing is a concern in our communities, and it's something that we need to be acting upon.

I love having the opportunity to stand here and talk about the Albanese government's measures to address the housing concerns across the country. This is a commitment that we made at the election, and it's a promise that we're keeping because we understand how important housing is to the wellbeing of individuals. We understand the importance of safe and affordable housing. It's central to the wellbeing of all Australians, it's central to the security of all Australians and it's central to the dignity of all Australians.

I remember a quote from a 7.30 report from a man that was facing homelessness. He said, 'It is difficult to find the will to live when I have no place to live.' The thing that we need to make sure we do is have a look at the system as a whole and look at the way that we unlock housing opportunities for different people. That's exactly what the Help to Buy Bill does.

Having a safe home is something that we're all entitled to, and, sadly, after years of neglectful policy under the former Liberal government, this is not the case for all Australians. Many Australians, and this includes people in my electorate of Swan, cannot find an affordable place to buy. For those with a mortgage, it has been really difficult, and, for those renting in a very tight rental market, it has been a very tough time.

We're fully conscious of the difficulties being faced by many people around the country. I'm fully conscious of the difficulties being faced by people in my electorate. I'm doing what I can as their representative and their community leader to help those that are doing it tough.

Just last week we had a forum in the electorate in Riverdale and we brought along a raft of service providers and community support workers to provide information and advice to those who have been struggling with household budgets. I did this with the wonderful member for Belmont, Cassie Rowe. We also had the local government mayor, Robert Rossi, present. It was an example of what we can do when we—federal, state and local governments—work together and the private and not-for-profit sectors work together, pitting their resources and efforts together, to provide a package of support measures to help Australians. This is what I'm about as a community leader. I actively want to work with my community at a local level to make a real difference to their lives.

Unfortunately, this is something that was quite lacking under my predecessor. Often Liberal MPs prefer to sit in their ivory towers, with maybe lots of pillars in their towers, and dictate. They fail to consider the impact their actions or their policies will have on already vulnerable people in our population. They fail to consider the long-term implications of their policies and fail to consider anyone but themselves and their mates. But we are now experiencing the impact of their policies on hardworking people and their families—people like nurses, teachers, firefighters, truck drivers and care workers. These are workers that kept our state and our nation going during the COVID pandemic. These were essential workers. And, really, these are workers that should be able to afford a roof over their heads.

That's why our package of reforms across housing and economic policies is the right thing to do. It's because we want to make sure that we protect our essential workers and protect the services that our country relies on. The Help to Buy scheme is one of the initiatives that I can wholeheartedly say will make a difference. Housing, along with cost-of-living pressures, is one of the issues that gets raised often with me in my regular catch-ups with community members. Whether by phone calls, meetings in coffee shops or town hall meetings, they are a really great way of keeping in touch with the community and understanding what their concerns are. My job is to relay those concerns to my colleagues in the government and make sure that we have meaningful action that has a coordinated response that helps people at the coalface.

Effort is being made to address these issues, and the Help to Buy scheme is a tangible initiative which is open to people who need it. This bill is an example of those efforts being transformed into real outcomes. This bill is also part of a wider range of reforms. The housing reform agenda of the Albanese government is an ambitious one, and I will say we are unapologetic about that. We've embraced this and we are taking responsibility. Our goal is to boost the supply of all housing stock. This will mean more public housing, more social housing, more affordable housing, more homes to rent and more homes to buy. The bill will contribute to the implementation of our ambitious agenda. We are taking action and making a difference with measures that can deliver a real, tangible outcome—not just words but action, not apathy but action. We're taking action to make sure that all Australians can live with security and dignity by working in partnership with state and territory governments, not against them.

It's amazing that we managed to get National Cabinet agreed to build 1.2 million homes by 2030. This is incredible. It makes sure that we have our eye on what we are trying to do in more than five years time to make sure that we actually have a decent amount of housing supply. Supply has been the key issue that has resulted in challenging housing affordability. It is through this collaboration that we are able to develop schemes that will help thousands of Australians. Owning your own home should not be just a dream. It should be a reality regardless of income. That's what this bill does. It will help 40,000 middle-income Australian households achieve their dream. Those who have been locked out of the housing market will be able to consider a future in their own home—secure safe and sustainable.

The reality for nearly 5,000 new homeowners since the government came into office is they've been able to get into home ownership when, for too long, it eluded them. That's thanks to Labor. This was elusive under the Liberals. Applications are currently open for the first round of the Housing Australia Future Fund and the accord. The $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund has started. It will support 30,000 new affordable rental homes over the first five years. It's another example of delivering on a commitment. It's the biggest investment for more than a decade, a decade when the housing needs of Australians were neglected. The future of housing is now back on track thanks to the work being established by the HAFF, and it will direct funding to support social and affordable rental housing. When it comes to the National Housing Accord, planning and zoning reforms will be supported, with an investment of $350 million in addition federal funding to deliver 10,000 affordable rental homes over five years from 2024, which will also be matched by states and territories. Partnerships putting people above politics means that all Australians benefit.

Under the Help to Buy initiative the Commonwealth will provide an equity contribution to eligible participants of 40 per cent for new homes and 30 per cent for existing homes. It's an integral part of our broader housing agenda. It's responsible, and it's recognised by experts as the correct path forward. Unlike the ideas put forward by the Greens, ideas that have been criticised by housing experts, our supply plan has received support. The Grattan Institute said that Labor's plan will put significant downward pressure on rents. This will save renters $32 billion over the next decade, but we in the Senate have heard that short-term thinking leads to long-term problems, and that's what the ideas of the Greens are—short term and knee jerk. We need long-term solutions that are sustainable.

I commend the plans that are before us today. The Help to Buy scheme is long term and effective. It is a sustainable solution. It provides a vehicle towards homeownership. Under Labor there's a pathway to own your own home. Under the Liberals there are just roadblocks. And I'll say it again: our challenges are serious, but we have serious solutions.

I think about one of the women that I with studying my Masters of Community Development with at Murdoch University. She's a single mum, she lives in social housing and she put herself through university, got her postgraduate qualifications and has a great job, but it will take a very long time for her to afford a home of her own. But the Help to Buy scheme will unlock the door, literally, to a home. She and her daughter can have a roof over their heads. That's what the Albanese Labor government does. We change the lives of individuals one step at a time, one door at a time. This is something that I'm very proud of.

After a decade of little action, we have had enormous action, and it's clear that the Albanese government is working hard to turn around the housing challenges in Australia today. I commend this bill to the House.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I won't stand in the way of any reasonable measure to assist Australians to be part of the great Australian dream of homeownership. However, I'm cautious that blind adherence to government incentives can exacerbate the very problems they seek to fix. The Help to Buy Bill 2023 proposes a national equity program that states and territories may opt in to help Australians to buy a home if they currently do not have the sufficient funds for a deposit.

On paper, this sounds like a reasonable and sensible approach to assist everyday Australians. It also sounds remarkably similar to government programs that already exist or have existed throughout the country. So I have some questions. If these programs are or were successful at the state and territory level, why do we need a federal program? If these programs were not successful, why does the government believe that they can implement the same program with a different result? And, lastly, will a federal program simply displace state and territory programs with no net effect?

We all want to see homeownership attainable for those who want it. Equity and fairness are cornerstones of our democracy, and we must do all we can to ensure that everyone has a fair go. However, I'm concerned that this bill and many of the policies of this government with respect to housing are failing to address the core problems of home ownership and the cost of living, which I'll discuss further shortly. Before I do that I wish to look at how governments in the past have dealt with this important issue.

Former prime minister Robert Menzies spoke of the aspiration of home ownership in his seminal speech on 'the forgotten people' in 1942. Since that speech, state and federal governments of both persuasions have made explicit policy objectives to achieve home ownership aspirations of Australians.

While government policy objectives have not changed over time, the mechanism to obtain these objectives has. Postwar policies were typically supply-side orientated—that is they promoted housing construction and also included the sale of public housing, which provided capital to build more public housing stock. In the 1980s, governments moved to demand-side policies with measures such as first home owner stamp duty concessions and grants and, more recently, shared equity programs.

It's very clear from the data that the demand-side policies have not worked. In the age cohorts of 25 to 34 and 35 to 44, home ownership rates have declined dramatically from their peaks in the early 1980s. Why did we then persist with policies that have failed?

The government will argue that this bill simply complements its many supply-side policies, like the National Housing Accord, the Housing Australia Future Fund and the National Housing Infrastructure Facility—to name a few. While this is true, these measures are unfortunately not keeping pace with other government policies that are adding pressure.

Home ownership is intrinsically linked to the total cost of the property, including taxes and transfer costs, availability of property, the deposit required and the ability of the prospective owner to service a loan. In this term of government we've had successive rate rises that have seen the repayments on a mortgage of $750,000 rise by around $2,000 per month, a staggering $24,000 of after-tax money per year that many Australian households need to find in order to service a loan. This has resulted in many Australians being priced out of the market because they can no longer meet the lending criteria

I've mentioned in this place previously that inflation—the driver of these mortgage rate rises—has been running hot because the government added $209 billion of new spending and has implemented a 'big Australia' policy that has seen record migration levels. Last year we recorded 737,200 overseas arrivals and 219,100 departures—a net migration of 518,100. This equates to more than 80 per cent of the population increase. The government controls migration and it is therefore on the government to explain why it has allowed so many to settle in Australia at a time when we already had immense housing pressures, and the natural demand of that flow-on from this is inflationary.

Last week the Housing Industry Association advised that new modelling showed we are already 200,000 homes behind the target set by the government in August last year. While 96,250 detached houses are expected in this financial year, it is down 12.6 per cent on the previous 12 months, and down by almost a third from the 2020-21 peak. Clearly the government's supply-side policies are not working to a level to keep up with that demand, which is overextended by mass migration policies.

As I mentioned at the outset, I will not stand in the way of this bill. I will support this bill because I want every Australian to be able to realise their dream of owning their own home. However, I'll make it very clear that I will withdraw my support for this bill if amendments are made that reflect the wishes of the Australian Greens, who seek to attack the mums and dads of this country who have worked hard to buy a second home. Any changes to negative gearing or capital gains tax would be a broken promise and one that I steadfastly object to.

Libby Coker (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At local markets and street stalls, people often share their stories with me—stories about housing and rapid population growth, which is occurring right across my electorate of Corangamite in Victoria. The Albanese government understands that this rapid growth is putting pressure on housing availability and affordability, particularly in electorates like mine. Since coming to office in 2022, we have introduced a raft of measures to proactively address these challenges, and we are making significant progress. The latest measure is our Help to Buy scheme, which will cut the cost of buying a new home by up to 40 per cent with the help of the Commonwealth through Housing Australia. For existing homes, the bill will cut costs by 30 per cent. This will give buyers a much needed leg-up and also boost housing supply, with an incentive largely directed at the construction of new homes. Participants in this scheme will only require a two per cent deposit and will benefit from lower mortgage payments through smaller ongoing home loans.

Significantly, Help to Buy will support the purchase of up to 10,000 properties per year over four years. This will be tightly targeted, meaning it will help people who need it, without driving up property prices. This housing reform will be the first national shared-equity scheme of its kind, where the Commonwealth will play a vital role in helping people buy a home of their own. Put simply, this bill, the Help to Buy Bill 2023, is all about bringing down the cost barriers that prevent Australians from entering the housing market. It's about putting downward pressure on rental prices without impacting inflation. It's about addressing key challenges affecting young Australians, like Lily from my electorate in Corangamite. Lily rents in a share house in Torquay. She juggles two jobs, working 40 hours at a shop in Barwon Heads and, on weekends, running a baked goods business with her mum. Alongside that, she is studying at TAFE. Despite all the hard work and long hours, Lily told me she couldn't possibly see herself buying a home in the next ten years. She said: 'It's just not possible, no matter where I look. To put together a deposit at the moment is almost impossible.' When I told her about the Help to Buy scheme and what it will mean for young Australians like her, her whole disposition changed. She said: 'This is a game changer. Why couldn't this have come sooner?' I told her that this was a question for members of the opposition, the former government, who did little to tackle housing supply and affordability.

Now we see the coalition teaming up with the Greens to stand in the way of more help for homebuyers, despite the fact this bill will put downward pressure on rental prices. Help to Buy will provide a pathway to homeownership for people like Lily who have been locked out of the market. I urge the Greens and the coalition to please do the right thing, support this bill and help more renters be able to buy a home.

On this side of the House, we recognise Australia's housing challenges are serious, and our government is serious about addressing them. Our Minister for Housing and Minister for Small Business has been working hard to make this a reality, rolling out a suite of measures to revitalise our housing market after a decade of policy neglect. We know that in the last decade, under former coalition governments, it was so much harder for Australians. That is not what our communities deserve, and it's why this Labor government is acting. With the cost-of-living challenges facing Australians, this bill signals our government's commitment to ensuring people right across our nation have access to the dreams and ambitions of homeownership. This dream has been the pillar of our national identity for decades, from postwar reconstruction, when the Chifley Labor government delivered the world's first ever federal housing policy, to the housing policies of Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard—Labor leaders who understood that owning your home was the key to a rewarding life; a life well lived. Under their leadership, owning a home became the foundation of our new national story. It was the heart of iconic shows like The Sullivans and Neighbours, and who can forget the classic Australian drama, The Castle, which told our story, the story of the importance of homeownership and the Australian dream. But, over the last two decades, former coalition governments have systematically closed the door on homeownership for so many Australians and dismantled this key component of our national identity. 'Tell them they're dreaming' was the coalition's message to Australians who dreamed of owning their own home. Previous coalition governments were more than happy to leave homes empty across the nation while hardworking Australians went without. That's why the Albanese government has introduced the bill in this House. We know that, because of the inaction of the former Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments, outright homeownership rates have dropped significantly. This inaction was fuelled by infighting and leadership squabbles which were aptly showcased in the Nemesis program on the ABC. This bill, alongside our ambitious housing agenda, is all about changing that reality.

Just last year, we delivered on our commitment for the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee three months early. That reform has already helped more than 13,000 people across Australia into homeownership. In 2024, we'll deliver more help for homebuyers and renters with significant tax cuts, family health boosts and rent assistance. This bill will ensure that Australians don't have to sacrifice their health, wellbeing and education and that they can put a roof over their head. It will work alongside our government's cheaper medicines policy, which is driving down prices at the pharmacy for more than 300 medicines which have now been added to the PBS. It will work alongside the cheaper child care subsidy, which has seen more than 30,000 families save up to $1,500 on childcare costs. It will work alongside our urgent care clinics, where you just need a Medicare card—not a credit card—to get the health care you need. It will work alongside our tax cuts for all Australians, putting more dollars back into the pockets of hardworking Australians. And, of course, it adds to our ambitious housing agenda, which includes the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund building 30,000 new homes in its first five years, with a new national target to build 1.2 million well-located homes, a $3 billion new homes bonus, a $500 million housing support program and a $2 billion social-housing accelerator to deliver around 4,000 new social homes across Australia.

There is more. There's our National Housing Accord, which includes federal funding to deliver 10,000 affordable homes over five years from 2024, an investment of an additional $1 billion in the National Housing Infrastructure Facility to support more homes and up to $575 million in funding already unlocked from the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, with homes under construction. We're increasing the maximum rate of Commonwealth rent assistance by 15 per cent—the largest increase in 30 years—and providing an extra $2 billion in financing for more social and affordable rental housing through Housing Australia.

It doesn't stop there. There are new incentives to boost rental housing by changing arrangements for investments in build-to-rent accommodation. There's a $1.7 billion one-year extension of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement with states and territories, including a $67.5 million boost to homelessness funding over the next year. We're developing a new National Housing and Homelessness Plan and a better deal for renters, which the states and territories have agreed to implement through this suite of measures and the bill I stand to support today. We're making a real difference for so many Australians looking to buy a home of their own. These reforms are about strengthening our housing market for local communities, local families and all people who want a roof over their head. They're about unlocking the door to homeownership for all Australians. Our government understands that, with national leadership, with cooperation with states, local government and industry and with the right housing policies, we can continue to make a real difference. I urge the Greens and the coalition to support this bill. Support hardworking Australians like Lily, and do the right thing. I commend this bill to the House.

Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's been a lot of discussion in the debate this afternoon and this morning on the housing crisis that many communities across parliament experience. In fact, probably every parliamentarian here represents a community that's facing a housing crisis. It's not just a crisis of affordability for people seeking to purchase a property and enter the property market as owners. It's a crisis being felt by people across the housing continuum. Many people in my electorate are unable to find a rental property. There are people who are unable to find social housing, and, of course, there are many Redlanders within my electorate who are unable to find a place to purchase and enter the market. It's one of the more challenging things that any level of government has to deal with, and in the Australian context it's an incredibly complex area of policy because the responsibilities cascade through all levels of government. This housing scheme, unfortunately, will not offer homeownership but rather home co-ownership with the government. It will not make a dent on the current housing crisis that's gripping the nation. Unfortunately, through this bill and through the lack of details that have been provided by the government, we simply haven't got the details to be able to answer many of the questions that are still left unanswered in relation to this scheme. For Australians—and there are many of these Australians within my electorate—who are desperate to buy their first home, all this bill offers is the prospect of co-ownership of a home with the federal government. That's not exactly the Australian dream.

Labor have paraded this scheme as a solution to the housing affordability crisis, but it will very much be a niche scheme, with a very small impact—certainly for the people within my electorate who are currently seeking to find a rental. I was at a rental inspection for a relative of mine. I joined her to check on a rental property within my electorate. The line-up for a two-bedroom townhouse was something to behold; it went down the block. There were families of four and six lined up desperately trying to get a roof over their head. This scheme, unfortunately, does very little to support them or support those who have broader ambitions in terms of ownership. It is very much a niche program. It's only available to a small pool; we're still not clear on what the parameters will be around the eligibility of that pool. With so many Australians feeling the bite of the cost-of-living crisis—which, unfortunately, this government has presided over, making the crisis far worse than it needs to be—this niche program, costing $5.5 billion, won't be a solution.

At the moment, the only housing policies which are supporting first home buyers are the policies that were implemented by the previous coalition government that the current government have been able to inherit. The coalition remains committed to making homeownership a reality for Australians. We want to make sure that Australians can own their own homes sooner. Our record in government reflects that, and the policies we intend to bring to the next election will demonstrate that as well. Unfortunately, what we are seeing from the current government are a lot of shiny brochures when it comes to housing policy but not much in terms of real content. This Help to Buy is certainly a niche program that fails to address any real need in the housing market.

Of course, the main crisis is not an affordability crisis per se; it's a crisis of supply. I fear that policies like this, which pump a certain element of demand, are not the true solution to housing supply in this country. Within my electorate you'd be lucky to be able to build any home under this scheme because you simply cannot find a lot of land to do so. There is increasing demand across all of South-East Queensland. Unfortunately, this is not going to touch the sides in terms of ensuring that we can get that supply up to the level that is required to meet growing demand. Increased migration levels—which was a topic of discussion in question time today—means that we are going to need more homes to house Australians and new Australians. We need to ensure that supply keeps up with demand.

Just this week, we've seen the Housing Industry Association confirm that Labor will fall at least 200,000 homes short of its 1.2 million home target. With 20,000 homes per month required to meet the 1.2 million home target and with the current monthly building data averaging at 13,000 per month, Labor will be lucky to even get 800,000 homes. So it seems to be gearing up that the ambition was 1.2 million; we're not going to get to 800,000—or we might just get to 800,000. This is, of course, far less than what was delivered during the previous government. This is 200,000 fewer homes than what was delivered during the last five full calendar years of the coalition government. Between 2017 and 2021 we saw an amazing 1,029,043 homes built across Australia. You've got to remember that was during a significant period of the pandemic response when building homes became incredibly challenging due to the restrictions.

Over the period when the government wants to build 1.2 million homes, the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation expects that 1.7 million new households will actually be formed. While the ambition is to achieve 1.2 million homes, the actual demand will be 1.7 million. So even under the ambitious target, we aren't going to get anywhere close to what's required to ensure that supply meets demand. The Labor government's goals are unambitious and dangerously so. They're not going to come anywhere near meeting these unambitious goals. Even if we meet those goals—and we know from the latest data that I've just outlined that it's now impossible—housing in Australia will be significantly less affordable at the end of this decade than it is today. With 1.5 million people expected to come to this country over the next five years, the equation is just going to go further out.

Under this government, rents have increased by 26 per cent. First home buyers and new home approvals remain at their lowest levels in more than a decade. Lending for new homes remains at a shameful 20-year low, and we've recently seen the weakest quarter of construction in more than a decade. Despite all of this, we're seeing this government continue to implement its big migration plans. When the market needs more homes, Labor instead is championing this Help to Buy scheme that does nothing to stop these shortages. In fact, it purely drives further demand.

Let's touch for a moment on some of the failures we've already seen with this scheme. It hasn't even been implemented yet, but of course it's well behind schedule. We're only debating this bill now in 2024, but the Help to Buy scheme was an election policy of the Labor government and it was meant to begin on 1 January 2023. We're already well past 1 January 2024, and this scheme won't see the light of day until well into this year at the earliest. At best, it's already 18 months late. It's not only late but it's also not well thought through. Labor's Help to Buy plan lacks the details of serious legislation. We still have no detail regarding the eligibility criteria. Importantly we don't have information on the obligations for those who are part of the scheme and whose financial circumstances change and place them outside of the scheme's parameters. That's a really important concept that we need to get the bottom of. What happens if you start engaging in this process as an eligible purchaser and then, over the course of the next 20 or 30 years—the life of the mortgage—you receive promotions, get a new job or come into some inherited income and find yourself outside the scheme's parameters? We need to understand the details of that.

We need to have details on which lenders will participate, how participants may be able to exit the scheme, how they may be able to buy the government out of their share and what the property price caps are. Will this be available for every single home in Australia, or will it be a target band? We don't have that level of detail yet. With so much unknown and uncertain about this proposal, the government are asking first home buyers to enter into this scheme and take a significant risk. The scheme also puts the Commonwealth at a financial risk if defaults on mortgages occur, due the removal of the need for lenders mortgage insurance. It's risky for homebuyers, it's risky for government and it's too risky for the coalition to support.

We've got serious concerns about the shared-equity model. The Help to Buy scheme is simply not going to work. Shared-equity schemes are not the solution to help Australians into their own homes. These schemes where the government co-owns the home of the participants can contribute to growth in house prices across the board. We've had comments in the press from Cameron Kusher, who's the Director of Economic Research at REA Group. The quote is:

If the government has a stake in the property, it has more of an incentive for prices to increase.

Potentially it could be inflationary …

These shared equity schemes also encourage Australians to take undue financial risk in a scheme that doesn't even answer all their financial questions. What happens if you need to undertake renovations or some serious upgrades to the property? I recently installed security cameras at my property, and I think it's an important investment that we've got to make, unfortunately, under the current youth crime crisis that's gripping a lot of South East Queensland. The question is: if I had to do that and the government owned half the property, would I be able to send half the invoice for that investment to the Prime Minister? Would I be able to get the government to pay for half of a driveway repair or a gutter repair? These are questions that are completely unclear at this point, but I think the answer would be, no, you'd be up to foot the bill for all the investment that you make in the property.

What happens if your wages increase and you earn a dollar more than the eligibility criteria—an important unanswered question. What happens if housing prices fall? That's an important question. Of course, we've had record growth in houses across Australia for many years, but it's not always a straight trajectory. What happens if house prices go down? What happens if financial circumstances of the participants within this scheme change?

Labor promised before the previous election that they would cut the cost of buying a home by 40 per cent for those who are part of the scheme. With a promise such as this, surely many Australians would want to be involved, yet the government has let them down through delays and a lack of detail. We've seen at the state level that these schemes don't work. The are so unwanted by Australians that places remain unfilled in the New South Wales Shared Equity Homebuyer Helper scheme, in Victoria's Homebuyer Fund, in South Australia's HomeStart Shared Equity Option and in Tasmania's MyHome shared equity program. Australians simply don't want to participate in these programs. Australians are voting with her feet and not taking part in these schemes because, unlike this government, they are making smart financial decisions for their futures. Aussies are saying no to shared equity because they don't want to give the Prime Minister and his housing minister a seat at their kitchen table. They want to make their own decisions about their own futures, not hand in hand with the government. That's what this government is trying to do. They're trying to force a niche option on Australians. Australians don't like the idea of sharing their mortgage with the housing minister; they want the Australian dream, not to be locked into the Australian nightmare. Many Australians need support and the housing market, but Aussies know that shared equity schemes are certainly not the way forward.

I want to reflect on the coalition's record on housing when compared to this rather weak option. Housing policies of the previous coalition government have supported more than 300,000 Australians with the purchase of their home in the last three years. The Coalition's home guarantee schemes have supported 60,000 first home buyers and single-parent families to own their own homes. One in three first home buyers are supported by the policies that were promoted by the previous coalition government. The coalition also helped 27,600 first home buyers accelerate their savings for their deposit towards homeownership through the First Home Super Saver Scheme. Those supported by the coalition programs do not co-own their homes with the government. The government programs help them achieve the dream of home ownership. I think there's a significant difference between what had previously been the housing policies of the federal government and what the policies now look like and the policy proposals that are being put forward by the current government.

In most of the country, we're in the midst of an ongoing housing affordability and rental crisis, and the government is offering this scheme as a solution to the housing market problems. The assumption is that there is a market failure in home building, but the failure doesn't sit with the market; it sits with the government. Home construction is not a declining industry. The Australian economy knows well how to produce new homes. We've led the world in this area and we need to have more policies that encourage supply, not just pump demand.

Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's my pleasure to rise in support of this important bill and genuine policy reform. In May 2022 Labor took the Help to Buy policy to our communities as one of our key election commitments. The Help to Buy Bill 2023 and Help to Buy (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023 give effect to this commitment and provide for Housing Australia to administer the Help to Buy scheme, supported by a referral of power from the states.

Our Labor government is an ambitious government committed to a housing agenda that will improve housing affordability and supply. We've already created the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund—the single biggest investment to support social and affordable housing in more than a decade. We've also provided $2 billion to state and territory governments to deliver around 4,000 new social homes. Our government has also unlocked $575 million from the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, with homes being built right around the country, and we will invest an additional $1 billion in this facility to support even more homes.

We are a government that has delivered the largest increase in Commonwealth rent assistance in 30 years. This is real practical assistance for Australians that makes a difference. Our government wants to ensure that more Australians have a roof over their heads through a new national housing and homelessness plan. I'm proud that our government does not just talk when it comes to Australians having a roof over their heads; we act and we will always act. Through this legislation, our government is taking yet another step forward.

Our government understands that buying a home is important to Australians. We know what a difference this will make. Homeownership is an opportunity for Australians to put down roots and to live and to build life in community. It allows for children to join the local sports club and for parents to get involved with the local primary school with a sense of stability and ownership—not just of their home, but with further equity in their communities.

Delivering on our commitment to initiate the Help to Buy scheme will mean more Australians have a safe and affordable place to call home and build community. This is, of course, alongside all of our other housing commitments meaning that we can help more people. We'll continue to be ambitious for Australians. It's what drives me; it's what drives our government every single day. Our ambitious housing reform agenda is working right across Australia. We're providing more help for homebuyers, for renters and for people who need a safe place for the night.

Our government's working hard every day to help Australians facing housing challenges, and, through this important piece of legislation, we're doing even more. The Help to Buy shared-equity scheme will support up 40,000 Australian households to purchase a home of their own. Under the scheme, the Commonwealth will provide an equity contribution to eligible participants of up to 40 per cent of the purchase price for new homes and 30 per cent for existing homes.

On a practical level, states will be required to pass legislation for the scheme to operate in their jurisdictions. Significantly, in August all states agreed at National Cabinet to progress legislation, so this scheme will run nationally. This scheme will be open to applications for four years with 10,000 places available each year.

At a functional level, the Help to Buy scheme will be delivered by Housing Australia and supported by a panel of lenders. This will fulfil our government's election commitment to establish a national shared-equity scheme.

From a timing perspective, it is expected that states and territories will pass legislation in 2024, so this year. Consistent with general practice for referrals of power, at least one state must pass legislation before the Commonwealth passes the Help to Buy legislation.

This legislation is another important step forward that our government is taking to bring homeownership back into the reach of more Australians. In November of last year, the Minister for Housing introduced legislation to make Help to Buy a reality. This is not just a leg-up to help Australians into homeownership but it also provides long-term relief for participants in the scheme, and we know that this will be the first national shared-equity scheme of its kind. This will be delivered through Housing Australia and will assist Australians to overcome the hurdle of both saving for a deposit and servicing a mortgage, which are challenges that people face.

Through Help to Buy, the Commonwealth will cut the cost of buying a home by up to 40 per cent. Participants will only require a minimum two per cent deposit and will benefit from lower ongoing mortgage repayments through a smaller home loan. As mentioned, when National Cabinet met in August last year they agreed to progress this legislation so that the scheme can run nationally. And we've seen recent recommitments to this agreement.

We're now acting, with the introduction of this legislation, to help ensure the government is in the best position to make this support available to Australians. We'll continue to work closely with state and territory governments on the rollout of the scheme. We know that eligible participants will be able to access the scheme through participating lenders, alongside a standard mortgage.

As with a traditional mortgage, Housing Australia will then provide the Commonwealth's equity contribution through a loan arrangement secured against the property. A special appropriation to enter Help to Buy arrangements through Housing Australia will be funded by the Commonwealth and will provide a return to the Commonwealth when the equity is repaid. The Minister for Housing will provide written directions to Housing Australia on the operation of the scheme, including decision-making criteria for entering Help to Buy arrangements. This is a similar approach to other government programs, like the Home Guarantee Scheme.

The bill also includes the administrative framework for Help to Buy, including that Housing Australia must report to the minister on an annual basis. It also provides that the minister must cause a review of Help to Buy as soon as possible after the end of three years from the commencement of the bill. There's also a general power to make regulations that are required or permitted by the bill, or are necessary or convenient to give effect to the bill. A significant attribute of Help to Buy is that it will be open to assist people who've owned homes before and those who are yet to purchase their first home. Importantly, this bill seeks to capture people at almost all stages of life. It'll help singles, couples, siblings, those starting in the workforce, as well as those who are close to retirement and everywhere in between.

We are an ambitious government. We are committed to a housing agenda that will improve housing affordability and supply, and we take this responsibility really seriously. We're sharing in the cost of purchasing a home, and, upon sale, any capital gains or losses will be shared between the participant and the government, proportionate to their interests. Whilst the Commonwealth recognises that most states and territories already administer some form of shared-equity scheme, with most made available only to specific cohorts, there is an opportunity that we see for the Commonwealth to complement these existing schemes and to extend this support to more Australian households by establishing our national shared-equity scheme.

Whilst households will be limited to accessing one shared-equity scheme at a time, whether it is Help to Buy or it's a state or territory scheme, they will have the opportunity to apply for the scheme that best suits their personal circumstances. Places will be allocated between participating states and territories on a per capita basis. Each state and territory's allocation will be available to eligible residents on a first come, first serve basis. The 10,000 places will be available under the Help to Buy scheme each year and will be initially allocated to participating states and territories on a per capita basis. States will need to have passed the Help to Buy legislation in order to access scheme places. The territories are not required to pass legislation for the scheme to operate in their jurisdictions.

Help to Buy will support the purchase and construction of new and existing homes, including houses, townhouses and apartments—all sorts of housing. Up to a 40 per cent equity contribution will be available to support eligible new homes, including house and land packages, land and separate contract-to-build homes, and off-the-plan dwellings. Help to Buy will involve the government directly contributing funds to support an eligible applicant's home purchase. That means that participants can buy a home with a smaller deposit, smaller mortgage and smaller mortgage repayments.

Fundamentally, this scheme is aimed at supporting low- to middle-income households into homeownership. Income caps will apply in the form of $90,000 for singles and $120,000 for joint applicants, which compares with the Home Guarantee Scheme's caps of $125,000 for singles and $200,000 for joint applicants. Participants will be able to renovate their homes, and they will not have to seek the government's permission to do so. That is a response of sorts to the previous contributor's queries about this scheme. So I hope that he goes back and looks at this publicly available information.

The government will not be a co-owner of scheme properties. Rather, the government's investment in participants' homes will be secured through a second mortgage, with the government's interest similar in nature to a private mortgage holder. In relation to participants exceeding the income cap, after entering the scheme the participant's individual circumstances will be considered, with participants only needing to repay the Commonwealth's contribution as their circumstances permit.

Of note is that continuity arrangements have been provisioned within the bill in the unfortunate situation that a participant passes away. That will allow a participant's beneficiary, subject to eligibility, to participate in the scheme. Participants or their executors may make repayments of the equity contribution. Participants will be able to make early payments on the government's equity share when they are able to do so and thereby increase their stake in the property. At a minimum, this must be five per cent for the value of the property at the time of repayments. Participants will not pay rent or interest on the government's equity share.

This is ambitious reform, and we are ambitious for all Australians. Of course, we can contrast that with the approach to housing from those opposite, who, during the last election campaign, relentlessly attacked our government's commitment here and who of course did next to nothing over the previous decade. They had the privilege, the gift, of government and failed to build the homes that Australians need. We know that those opposite like to say no to everything, but I do really urge them to very seriously consider supporting legislation that ensures that more Australians are able to enter homeownership.

We understand that affordable housing is critical to economic wellbeing and to building communities, and we are absolutely committed to supporting more Australians in their endeavour to build community and to access housing. We are getting on with the business of good government—doing what we said we would do—and we'll continue to be unapologetically ambitious for Australians, including in the area of housing.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My family, my forebears, have lived in Charters Towers since the 1880s, or something like. When I moved there from my home town of Cloncurry, we didn't have enough money to finish our house. I had put a lot of money into buying cattle and developing a copper mine which we were producing copper from. My wife went in—we had 20 acres—and she said we had to subdivide it because we couldn't afford to finish building the house. All land in the greater Charters Towers area was under control of the mines department, and you went to see the mining clerk of the court, a gentleman called Michael Power, if you wanted a subdivision. He said yes, or he said no, and that was as simple as it was.

My wife said, 'Can we subdivide it?' He said, 'Have you got the survey done?' She said yes and handed him the survey plan. He said, 'Fill out that form, Suze.' So my wife filled it out. 'Give me 25 bucks. Thank you.' She said, 'When can I sell it?' He said, 'You can sell it now.' 'Right now?' 'Yes, go down to the real estate agent and sell it. Once I've stamped it and signed it, it's finished.'

Now, if we wanted to do that today—because the socialist ALP government, when they overthrew the much-maligned Bjelke-Petersen government, abolished the mining act—we'd have to go through the process like every other poor beggar in Queensland. You've got to put in an application to the local traditional owners, and that takes a long time and a lot of money to get over that hurdle. Then you've got to have a soil-testing and engineering report done on the house and the effect on an engineering basis. Then you have to get another report on the environmental impact of the proposal, and then you've got to get a social impact statement. All of these things take about three to 4½ years. So once it took five minutes and now it takes four years.

No less a person in this place than the Treasurer in his first budget speech said, 'The problem confronting this nation is affordability. That is being driven by housing prices, which are being pressured by restrictive impositions upon land.' Myself and my two colleagues here said, 'Hear, hear.' For each of his five propositions, we said, 'Hear, hear. Spot on.' And then he said, 'We're setting up an authority.' We said, 'No, no!' We've already got four processes we've got to go through, and we'll have five processes we've got to go through if that authority is brought into operation.

The culpability of the people in the state parliaments—not so much this parliament—is colossal. They have driven average housing prices in Brisbane up to over $820,000 and in Sydney to over $1.2 million. These are the highest housing costs anywhere in the world. I don't know whether I've got it, but I'll have a quick look. I carry around a map I call 'the golden Australia'. I hold it up and I say, 'What's that?' They say, 'It's a map of Australia.' And I say, 'No, it's not. It's a map of Australia shorn of a little narrow hundred-kilometre coastal belt.' We've dropped off Victoria, but who'd miss Victoria? And there's a little dot around Perth.

Ninety-two per cent of the surface area of Australia is occupied by a meagre 1.2 million people. That's all that lives there, and they are leaving. In fact, west of the Great Dividing Range in Queensland we can only have one member of parliament now. There are only about 150,000 to 170,000 people left there, and it's not much better in New South Wales. The population is leaving.

Two hundred and forty years ago we Australians said, 'We don't need a population. We've got very strong birth control operating. We want to keep population down. We don't want to put too much pressure on the environment, so we want to keep population down and we don't have to have population.'

What happened to us? We were nearly annihilated. If it wasn't for the much maligned Christian missionaries in North Queensland—I can't speak for other parts of Australia—I think my people, my brother cousins, would have been annihilated. They pull them back into areas and made them no-go areas for whitefellas and protected the people. If it wasn't for that, I think there would have been a terrible result and it would have been annihilation or pretty close to it. That was the result of us sitting on our hands as Australians and saying, 'We don't need population. We don't need to populate this country. We could just go on the way we're going on, and it'll all be wonderful.'

This country has only three sources of income now. They're iron ore, coal and gas. That's it. They're worth $120 billion. The next thing down, which might be beef, is about $12 billion or something like that. Gold is maybe $12 billion and aluminium might be about $12 billion, but the big three are iron ore, coal and gas.

Gas is gone because people in this place sold it for six cents a unit. And God bless my union, the CFMEU, for saying again and again, 'You morons in this place sold all the gas for 6 cents a unit, and Australians have to buy their own gas back at $16 a unit.' Qatar—little tiny Qatar—exports the same amount of gas as Australia. They get $29,000 million dollars a year for it. We get $600 million. Those figures are old—they're about 20 years old—so you can multiply those figures by about three or four. We gave it away.

Coal—62 per cent of this country. Almost every single person in this parliament wants coal abolished. You're on record as wanting coal abolished. So what have you got for an income? You've got iron ore. You're just a quarry; you're not a mining country. Mining is when you dig it out of the earth and you sell metals. We don't dig it out of the ground and sell metals; we dig it out of the ground and sell the ground. That's called quarrying. We can't even process a metal in this country.

Returning to the subject of land, Australians are almost certainly a vanishing race. When the statistics for this year come out—when 20 Australians die they'll be replaced by 16 people. I love the zero-population-growth mob, all the wokies and the people that denigrate women for having children. They should all be career women, careering off into oblivion, extinction. As a race of people, at 100 miles an hour, we're becoming extinct. That's the price you pay for criminal stupidity. When you get old, as they have in China, there's no-one to look after you. It's going to be tough. I won't be around, but a lot of people in this place will be, when there's no-one to look after them in their old age. We're a dying race. Why are we a dying race? Cleo magazine did a wonderful series of articles on this: why do women in Australia not have children? They all want to have children, but they say, 'We're just waiting around until we've got enough money to get a house and settle down, find a more stable relationship.' But it doesn't happen and they run out of time. The biological clock runs out. We're a dying race.

In that golden Australia is all of your gold, all of your iron ore, all of your aluminium—no, bauxite, because we don't export aluminium anymore; we export bauxite. Fancy letting them export bauxite! When they went to Leo Hielscher, in the much maligned Queensland government, and said they wanted an export licence for bauxite, he burst out laughing. The idea that anyone was going to send bauxite overseas was laughable: 'We don't export bauxite; we export aluminium.' They said, 'We can't afford your high electricity charges.' Well, we're taking the coal for free, so there's no coal charge. We built the biggest power station in the world, so labour costs are negligible. All we've got to do is pay off the power station, which will pay itself off in about four or five years, so we'll have the cheapest electricity in the world. So, alright, we got an aluminium industry.

Going back to golden Australia, almost every single item this country exports comes out of golden Australia, where no-one is living, and those that are living there are leaving at 100 miles an hour. In inland North Queensland, Mount Isa, at 31,000 people, is now down to 19,000, and the mining company Xstrata—a foreign corporation—just decides to close its huge copper mine. They're a trading company. If you take copper off the market, the price of copper goes up, and this is a very big mine. Whether they did it for that purpose or whether they're just callous or incompetent, 2,000 Australians were sacked, and a Labor government did absolutely nothing. The 'use it or lose it' clause of the great Theodore—they were Labor governments, but they were labour governments, not what you've got now: ALP governments. They put in 'use it or lose it'. The great Bjelke-Petersen governments followed them. They were much the same people—half the Labor Party went over and joined the Country Party, so it was the same people. Rudd's family and my family fall into that category, by the way. Use it or lose it. These people have got it, but they don't have to use it; they can just sit on it. It's our resource, and they can just sit on it, trade it and make themselves wealthy while we, the people of Australia, get nothing out of it at all.

I hope that the two major parties are saying their prayers, because there's every likelihood that our party will get the balance of power in the forthcoming election. If you're Glencore, say your prayers because you're going to get what you justly deserve. You're a big, ruthless, international mining company and you treat the people like dirt. You can get away with it because the ALP allows you to and you can get away with it because the Liberal and National parties allow you to. But, I tell you what, you won't get away with it if the people's party is back in power. It'll be a different outcome, I can assure you.

Going back to the issue of housing, the cost of a house, for land, was $7,000 in Charters Towers. When the mines department was abolished, it went—hear me—from $7,000 to $142,000. That's what you did with all your regulatory impositions. You put that price on the poor young people trying to have kids, trying to propagate Australia. You put a burden on them of $142,000. Now, alright, it's come back to $82,000. There are a number of towns within 100 kilometres of a population centre of 300,000. It's not as if we're living in the middle of nowhere. We can give you a house and land package for $300,000, because, really, there's no justification for land costing any more than $20,000. If you're trying to get a block of land in Brisbane under $300,000, I wish you well.

Come and live in Charters Towers, Ingham or Ayr and you can get a block of land if the government plays ball and the authority allows us to go back to square one, where there's one person living in the town, working for the local council presumably, who decides whether you get the subdivision or you don't. Buyer beware. The block we sold had no water, no electricity and no sewerage on it. They bought it. They got the water connected. There was no necessity for a bitumen road, but eventually we did get a bitumen road. We didn't ask for it. The point of the story is that we could produce land for housing in any of those three towns within an hour of Townsville for under— (Time expired)

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very glad to speak on the Help to Buy Bill 2023, which establishes one of the key measures being put in place by the Albanese Labor government to address the sharp challenges in housing access and affordability in Australia. It's a big problem. We understand that. We're not turning away from it. We are taking it on, and, in the first 18 months of this government, we've put in place a significant package of measures to address what was neglected for the previous decade: access to safe and affordable housing. This is one of those measures, the Help to Buy bill, and we're putting it in place along with all the other measures, some of which I'll touch on in a bit, because we know that safe, secure and affordable housing is literally the foundation upon which our wellbeing depends.

As I've said before, the starkest measures of deprivation anywhere in the world, including in Australia, relate to the absence of safe and secure housing, which means the inability to live and sleep warmly and in peace. It means the lack of a place where you can prepare food and eat properly. It means the lack of a home base from which people can go to work and children can go off to school, and a home base to which people can return to and rest and be supported in the company of their family and housemates. Without safe and affordable housing, everything else in life is contingent and at risk: health, education, employment and social inclusion, and the opportunity to breathe out, to think about the future, to play, to love and to be loved. That's why safe and affordable housing is rightly considered a basic human right.

As I say, it is literally the steady ground under your feet; it is literally the roof over your head. That's why it's been a high priority and major focus for the Albanese government in our first term. It's why it was such a big part of our first full budget in May last year. And it needed to be, because, as I said, as in so many areas of Australian life, the Albanese federal Labor government are stepping back into an area that was woefully neglected for the nine years, the three terms, of government before us. It was a decade in many cases of nothing and in some cases of worse than nothing—not just neglect but the active undermining of the capacity for Australians to access safe and affordable housing.

In that cause, we are delivering the Help to Buy scheme. It's part of a wider package but an important measure in itself. The concept is very simple: the Albanese government, in partnership with state and territory governments, is going to assist low-income Australians to own a home by sharing the investment in that home with them. We know that there are significant barriers to homeownership, especially for younger and low-income Australians. We know that saving a deposit is hard when there are so many other cost pressures. We know that getting a loan is not easy. This scheme will assist by allowing government to take a share in the purchase of a home, thereby alleviating what is otherwise an obstacle that many Australians can't overcome.

The fact is that Western Australians don't need any convincing and probably don't need much explanation about the benefits and the value of shared-equity schemes because we've seen an approach of that kind in WA. We've seen how it assists people into housing and boosts homeownership, particularly for people who find that challenging. We've had the Keystart shared-equity program operating in WA since it was created by the Dowding Western Australian Labor government back in 1989. That's significant for me. I actually remember that—1989 was my last year of high school. My life up to that point involved relative insecurity of housing. I was talking to my brother and sister the other day, just reflecting on the fact that in my last four years of high school—I attended Swanbourne high school—we moved five times. We lived in five different houses in those four years. After my parents parted ways when I was young, my parents never owned a house again until after my father's parents died and he was able to purchase a home. My mum doesn't own a house to this day. We were a renting, single-parent household. That's just how it was in Fremantle at the time. It was a considerably more affordable place than it is now. It amazes me, in terms of the difference that my kids have experienced, to reflect on what that was like, to think that I lived in five different premises just over the last four years of high school.

Keystart has been a remarkable program in WA. As I say, it started in 1989. It's helped more than 120,000 Western Australians get into their own home through nearly 80,000 separate home loans over that period, accounting for $18.3 billion in total loan funding. Three-quarters of those loans went to people who were previously renting. So 75 per cent of people who benefited from a Keystart loan had been renting. Some of the other quarter probably weren't even renting in as much as they were probably still living with family or in some other kind of informal housing arrangement. Seventy-three per cent of the loans under the Keystart program, in the 35 years that it's been in operation, have been made to people between the ages of 20 and 40. So you can see that nearly three-quarters of those loans go to people in that younger age bracket, where we know people face those kinds of challenges.

There's just no doubt that shared-equity programs work. I'm going to quote something that Jessica Shaw, the Western Australian state Labor member for Swan Hills, said about Keystart because it can't really be said better:

In Keystart, the State has a commercially sustainable, low-deposit but not high-risk, lending business that sets people on the path to financial sustainability.

That's absolutely right. So it's fantastic that the Albanese Labor government is now creating, through this bill, a similar shared-equity opportunity in Help to Buy that—certainly, in my state—will amplify what's already been delivered through Keystart. As I've said, it's an important measure. It's far from being the only thing that we've done in the first 18 months of this government. We created the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, with some significant resistance from other parts of the parliament, unfortunately—both the coalition and the Greens as it turned out, strangely enough. That's $10 billion through the Housing Australia Future Fund. It will create 40,000 dwellings over five years, with 4,000 of those dedicated to supporting women and children fleeing domestic violence. I don't think anyone would argue that we don't need that kind of measure.

The Social Housing Accelerator is $2 billion to partner with states and territories in creating new or refurbished social housing dwellings. The Home Guarantee Scheme was stood up quickly. It's already helped more than 67,000 people into homeownership since we were elected in May 2022. That includes 9,000 in rural and regional Australia through the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee. As part of our focus on cost of living, which was the highest priority focus of our first full budget, we delivered the largest increase to Commonwealth rent assistance that had been provided in 30 years. So we know that housing is a significant cost pressure. As I said, it's really the principal cost pressure on any Australian household. We are doing a number of things that are specific to housing but also things that go to cost of living more broadly, noting that that makes a difference when it comes to people's capacity to afford safe and secure housing.

That assistance to Commonwealth rent assistance, as we discussed, was a bill about getting people into homeownership. We of course know that people who aren't in a position to buy at this stage are essentially facing the rental market, and the market is tough. That's why we're working with the states on the rules that help regulate rental tenancies so that people can receive fair treatment, can ensure that they're not facing unconscionable rent increases that pile up one after the other, can face other kinds of sharp dealing when it comes to trying to find a place to rent on a fair basis. To the extent that the Commonwealth can make a direct difference to the capacity of people to afford rental premises, we are providing, as I said, the largest increase to Commonwealth rent assistance in 30 years.

We also boosted the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, and that's significant because, last year, when the cabinet came to Western Australia, as the Prime Minister committed to doing, making sure that cabinet and key ministers spend time in WA following his commitment to be in the west as often as he can be, there was an announcement by the Prime Minister and the minister for housing, with their Western Australian counterparts, of an $88 million investment through the National Housing Infrastructure Facility for a new social and affordable housing project in central Perth. It's being undertaken in cooperation with the Cook WA Labor government. They are putting in about $45 million. It will create 200 new dwellings, including 66 social housing apartments and 44 affordable rental homes.

As we make the change, which I hope is supported across the board, it's worth remembering the scale of the challenge not just in the way that it is experienced by people who are struggling to buy or to rent. The scale of the challenge before us is partly created by relatively short medium-term circumstances, but the greatest contributor to it is the longer-term pattern of neglect.

I said before that you could look at the things that the coalition did and didn't do. You can call it neglect. You can say that it's a failure of omission inasmuch as a lot of the measures that the Rudd and Gillard governments put in place—Prime Minister Rudd had his own experience of housing insecurity and was therefore very committed to introducing a range of programs at the Commonwealth level that would address that. It wasn't just that the incoming Abbott government said: 'We'll take our hands off the wheel. There's nothing more to do here.' There was a series of steps that the former government took that made things worse. They got rid of the housing help for seniors pilot. Older Australians, who are least able to increase their income and, frankly, need safe and secure housing as much as anyone, benefited from the housing help for seniors pilot. That got the chop under the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government.

They tried to cut funding to community legal centres. Mercifully, that was resisted. Think about the work that community legal centres do in terms of tenancy support and advice. Think about how critical it is when people who are possibly facing eviction and finding themselves homeless are able to get that expert legal assistance and advice. The coalition government wanted to cut the knees out from under community legal centres, which certainly would have not just had acute, harmful impacts on individuals but also pushed greater costs onto every part of the system. We know that, when you don't prevent a person from being in crisis, the consequences after that, when they've been evicted, end up being much more costly than if they could have stayed in their home in the first place. The coalition government wasn't finished there. They defunded the homelessness and community housing peak bodies. They thought: 'We don't need peak bodies who are in the game of helping give advice on policy, of helping to represent some of the most marginalised and disadvantaged Australians. We will stop supporting the vital work that they do.'

They closed the National Rental Affordability Scheme, a key policy under the Rudd-Gillard government, and they abolished the National Housing Supply Council. The one thing that those opposite will say is: 'Don't worry about anything else. It's all about supply. Take the ropes off the animal spirits in the economy'—blah, blah, blah—'and it will all take care of itself.' Well, they abolished the National Housing Supply Council, the body that was put in place to help coordinate increases in supply, encourage local governments to look at their planning conditions and encourage state and territory governments to take the brakes off. That body, which was doing good work, was abolished by those opposite. We don't accept the circumstances that face people in Australia doing it tough when it comes to achieving what should be a basic human right: safe, secure and affordable housing, the foundation of everything. We don't accept that.

We are stepping back into that space. In short order the Minister for Housing has introduced a comprehensive range of measures and funding, because the neglect of the last 10 years can't be allowed to continue. The Commonwealth has a role to help support housing options for all Australians, but particularly for those fleeing domestic violence, as well as younger, low-income, older, and poorer Australians. The Help to Buy 2023 Bill is one of those measures, along with a whole range of things that we're doing after a decade of neglect.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are times in your life that you simply never forget, whether it's meeting your partner—remembering that first time you saw them or your wedding day, if that's a path you choose—or the 'sold' sticker going up on your very first home. Those are very important times that you don't forget. Those four letters on that sign are a culmination of years of hard work, saving and sacrifice for a place to call your own. It's the great Australian dream, and it's still very much alive, but there's no doubt that that dream is under extreme pressure right across the country, including in my electorate of Casey.

Australians of all ages are working hard to take their first steps on the property ladder. We know that 85 per cent of renters aspire to own their home. As policymakers, we have a responsibility to do what we can to help all Australians reach their potential and reach that great Australian dream. As a first principle, we as a country need to create a situation where any Australian that wants to own a home should have the opportunity to own a home. However, this scheme that we are talking about, the shared-equity scheme in the Help to Buy 2023 Bill, is not going to achieve that for the Australian people. We know it's not the answer, because the uptake of shared-equity schemes in state jurisdictions shows that.

Labor's plan is for the federal government to contribute 40 per cent of the purchase price of a new home, or 30 per cent for an existing dwelling. They talk about their policy saving homebuyers up to 40 per cent of the money needed for a deposit. However, what they fail to mention is the upwards of 40 per cent tax that homebuyers will face upon selling their home, or throughout the life of the loan, in paying the government back their 40 per cent share. Under Labor's scheme, you own part of your home and the government owns the percentage that they contributed. Australians want to be able to own their own home, but they don't want Anthony Albanese and the government sitting at the kitchen table waiting for their slice of the profits in years to come.

There are a lot of challenges in the Help to Buy Bill 2023 that I'm going to talk to, and this bill is another example of this government promising a lot and not delivering on it. They promised, with all its flaws, that this scheme would be introduced by 1 January 2023, and here we are, in February 2024, 12 or 13 months later, and it's finally been introduced in the midst of a housing crisis. It's a bad bill that's not going to make a difference, but they didn't even live up to their promise to bring it in over 12 months ago.

It relies on working with the states to make these schemes work. However, as I said before, we already know that there are no full uptakes of these schemes in states. In Victoria, where I live, the Homebuyer Fund, which is a shared-equity scheme, was anticipated to assist up to 13,000 households. So far, there have only been 2,874 successful applicants—a significant gap in Victoria. In South Australia, their HomeStart shared-equity loans began in 2007, and a total of 705 loans have been offered in total. According to the 2021 census, there were 14,254 dwellings purchased under a shared-equity scheme. This comprises 0.13 per cent of the 10.8 million private dwellings in Australia.

This is what we see time and time again with the Albanese Labor government, and the Australian public have worked them out. There's a big headline, a big announcement, but it's actually not making a difference to improving people's lives. They're spruiking this scheme like it will solve all of the problems of the Australian people when it comes to housing affordability, but we know it won't and we know there's not an appetite for schemes like this, because we see it in the data and uptake in states all across the country. This is one of the challenges we have with this government. They talk about this being the solution. We've seen that the uptake is not there. But, even if the uptake was subscribed fully, it's 10,000 Australians each financial year at a cost of $5.5 billion to the Commonwealth government. Even if it was fully taken up, it's only 10,000 people, but we know it's not going to be.

But there's an even more significant challenge with this scheme and these bills, and it is in the detail and the unintended consequences that we need to look, and should be looking, as lawmakers. I was recently contacted by a constituent who purchased her first home using a shared-equity scheme in Victoria that's similar to this method that Labor is proposing. She is a professional woman who works in the finance industry, and I'd like to share, with her permission, a part of what she wrote so we can understand the unintended consequences of these schemes:

I was fortunate to buy my first home using the Victorian Home Buyer Fund program with a 15% equity share with the Victorian Government.

It put me in a position to create a home for myself and my two children, providing security and safety. I have a good understanding of my budget and accounted for interest rate rises when purchasing.

I am proud of the way I have managed my money as a single parent in the face of rising interest rates and cost of living. Unfortunately, I have recently discovered that I need to have brain surgery for a tumour in my brain. I anticipate I will need around 2 months off work, with full recovery to take up to 12 months.

I have been proactive in preparing for this unexpected event and recently contacted my bank about getting assistance with my mortgage. I qualify for hardship, but when going through the options for hardship, it was limited due to the Shared Equity Program. Both options available to me meant that once I was out of hardship, my repayments would increase to recoup the lost time and payments. I was advised that my repayments would increase by $29 a fortnight to keep me within the loan term. I know that might not seem like a lot, but for me, it is a significant amount.

The other option I had was increasing the loan term, which wouldn't impact my repayments. However, this option isn't available to me under the Shared Equity Scheme.

Being a single parent, I am already finding cost of living difficult. We don't go on holidays, we don't have subscriptions, I cover the basics and that is it.

I feel that I should have the same options available to me as other mortgage holders and not be disadvantaged for participating in a program designed to make homeownership easier.

I want to thank my constituent for sharing that story. It's an example of why the details matter when it comes to programs like this. It is not about putting it through so the Prime Minister and others can stand up and talk about how they're trying to make a difference, and we saw that in the state Labor shared-equity scheme. This person has been caught up because the details are not clear.

That's the reality of Labor's scheme. It leaves us with more questions than answers. What happens if you make improvements to your home? Will you have to send an invoice or ask for approval to renovate your bathroom or to fix your roof? Will the ATO be auditing your income to ensure it doesn't rise above the eligibility threshold? What happens if the market falls? Will you be forced to sell your house for less than you paid for it? What lenders are participating in the scheme? And, importantly, can the government guarantee that people taking up this scheme won't be caught in the same situation as my constituent, being limited in the hardship options when they desperately need them? These are questions that the government aren't able to answer, and that's why the detail matters.

There's really only one certainty about Labor's Help to Buy scheme: when it comes time to sell, homebuyers will be hit with a housing tax of 40 per cent as the government takes back its share. It doesn't seem fair and reasonable that, if you own a property jointly with the government, it's your responsibility for all the repairs, maintenance, rates, bills and everything else associated with the house—you've got to pay for all of that—but when it comes time to sell the government comes and takes its 40 per cent back. It's not a bad deal for the government: all the perks and none of the responsibilities.

We hear those opposite talk about the coalition and the last 10 years, and they like to say that nothing was done. The problem with that statement is that it isn't borne out in the facts. The coalition has a proud record in helping Australians into homeownership. Our approach is to support aspiration and help make homeownership a reality. In the last three years of the coalition government, our policy saw more than 300,000 Australians purchase homes. Under the coalition, first home buyers reached their highest levels in 15 years. We established the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation, now Housing Australia, which supported over 21,000 social and affordable homes. More than 60,000 first home buyers and single-parent families picked up the keys to their first home through the coalition's Home Guarantee Scheme, avoiding costly lenders mortgage insurance.

We took to the election a suite of homebuyer policies which would have delivered, including the super homebuyer scheme, which would have allowed first home buyers to invest up to 40 per cent of their super, up to $500,000, to help with the purchase of their home. The great thing about this scheme is that you would own all of your home. But some argue that it's a trade-off for your retirement savings by putting it into housing. Under this scheme a homeowner, when they sell that house, would be required to put that equity into their superannuation and into their retirement.

Let's compare and contrast the policies. The coalition believes that superannuation is your money. We believe that homeownership is crucial to security and safety and engagement with your community. We want to allow Australians to take some of their money, their savings, out of their superannuation to put into homeownership—40 per cent, which is the same amount as the government scheme. But then we're saying that, when you sell that house, you get to keep 100 per cent of the equity increase in that house, and you're required to put that 40 per cent growth into your superannuation to look after your retirement.

What does the government say? They say: 'You can't do that. You can't touch your money in superannuation. We will give you that money. We will give you that money, but we'll take 40 per cent of your house. And, if that increases in value and you sell it, we'll take that 40 per cent back.' How does that help Australians with their retirement? And they say, 'Any costs you have accrued along the way, any maintenance and any improvements you've made, we will just take our 40 per cent on top of that.' That's the reality of this scheme.

We're seeing people understand this. That's why the uptake is so low at state level. This is a new scheme that is not required because there are so many places already available. The Australian people have spoken with their feet. If they wanted these schemes, they would have already signed up to them at the state level, but they have not. They don't want the Australian government owning 40 per cent of their home. This is a policy that is designed to allow the Prime Minister, in his campaign launch, to stand up and talk about cheaper mortgages when the reality is mortgages have gone up 12 times under this government. It's not going to deliver a tangible difference for the Australian people. We've seen that and we know. That's the reality of this government. It's all spin. It's all politics. It's not providing tangible solutions to the housing crisis for the Australian people.

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

The Albanese Labor government understands that housing is more than just a roof over someone's head. It's about employment, it's about school and it's about friends and family. It provides security and economic wellbeing. And it's about being able to participate in the community. That's why the Albanese Labor government is committed to bringing homeownership back into the reach of Australians by helping more and more Australians around the country to move into their own home.

For many Novocastrians homeownership can feel like a far-off dream. Data released late last year showed the income required to buy a unit or a house in Newcastle was above the national average and higher than capital cities such as Melbourne. Homebuyers in Newcastle need to earn an income of more than $237,000 to comfortably service a house mortgage. Those in the market for a unit in Newcastle would need to earn a minimum household income of more than $181,000. In comparison, in Melbourne, a household income of $171,000 is needed to comfortably service a house mortgage. The average full-time salary in Australia is around $96,000, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics data, and slightly less in Newcastle. I know these statistics won't come as a shock to Novocastrians trying to get a foot into the housing market.

These statistics tell a story. Once upon a time, the Australian dream of buying your own home was achievable without intergenerational wealth. But owning a home has decreased over successive generations and is becoming more and more unrealistic. We want to change that. Our government understands the seriousness of this issue, which we've already acted on. We know it will take a suite of measures to help bring homeownership back into reach for more Australians, and that is exactly what we are doing. One of our key election commitments was expanding the Home Guarantee Scheme, helping eligible home buyers secure finance sooner through government support. We've recently reached an important milestone with this scheme, having now helped 100,000 people into homeownership, including 2,235 in Lake Macquarie and Newcastle. That's more than 2,000 Novocastrians who now, thanks to the Albanese Labor government, own a home who would otherwise not.

The Home Guarantee Scheme enables an eligible homebuyer to buy a home with as little as a five per cent deposit, and the government guarantees the other 15 per cent. This saves homebuyers from having to pay lenders mortgage insurance, meaning a savings of tens of thousands of dollars. We know that the average time to save for a deposit on a house on a medium income now exceeds a decade. The Home Guarantee Scheme means people who can service a loan for a mortgage but can't get over that hurdle of getting a deposit together are given a foot up.

The Albanese Labor government has also expanded eligibility of the Home Guarantee Scheme to allow joint applications between friends and family members, not just single, married or de facto applicants, and that's a great thing. We need more choices, more housing options in Australia, not fewer. The results speak for themselves. Almost one in three first home buyers are now using this government scheme—a significant increase from the last year of the former Liberal government. It's just one part of our ambitious housing reform agenda.

The Help to Buy scheme, the legislation that's before the House this evening, is another piece of help we're providing to Australians trying to set up their own home. It's help for thousands more Australians wanting to own their own home. Through Help to Buy, the Commonwealth will cut the cost of buying a home by up to 40 per cent. Participants will require only a minimum of a two per cent deposit and will benefit from lower ongoing mortgage repayments through having a smaller home loan. It will be the first national shared equity scheme of its kind, supporting up to 40,000 eligible Australians with purchasing a home. This scheme will be open to applications for four years, with 10,000 places available each year.

The Help to Buy Bill 2023 gives Housing Australia the power to enter into shared equity arrangements. Eligible participants will be able to access the scheme through participating lenders alongside a standard mortgage. This scheme will help participants overcome both the hurdle of saving for a deposit and the hurdle of servicing a mortgage. That's because the Commonwealth will provide an equity contribution, and scheme participants will have lower ongoing repayments due to the smaller home loan being taken out in the first place. The financial risk and benefit, capital gains and losses will be shared between the participant and the Commonwealth proportionate to their interests. All states have agreed through the national cabinet to progress legislation so the scheme can run nationally. That is a great thing. We have every state and territory in Australia signed up to this scheme.

The bill also includes the administrative framework for Help to Buy, including that Housing Australia must report to the minister on an annual basis, the minister must cause a review of Help to Buy as soon as possible after the end of three years from the commencement of the bill and that regulations for Help to Buy may enable administrative review of Housing Australia's decisions under the program.

Help to Buy will be open to assist people who have owned homes before and those who haven't. It will help couples, singles, siblings, friends, people close to retirement, those just starting out in the workforce and anyone eligible in between. This is an ambitious government committed to a housing agenda that will improve housing affordability and supply. Whilst we're often told by those opposite that it's states and territories that bear the primary responsibility for housing, including the provision of homelessness services, the Albanese Labor government has an ambitious housing reform agenda to ensure that all Australians can have a secure and safe place to call home. That's unlike those opposite, who say, 'It's not our responsibility,' and wash their hands and take no responsibility for providing citizens with one of the most basic of citizenship needs and rights—that is, safe affordable housing. They insist, 'No, no, no, it's not our job.' They anticipate voting no, but I beg them to rethink what they're doing, particularly those in regional seats.

Labor's housing agenda beyond this bill includes a $1.7 billion one-year extension of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement with states and territories, including $67.5 million in boosts to homelessness services. We've also got the development of the new National Housing and Homelessness Plan. We have the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the first of its kind; a national target to build 1.2 million well-appointed and well-located homes; $3 billion in a new homes bonus; and $5 million for the Housing Support Program. There's the national housing accord, which includes federal funding to deliver 10,000 affordable homes over five years from 2024, and that will be matched by another 10,000 from the state and territory governments; the $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator fund to deliver around 4,000 new social homes across Australia; an investment of an additional $1 billion in the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, again, to support more homes; and up to $575 million in funding already unlocked from the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, with homes under construction now. Remember that those opposite tried to block these bills before, saying that we couldn't do it, we were too ambitious and that it was not our responsibility and not our job. Well, those homes are under construction now.

The government also increased the maximum rate of the Commonwealth rent assistance by 15 per cent, the largest increase in more than 30 years. These are things that only Labor governments ever worry about and, indeed, deliver on. There's the additional $2 billion in financing for more social and affordable rental housing through Housing Australia. We've got new incentives to boost the supply of rental housing by changing arrangements for investments in build-to-rent accommodation, and the states and territories are committing to a better deal for renters to harmonise and strengthen renters' rights right across the nation. This is good news. This is good news for every generation of Australian citizens.

Those opposite often like to regard themselves as the party for homeownership, yet they will oppose this bill. I've never met a Liberal in this Australian parliament who actually thinks that they have a role to play in the provision of housing for our citizens. Usually their answer is: 'No, no, no. That's the job of the states and territories.' That's no matter how dire the situation and no matter how big a housing crisis our nation faces. That is not the Labor way. Indeed, it is only Labor governments that have ever stepped up to deliver housing policy at a national level.

This is legislation that will deliver one of the most basic fundamental rights for citizens, and that is access to a safe and affordable place to call home. There is nothing more basic. There is no more basic need than that in our country. Chifley understood this, the first of the great Labor leaders to invest in federal housing programs. That was followed by Whitlam, who also fully understood the importance of housing and proper services and who delivered sewerage to the suburbs. Again, this was vehemently opposed at the time. 'It's not the job of federal governments,' we were told. These are people facing dire circumstances with very clear, obvious needs. I'm not sure how those opposite look those people squarely in the eyes and say, 'Sorry, it's not our job.' We know that was the mantra under the former government. My one piece of advice to members opposite is: do not carry that through your term of opposition.

Australians who are squeezed out of housing markets and rental markets and are deeply worried about their capacity to have a safe, affordable place to call home will not thank you for shirking your responsibilities. They expect a government to be able to listen to their cries and formulate policy and legislation that in fact delivers on their needs. We've seen it following Chifley and Whitlam and, of course, when we had the Hawke and Keating governments, who understood the need for a national housing policy. This was followed through by Rudd and Gillard. Then we go back to the hiatus during the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison government years. No homes were to be built then. For Labor leaders and Labor members in this parliament, the idea that you would wash your hands of any responsibility to deliver housing for citizens at a time of tremendous need is utterly abhorrent. It is unimaginable. But I guess, when you've got a target of building zero houses, it's little wonder that no new housing ever came to fruition.

We do have an ambitious plan. We are a government that acts. We're not content to sit back and say: 'Not our job. Not us. Not Labor.' Australians can have a safe and secure place to call home. We should be working every day and every night to ensure that is possible. Delivering on Help to Buy, alongside all our other housing commitments, is part of that commitment to the Australian people. It's what drives our government every day. Our ambitious housing reform plan is working, and you should support it.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Help to Buy Bill 2023 and the Help to Buy (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023. I am opposed to this bill, because I believe this isn't a serious attempt to solve what is a significant problem in Australia at the moment. Similar programs have caused problems. On this side, we are opposed to the principle of excessive government involvement in peoples' affairs, and there are too many unanswered questions in relation to this piece of legislation. There will be a lot of speeches in the House about the importance of homeownership, and nobody disagrees with that. But the conflation of housing affordability with the scheme proposed in this bill is disappointing, and—if I could make an observation, being a new member of parliament—it's one of the bait-and-switch things that I see passing for debate in this place. It manifests itself in omnibus bills, where there'll be one good thing in it and about 50 things that are no good. People who are supporting it will castigate everyone, only talking about that one thing that everyone agrees on and not about the 50 things that are no good. But this follows that sort of logic. 'There is a problem, it needs a solution, and this is our proposed solution; therefore, this must be the solution.' It's worth noting that I don't think this particular solution is a solution to the housing crisis. It is a niche program and a flawed one. It's worth noting—and I will address this more in detail—that the only housing policies delivering support to first-home buyers, as borne out by my discussions with people in the industry and homebuyers in my electorate, are the housing policies that Labor inherited from the former coalition government.

What is Help to Buy? Help to Buy is a shared-equity scheme. It purports to make it easier for people to buy a home, but there's a catch. Your equity partner is the Australian government. It purports to be easier because eligible homebuyers are supported by the government. They don't have to contribute as much towards a purchase and so the deposit they require is smaller, as low as two per cent. With a shared-equity partner, they're saying you can get a home sooner or, more accurately, you can you get a loan sooner. But you'll also owe the government and they'll have to be paid back over time or when you sell.

Help to Buy will be open to only 10,000 households each financial year and will cost the Commonwealth $5.5 billion. That's if it reaches its targeted take-up. We have serious doubts about this because Australians don't love shared-equity schemes, especially when their equity partner is the government. The majority of states already offer their own shared-equity products, and these schemes are so unwanted by many Australians that there are places remaining in each of the available state based schemes. If they are not popular with Australians, why have one that comes from the federal government? Is it the case of being seen to do something?

The United Kingdom have had a help-to-buy scheme and it has been open to criticism. I'm not suggesting that this scheme that we are debating now is exactly the same as that UK help-to-buy scheme, but there are legitimate concerns that should be contemplated about what happened in the United Kingdom. We can look to them to see what some of the positives were but also what some of the perverse outcomes were. Graeme Leach, who is the chief economist at the Institute of Directors in the United Kingdom, described the scheme as 'dangerous' and said it would drive up prices. This was his quote in the Telegraph newspaper back in July 2013:

The housing market needs help to supply, not help to buy and the extension of this scheme is very dangerous. Government guarantees will not increase the supply of homes, but they will drive up prices at a time when it seems likely that house prices are already over-valued …

When the scheme is withdrawn any rise in prices that has taken place will be undermined, with potentially disastrous results. There is a real risk that the housing market will become dependent on the underwriting by government, making it very difficult politically to shut the scheme down.

Again, this is not the scheme we are debating. I concede that. But lessons can be learned from these government equity schemes in other parts of the world, and there are concerns about driving up house prices.

There are legitimate concerns that we have in the context of this bill. Will it contribute to further growth in house prices? Will it be found after five years of operation that three out of every five applicants who bought a home would have been able to afford it anyway, as was found by the UK National Audit Office on the UK scheme? Will it encourage those for whom homeownership may not be the most suitable option to take on undue financial risk? Could it divert resources from supporting people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness including because of rental stress?

There are a number of reasonable questions that we have in relation to this legislation that I think we should have answers to. What is the scheme's eligibility criteria? What happens when a person involved in this scheme makes improvements to their home? Will they have to send the government an invoice for repairs or maintenance? Will the government collect capital gains windfall based on the homeowner's investment in any improvements they've made? What happens if a person involved in the scheme earns a cent above $90,000 for an individual or $120,000 for a couple? Will the government force the sale of their home? Will the ATO be auditing incomes? If you participate in it, what are the reporting obligations? What happens if housing prices fall and you are behind with your mortgage payments? Will the government force you to sell your house for less than you paid for it? How many of the 40,000 places will be available in each state and territory? What lenders are participating in the scheme? These are all reasonable questions that I think should have been ironed out before bringing the bill into this place.

The question I think we need to ask when having this debate in a constructive way is: is there a better way of helping Australians realise their dream of homeownership? There are a few. There are some really good ones that were implemented by coalition governments. The first one I've had discussions with people in my electorate about. That's the Home Guarantee Scheme. Over the last three years, the coalition government's housing policies have supported more than 300,000 Australians with the purchase of a home. Remember with this Help to Buy scheme we're talking about only 10,000 a year over four years, a fraction of what the coalition was achieving. The coalition supported almost 60,000 first home buyers and single-parent families into homeownership through the home guarantee schemes, consisting of the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme, the New Home Guarantee and the Family Home Guarantee, with deposits of as little as five per cent or two per cent. The coalition's Home Guarantee Scheme is now supporting one in three first home buyers. We protected the residential construction industry with more than 137 HomeBuilder grants, generating $120 billion in economic activity.

These raw numbers talk to the fact that there were some very positive things happening during the previous government's term, but it's not just the numbers of people; it's who it helped. Of the 60,000 guarantees issued under the home guarantee schemes, 52 per cent were taken up by women—well above the market average of 41 per cent. One in five guarantees went to essential workers, almost 35 per cent of which were nurses and 34 per cent of which were teachers. There is a worker accommodation shortage and there are difficulties, particularly in regional areas, caused by a lack of supply. That, in my view, is caused by red and green tape, which is a legacy of the way that our state and local governments operate sometimes. But we do need to look after essential and professional workers and encourage them into regional areas.

In addition, there was the very successful HomeBuilder scheme. During the COVID pandemic, more than 137,000 Australian families applied for the HomeBuilder grants of $25,000 towards a new or substantially renovated home. The scheme delivered a secure pipeline of construction work that kept hundreds of thousands of tradies and small businesses in work.

The real issue is affordability, and what is being done now and what could be done in the future. In metropolitan areas, affordability is becoming a problem. The lack of supply is pushing prices up, and incomes aren't keeping up, particularly with the inflationary problems that we have at the moment. In regional areas affordability is still there. I'll pick some figures out. You can buy a house in Shepparton, in my electorate, for $450,000, and there are successful couples that are doing very well, perhaps earning a household income of $120,000 to $150,000 a year. Homeownership is a real option there, and that's a really good thing. In my own experience—I won't tell you what I bought my first house for, but it wasn't much, because it was back in 2003. My wife and I weren't earning a lot of money back then, but we scrimped and saved to get together a deposit. We bought a small house in Shepparton, and we were able to service those mortgage repayments. We were fortunate enough to have professional jobs in regional areas.

I think we can debate these schemes: our scheme is better than yours and your scheme is better than ours, and here's a government that's prepared to own a bit of your home, which you think is a good idea and we disagree. But we need to look a bit larger when we think about homeownership in Australia and, indeed, where people are living and working in Australia. I hark back to my maiden speech. I talked about my vision—and many others' vision—for regional Australia, and Australia more generally, and the need to look at population rebalance in our nation. I believe there are too many people living in our cities. Our cities are growing fast and sprawling in an unplanned way. In Australia we've got cities heading towards five to six million people, such as Sydney and Melbourne. In some cases this growth is unsustainable, in relation to public transport and other facilities.

Look at a country like Germany, which has a population that's significantly larger than ours—over double. Instead of having these big megacities that are sprawling out, they have smaller, regional cities linked by high-speed rail and surrounding major manufacturing centres. I was there last year and I saw this myself. Wouldn't that be a better way to plan our nation—to plan where we put people and where we build houses? The growth and the strategic development of regional Australia is what we're about. That's one of the reasons I put my hand up to try and come into this parliament as a National Party member—I see the opportunity of regional Australia, what it can achieve and what we could do by having significant cities outside our major metropolitan areas, linked by high-speed rail, with thousands and thousands of professional people living and working.

I believe this relates to homeownership because it's a lot cheaper to set up these greenfield places outside regional cities than it is to continue to sprawl out of suburban Melbourne or Sydney. I think that would be a positive thing for our nation. What's holding that back is the planning regimes that developers have to go through to open up land to build houses. A farmer might be very happy to see a place outside a regional area that is currently a paddock be rezoned as a residential block. The process to go from there to the point where someone is actually able to pour a slab and build a house takes, in some cases, six to eight or 10 years, and that's not keeping up with the demand for houses in our nation.

We need to streamline that. It's the responsibility primarily of the state governments, but the federal government has got a role to play there too. We can ensure that we get more people living sustainably and, in my view, more people in regional areas, close to where they work and embedded in supportive and connected communities. You only need to come to some of the cities in my electorate, such as Shepparton, Echuca and Seymour, to see how that works. It works really well.

I think that government equity in people's home loans is not a good idea. I think that there are too many unanswered questions in the way this particular scheme is going to work, and I don't think it's a serious attempt to look at a big-picture vision of how we improve homeownership and population rebalance in our nation of Australia.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Going once, going twice, sold' was a phrase that once was the beginning of the Australian dream for working Australians, which for many has now become a pipedream. We're here to change that. The Albanese Labor government will cut the cost of buying a home by up to 40 per cent for 10,000 Australians per year. Help to Buy will help Australians buy a home with a smaller deposit, smaller mortgage and smaller mortgage repayments. This will cut the cost of some mortgages by up to $400,000.

The scheme will mean that eligible homebuyers will have an equity contribution of up to 40 per cent of the purchase price of a new home and 30 per cent of the purchase price for an existing home. With only two per cent of the price needed for a deposit to qualify for a standard home loan, 10,000 people that have been kept out of the homeownership market due to the initial cost will be able to achieve homeownership a lot easier through a dramatic decrease in the initial price. They'll be able to qualify for a standard home loan with a participating lender to finance the rest of the purchase a lot more easily than it has been before.

Decreasing the initial barrier to homeownership allows more hardworking Australians to enter the housing market. Help to Buy is intended to support Australians who would otherwise not be able to purchase a home. That's why the government is committed to an ambitious housing reform agenda, which includes establishing the Help to Buy scheme to help more Australians into their own home. We understand that we have a housing crisis in Australia, which developed under the stewardship of those opposite, and homeownership has become harder than ever before. It's harder now in cities, it's harder in the regions, and it's harder in our local communities. There has been a massive drop of homeownership, especially for low- and moderate-income earners. If you're not a trust fund baby, it seems like you should just give up on the Australian dream.

We know that many older Australians, single parents and those from minority backgrounds are more vulnerable and find it a near impossibility to enter the housing market.

Even just looking at 40 years ago, when 60 per cent of young Australians on low to moderate incomes owned their own homes. It's now down to 28 per cent.

The Help to Buy scheme before us today is just one element of the Albanese government's plan to improve housing affordability, honouring our commitment from the last election.

We've already legislated the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the $3 billion Social Housing Accelerator program and the largest increase to Commonwealth rent assistance in 30 years.

We know this is not going to fix the crisis overnight but it's laying the foundations to build a sustainable and fit-to-work housing system after the years of neglect we have seen.

We are investing in the future of housing for younger generations.

The government understands that affordable housing is critical to Australia's economic wellbeing, and with National Cabinet we are making sure people across our country can get access to the scheme.

Once the scheme is established, 10,000 people over each the next four years will get access to lower deposits and lower mortgages.

This is on top of the more than 86,000 people who have accessed the Home Guarantee Scheme, including the 13,000 Australians who have acquired home ownership through the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee.

We know this policy will bridge the gap that many Australians experience when entering the housing market.

People within our electorates also know that this is a scheme that could also potentially open the doors of a new home for them.

A resident of Hurstbridge has been in regular contact with my office regarding the incoming Help to Buy Scheme. Since we announced it at the last election, he has been desperate to jump on board to apply.

As an older Australian, who wants to achieve the Australian dream, he sees it as his chance to actually get there.

I look forward to when the political games end and I can finally inform him that applications have opened.

We have the opportunity to get this scheme through parliament to help people right across the nation.

The only roadblock to people accessing this scheme is getting the legislation through and pass the egos who seek to block it.

The government is giving people the housing stability that people deserve to live fulfilling and safe lives.

As we look to get this legislation through, despite roadblocking by the coalition and the preaching of the Greens, I want to share a story with the parliament from a single mother in the electorate of McEwen and I want those who are blocking the bill to listen to this:

I have been a single parent for close to 11 years.

In 2013, upon my marriage breakdown and the sale of our home, I found myself a 41 year old woman back in the rental market, something I never expected after having worked hard and sacrificed to save for a deposit close to 15 years earlier, this time with three dependants 14, 8 and 5 years of age.

While I had a small settlement from the sale of our home, as a low-income earner I was unable to secure finance to purchase my own home.

There was no bank keen to approve a loan for a woman on a single income with three dependent children. (At the time I could not even get approval for a $1,000, 12-month interest-free deal on a TV!)

While I am university educated and was working in my field of study, it is not a profession which pays a great deal, which continued to affect my ability to get a loan.

And while over the last 4 years I have been lucky enough to find roles within this profession to increase my income, it still hasn't been enough.

We are a single income home. I have paid for the education of my oldest two children who are now young adults and still have one child at school.

The cost of my children's education meant that a fair proportion of the settlement I received went to them.

Further, I live in a regional area which has also had an impact on the opportunities available to me and the amount I can earn.

Without close family support, I have needed to rely on childcare and working close to home to raise my children.

I am now 52 years old and often hear the largest growing cohort of homeless people are women of my age and in my situation.

I also do not have a great deal of super because for many years I was only working casually—if at all with young children—and at the time our priority was to add extra to my former partner's superannuation to take care of both of us in retirement … and that's not the way it panned out.

I know that I am lucky that I am fit and healthy, allowing me to hopefully have the ability to work as long as I like, but no one knows what's around the corner.

The prospect of trying to survive renting on a pension or rely on the generosity of my children is not one I want to entertain. Labor's Help to Buy scheme is a perfect example of the way a government can provide a leg up to someone in my position, who despite the best laid plans finds themselves locked out of the housing market and not enjoying the security that comes from your own home.

As other members of our community know renting is stressful.

Whether it is the 6 monthly checks or the constant fear of eviction.

In the first 3 and a half years we had to move 3 times after selling our home. Whether it was due to landlords moving back in or the sale of the rental property.

For someone trying to provide stability for children who had undergone a massive family upheaval the constant relocation was a nightmare.

Add to that the recent rent increases continue to impede any ability to save for a deposit, and while interest rates have been a problem for mortgage holders they will decrease as inflation drops.

I doubt the rent will follow.

Rents will not go down unless a substantial increase in available properties becomes apparent as the competition for tenants will remain.

This scheme will give those on low and middle incomes an opportunity to buy a home with at least a 2 per cent deposit, allowing them to access home ownership which is linked to short, medium, and long-term economic security.

It helps people overcome both the hurdle of saving for a deposit and the hurdle of servicing a mortgage, with the Commonwealth providing an equity contribution, meaning scheme participants will have lower ongoing repayments from a smaller home loan.

This is the only way I can see myself being able to get back into home ownership… short of winning Tattslotto!

The Help to Buy scheme is a great program for women like myself.

Even without the current cost of living, single income homes have always done it tough and the security to be able to have a home I could call my own, and not constantly feel like I am just treading water—would be amazing to me.

That's a very important story, and it just shows those opposite aren't listening to what's actually going on in the real world. It's easy to sit there and say, 'Oh, we don't think this will work,' and then not put up any options about how things could be done better. We know that under the previous government their HomeBuilder scheme, or as it was commonly known 'rich people's bathroom renovations'—that's all it delivered. It overheated the market.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Gold taps!

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Gold taps were one of the things, yes. It overheated the market. It meant people were paying more to get homes built and homes repaired than what it used to cost because there was this free money getting thrown around without concern. So many people entered the previous coalition government scheme only to find out it was shortened because of the delay, because of COVID and because of a whole range of things, such as shortages in workforce and supplies. That left some people with signed contracts that wouldn't be completed on time, and therefore they lost the ability to access that support.

What's important is putting people at the centre of this. We're trying to find ways to give people like the lady I talked about security and peace of mind. We know quite a few people who have multiple houses, including some that sit over there and preach that no-one should have a house and that it should all be social. We've got to look at how we find the best way to help people get security. Buying a home when you've got have a trusted partner like government to help and support you is so important.

The story I read was a meaningful story, and no-one should, in good conscience, stand in the way of making housing more affordable. No political point is more important than providing housing security to our most vulnerable. It's a shame that the Liberal and the Nationals and the Greens continually form their new coalition to prevent better access to housing. I think about how in my time here there's never been a public housing program that they haven't opposed. They don't like support for public housing. The new tree/tory coalition will never stand up for hardworking Australians. They continue to block important legislation to increase access to homeownership. This new coalition doesn't stand up for working-class Australians. It simply prioritises cheap political points over housing security. Just look at the antics of the member for Griffith the last time housing was brought up.

After years of inaction in housing that has left the market almost impenetrable for many Australians, we will continue to look for new ways to legislate and to make entering the housing market more achievable for the average Australian. This bill is one of the many ways the Albanese Labor government is honouring our commitment to tackle the housing issue across the country, and I commend the bill to the House.

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

You find me in a state of absolute shock. I just heard a Labor member stand up and speak ill of throwing money around willy-nilly. I think this is throwing out the entire Labor Party scheme and the building blocks of the whole Labor Party—a government that came in and increased spending by $188 billion and now wants to talk about the ills of throwing money around willy-nilly. Goodness me!

But let's go through it further to the points made in the previous speech about not listening to the Australian people. If the government think that what the Australian people want is not homeownership but homeownership with an asterisk, then they're not listening. They're not tuned in to what the people of Australia are saying. I'll comment further on the last speaker who was making slight jibes about people owning multiple houses. I think that a quick look at the front bench might be useful to see the property portfolio of their own leader. If they want to raise issues like that, I think that's quite easily dismissible. To make what we're talking about clear, it raises the issue of working-class Australians. Once again, we're straight into class warfare from this government in their attacks over this one. What a joy it is to come after such an insightful speech on the true intention of the Australian Labor Party!

I will pick up one issue, though, that was raised about the impacts of government schemes driving prices up. A scheme very similar to this in the UK had exactly that impact. It inflated prices by more than its subsidy values in areas where it was most needed. One of the terrible things that we come across in the great lessons of history is that we take no lessons from history. This has been tried. This results in driving prices up, particularly for the most vulnerable. This is not about helping Australians one iota.

Let's talk about what this is. This is giving up on the thing that I think I've heard every speaker talk about so far: the great Australian dream of homeownership. This is setting out to climb Mount Everest, getting to base camp and saying, 'I got there.' I think that this issue matters—the nature of the ownership of one's house. I think it is important. It's beyond just the physical asset. It's beyond the little piece of paper that says, 'This is mine.' It's what that means as a family setting forth to start their family home, whatever shape that may be. It is some place in Australia that is theirs—a place that they have worked hard for, that they can be proud of and that in every single way reflects who they are and is their base. It's their castle.

I reflect upon my own grandfather coming back from the Second World War and falling in love with his beautiful wife. He raced as quickly as he could—the member for Leichhardt will enjoy this—to build the house with his own hands before his first child was born so that she could come into a house that he'd made himself. That spirit carries on today; you talk to anybody. I had the pleasure of talking to young homeless kids in my electorate, at Base Services, about what they want in life and about what they aspire to. They started off with things like a car or a girlfriend, but inevitably they got to the same point: a home, a place of their own. This isn't going away. This matters. People want to know that this is their home. They don't want to know that it's homeownership in partnership with the government that is subsidised. They want it to be theirs. I think that's a good thing. I think that is the aspiration in Australia that has driven so many of the good things that this country offers to people from all around the world who choose to come here and join this great Australian experiment of ours.

I think it's important to point out that this is not a new thing. This is a scheme that has largely been tried amongst the states in Australia. In the midst of a housing crisis—I think we can all acknowledge that's exactly where we are: a housing crisis—it's particularly hard. Being on the Economics Committee, I've heard over and over again from the RBA and all the major banks that the people getting squeezed the hardest are those young 25 to 29-year-olds who would usually be trying to save for a deposit to get onto the housing ladder. But, with inflation and the cost of everything rising, they're unable to. They're renting and their rents have gone up, and they're unable to get on that housing ladder. Presented with this option, some are taking it up, yes, but these schemes provided by various state governments are undersubscribed. In a housing crisis, they're undersubscribed. The suggestion that what is needed is more of this is an extraordinary step. These measures are being taken and they are undersubscribed, and, for that to be the case in a housing crisis, I think that speaks to the broadness of their appeal.

But, if you're willing to go through those two hoops, if you're willing to forgo homeownership in full without that little asterisk hanging over your head and if this is an option for you, there is an issue that I think is worthy of being raised, and it's about the nature of the contract you are entering into and the high level of trust that you are engaging in. For so many people, this is your family home, this is 30 years of repayments and this is everything that you base your hopes and dreams, your way of life, around. And you're entering that with that need for a high level of trust in an environment, particularly on issues of the economy, where that trust has not been on display from this government.

I go back again to the over 100 times that this Prime Minister promised that he would stick with the stage 3 tax cuts, and he then changed his mind. Now, those opposite can say that he stayed with the tax cuts—that's fine—but the details matter, and they matter significantly when it comes to the issue of homeownership; to how it impacts your household finances, your plans for the future; and to how that will play out as your life carries on. These things are important. So, when assessing this, I think the Australian people would do well to ask, 'Is the basis of trust there to enter into this contract with this government?' Clearly it's not. Clearly, when the politics and the polling of the day make it easy for a government to change its mind, despite multiple promises that it wouldn't do so right up to the death, that trust just isn't there.

To go to the key, the heart of where we're at in the broader context, and to where we find ourselves with this, this is a government that has said multiple times that the key issue of the housing crisis we have is supply. We've heard that, and this certainly is not in any way addressing supply. There's no attempt to pretend it is—nor is it addressing the issue of increasing demand. We've seen 500,000 new Australians join us in the last 12 months, with the prospect of another 1.2 million, I think, joining us over the next five years, all of which will continue to drive that demand up higher. The simple equation of supply—a good outcome at the moment is the supply rates staying the same. Unfortunately they've been dropping, and I'll get to that. With supply not changing and demand going up, we will see prices continue to rise. That's the forecast for us at the moment.

I'll go back again to my opening comments. When this sort of scheme was applied in the UK, the result was that house prices increased by more than the subsidised value, particularly in areas where it was needed most. So those most vulnerable will see those house prices rise. Those who choose to seek full homeownership will watch house prices rise more than the subsidised value of this scheme.

I want to explore the depths of the supply issue we have, and I'm going to start with a column that I hope is more digestible to those opposite. It's in the Guardian, that great bastion of right-wing thought: Australian housing approvals sink to lowest level in 12 years amid rising costs and planning delays. So we have inflationary pressures and regulatory pressures putting our housing supply at over 10-year lows. For the full year leading into 3 February, we saw approvals total 162,200, the lowest annual rate since March 2013, according to the NAB. Clearly, the NAB's comments are quite strong. Unfortunately, they say, 'A supply fix is not coming in a hurry.' What are the issues in front of us? What will help homeownership? What will help people realise that dream in the way my grandfather, my parents and new Australians coming from around the world seeking their own homes did? What are the delays and issues? They're construction costs and inflationary pressures in an environment where we've added $188 billion of spending and tried to pretend that wouldn't be inflationary. At a time when we've got the RBA trying to take money out of the economy by raising interest rates, we've got a government pumping money back into the economy. We've got one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake. We're going nowhere and wondering why, and we're just going to blow out the engine.

It's policies and interventions like these that seem at their heart to have good intentions and the burning desire to address a need in society. But it's their consequences. Unfortunately, what this government isn't doing is addressing those key issues that they can address. They're not reducing demand. They're not reducing the number of people coming from overseas, who are now entering the housing market, driving prices up. They could do that in a heartbeat, but they've decided not to. They made it very, very clear again in question time today when asked about the impact of immigration numbers on house prices. They refuse to address it. They refuse to acknowledge the increased demand their policies are producing in Australia or the impact on young first-home buyers.

I could go further. The ABS shows total dwelling approvals fell 9.5 per cent in the 12 months leading to December 2023. We are on a downward descent in terms of supply issues. We're not going upwards. We're hurting. We're going backwards. As we've seen, when very similar policies were deployed in the UK, it had upward pressure on prices. I go back again to this point. There is a fundamental divergence here around the role of homeownership that I think is being exposed. I think we see very clearly that it is not the view of the government that the nature of homeownership matters, whereas we on this side acknowledge something different. We think it does matter. We think that owning your home outright, in your name, is a worthy ambition. I think it's about being able to say: 'This is mine. I live here. I provide this for my husband, for my wife, for my children. This is what I have created. This is the place where I get to contribute to the continuation of Western society. This is where my family stories will be told. This is where the memories will be made.'

It matters that you own that outright and it's yours. That's the difference. I think the Australian people want to hear that we acknowledge that that difference—that belief that outright homeownership, without a little asterisk—is important. There's a very clear difference being put in this debate. Those on this side strongly stand by those Australians who have that aspiration and want to own their own home in their own name. We stand with those people. We will not give up. We will set out for Everest acknowledging the great challenges in front of us. They are many and will not be solved in the short term, but we will not set up on that ambition, give up at base camp and try to tell people that this is homeownership—that we've taken this first step, and that's going to get us there. The issue is more than that. The issue is more than just bricks and mortar or a roof over your head. The issue is your ability to have a place of your own, in your own name, outright, that you can be proud is yours. It's an ambition that Australians have held for such a long time, and I hope we can continue to hold it. I think it's worthy of fighting for. I don't think giving up on that ambition is worthy of the Australian people. I don't think that's what we're called to this place to do—to get halfway towards a solution, pack it up and start the marketing campaign. I think we should aim for higher ambitions than that.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had the misfortune of sitting through those 15 minutes. I know that it's good for members to try speaking from notes or speak off the cuff, but I think next time that bloke needs to get his staff to write him a speech and he should read it out faithfully. It was just rhetorical, circular nonsense.

Let's focus on what the bill actually does as opposed to the fantasy island or Enid Blyton interpretation over there. The Help to Buy Bill 2023 is a hugely important bill that will change lives. It's part of the government's ambitious agenda to improve housing affordability, including the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the $3 billion Social Housing Accelerator payment, the largest increase to Commonwealth rent assistance in 30 years, action on homelessness, the expanded Home Guarantee Scheme and the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee. Initiatives have already helped more than 100,000 people into homeownership since the election, delivering $25 billion in new housing investments over the decade.

It is appalling that, yet again, here we are observing the Liberals and the Greens political party teaming up to try and block action on housing. The only things standing in the way of this important reform to help 40,000 Australians into homeownership—people trying to buy their first home—are the coalition and the Greens.

What does the bill do? It's the first national shared-equity scheme of its kind. It will help 40,000 Australian households to purchase their own house. It would include a Commonwealth equity contribution to eligible participants of up to 40 per cent of the purchase price for new homes and 30 per cent for existing homes. Over four years, that's 10,000 places available per year. Homebuyers would need a minimum two per cent deposit. This will mean lower ongoing repayments while people are in the scheme, and that means long-term relief.

There are numerous people in my electorate—in Dandenong, Endeavour Hills, Hallam, Doveton, Narre Warren, Berwick and elsewhere—who stand to benefit from this scheme. It'd be delivered in partnership with all states and territories. States will pass their own legislation in 2024 for the scheme to operate in their jurisdictions. It went through National Cabinet last year.

The benefits of a well-designed, well-delivered shared-equity scheme are enormous. For those participants who are eligible, it'll help them to overcome both the hurdle of saving for a deposit and the hurdle of servicing a large mortgage. The Commonwealth equity contribution means that scheme participants will have lower ongoing repayments from a smaller home loan. The financial risk and benefit—the capital or losses—will be shared between the participant and the Commonwealth proportionate to their interests.

This should be a no-brainer. It's not a magic bullet. It's part, as I said at the start, of the government's ambitious housing agenda to improve housing affordability. It's a practical, responsible scheme which will help up to 40,000 Australians. Let's be frank: the housing market has been stuffed over recent decades. Homeownership rates between generations have decreased significantly, particularly for lower-income households, and it's lower-income households—people without the bank of mum and dad to help them into the market—that this scheme is intended to help. The average time to save for a deposit on a house in Australia on the median income now exceeds a decade. As I said, there's no magic bullet. The ultimate answer is to increase housing supply, but the government also needs to actively work to help people enter the market and to bring homeownership back into reach for thousands of Australians who've been locked out.

It should be a no-brainer, but, yet again, the unholy alliance of the Liberals and the Greens political party are teaming up with Peter Dutton and Barnaby Joyce—the Leader of the Opposition and the member for New England—to block action on housing. The Prime Minister has rightly described their repeated efforts to block action on housing as 'incomprehensible'. The last time that they tried this, with the Housing Australia Future Fund, he said:

… it is incomprehensible that at a time when housing is an issue and where everyone knows that housing supply is the issue … they continue to block this legislation.

And they're doing it all over again.

Now, Australians wouldn't be surprised that the Liberals say no. That's all they do. They say no to jobs, no to wage rises, no to fairer tax cuts and no to better working conditions. No. They vote no to lower energy prices. And now they're voting no to action on housing. The Leader of the Opposition has nothing to offer Australians but negativity and anger and division—literally, not one positive plan.

The Greens, however, are trickier, as the member for Wills well knows. They give fiery speeches about supporting social housing. There are lots of memes on social media because, if you're from the Greens political party, judging by their behaviour the only purpose of being in parliament is to wedge the government or the opposition and get a meme up on social media. It's 'Stunts R Us'. Once a week, there they are, getting the meme. Every bill, every debate, is an excuse for another meme, for the Greens. But when it comes to the crunch, when it's time to actually put their hands up and vote for action on housing, they put their own political posturing and product differentiation before the right outcomes for Australians, particularly the most vulnerable people in our society.

And it's not just here. Greens political party councillors on councils right across the country constantly vote no to more housing. They constantly oppose new development which would increase supply. The Greens in the federal parliament constantly vote to block action on housing. The Greens care more about prosecuting their own housing agenda than about helping Australians in need.

But let's have a look at the opposition—the shadow minister. He was offered a meeting to discuss the points which he raises in the media, but he's not prepared to actually meet with the minister. It's all stunts and press releases. Perhaps the silliest of his claims is that this scheme is 18 months delayed. He's outraged, the shadow minister, because the scheme's 18 months delayed, according to him. Well, the scheme didn't have a start date, but it's little bit ironic that he's complaining the scheme was delayed when he's actually delaying it by refusing to vote for it, stringing it out and locking out more low- and middle-income earners from owning their own home. The government has been working carefully over the last 12 months with all the states and territories on the design of the scheme. As I said, it was ticked off by National Cabinet, and the states will be passing parallel legislation this year.

The second complaint, which we heard from the previous speaker, the member for Groom, was this: 'People aren't taking up those state schemes, and states have these schemes anyway. Why do we need a national scheme?' It's true; some states do have shared-equity schemes, including the formerly Liberal state of New South Wales and the formerly Liberal state of Western Australia. Those schemes have provided useful insight into the design of Help to Buy. But there are large states that still do not have a shared-equity scheme. Also, some state schemes are very tightly targeted. They're all different. This is a scheme that would be open to a larger number of eligible Australians.

Those opposite also complain that the technical detail, like the eligibility criteria, has not been provided. Like most legislation like this, that's just a nonsense argument. The legislation doesn't provide every bit of technical detail. It sets up the framework to allow the Commonwealth to offer a scheme like Help to Buy. It's entirely appropriate and indeed entirely normal that the detail of these kinds of schemes is set out in program directions, to allow for flexibility. Ironically, that's exactly how the former government designed the Home Guarantee Scheme that it set up. Our government was very clear in the election campaign what the criteria would be. We'll be consulting soon on the detailed program directions, and of course the shadow minister is welcome to be part of the consultation. I wouldn't hold my breath, given he likes to complain about things and not actually turn up for the briefings.

We also heard the previous speaker say that Australians don't want this scheme. There are a lot of people in my electorate that do want this scheme, that would be in a position to access it and, indeed, that have contacted my office, asking when Help to Buy is starting. The only response we can give them is: 'Ask the Greens political party and the Liberal Party, because they're the ones blocking this scheme.' It's incredibly disappointing.

The other nonsense that's spread is 'we've seen nothing on first home buyers from this government'. Since the election, we've helped more than 100,000 people into homeownership through the Home Guarantee Scheme. And, when the government were elected, we acted quickly to improve and expand the Home Guarantee Scheme and to introduce the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee three months earlier than promised.

Importantly, with those changes, the government also expanded the guarantee to non-first-home buyers who haven't owned a property in Australia in the last 10 years, which is really important to help those who have fallen out of homeownership often due to financial crisis, time out of the labour market or relationship breakdown. We also expanded the existing scheme in July this year to allow friends, siblings and other family members to apply for the First Home Guarantee and the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee. Under those opposite, they were locked out. The only people who were eligible when they were in government were married people or single people. There will be a huge boost in take-up thanks to Labor's changes.

I will finish by picking up on some of the comments of those opposite. I wrote one down. The previous speaker was calling out policies that seem to have at their heart good intentions and things which might actually push up prices. Possibly the stupidest housing policy ever is the only policy they had on housing—to let people access their superannuation to buy a house. It would do two things. It is quite genius if you're going for the gold medal for stupidest policy. It would push house prices up by putting petrol on the fire of house prices. People would turn up to an auction with all their superannuation in their pockets and bid up the cost of housing. The only person that wins out of that is the person selling the house. The second genius move it would cause is to trash people's retirement savings. A low-income earner with 20 grand or 50 grand in their super may as well put the vacuum cleaner into their super account and suck it into the pocket of the guy selling the house. Just throwing the cash away is all it would do. That's their genius policy.

They want to vote against action on housing. They want to vote against everything the government is doing, and yet they want to push up the cost of housing. Here's a tip for them: you don't make housing more affordable by making it more expensive. If they were really serious about housing policy, the first thing they'd do is march into their party room tomorrow and say, 'We are going to drop this dumb policy we've got to push up the cost of housing.' I don't think they're going to do that. It is interesting, isn't it? The current Leader of the Opposition said back in 2017 in relation to the policy that they're pushing:

… you don't want to fuel the prices. You don't want to create a situation that is worse than what we have got at the moment.

He should follow his own advice, shouldn't he, and dump his policy? The shadow finance minister and then minister for superannuation in relation to the policy of letting people suck out their super and push up houses prices admitted it. She said, 'It'll probably push up prices.' She should listen to herself. Even the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, that well-known property investor in the Gold Coast, had something to say. She agreed with those comments and said:

Young people need their super for retirement, not to try to take pressure off an urban housing bubble …

It's not a serious policy. There's a reason why even Mathias Cormann when he was finance minister and every previous Liberal prime minister ruled this out. It's a nonsense policy. It would make the problem worse. It's the kind of policy you have when you want to take focus off the fact that you have no serious housing policy. It's a little bit like suggesting having small modular nuclear reactors everywhere to take attention away from the fact that you have no energy policy and you just destroyed the last three prime ministers by fighting about the lack of an energy policy. A small problem also is that there are no small modular nuclear reactors in the world, but they don't let that get in the way of their talking points.

So the only policy we have from those opposite, who are voting against the government's action on housing, is to let young people raid their own retirement settings, which, as the Grattan Institute said, would do little if anything to increase homeownership rates. I commend the bill to the House, and I encourage those opposite to march into their party room tomorrow and say: 'We've got it wrong. We need to dump our stupid policy and we need to actually vote for the government's legislation which will do something for 40,000 Australians to help them into the homeownership market.'

Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Help to Buy Bill 2023. I have to say that this bill sounds great. It's a really headline-grabbing name—'help to buy'. It's what I would call clickbait. At a time when everyone is talking about the affordability of owning a home, to have our government putting up a bill that says 'help to buy' sounds like our government is really helping people to buy a home. But is it really going to help more Australians buy a home?

I understand it was the Prime Minister's election promise when he launched his federal campaign in 2022 to help more 'hardworking Australians' to 'achieve the great Australian dream of home ownership'. That's quoted from the bill digest.

With a federal election looming, this Help to Buy Bill would no doubt have appealed to voters, just with its name. But, as a relative newbie in this House, listening to all these policy announcements, I can't help but wonder: what is truth, what's campaign messaging and what's reality?

At a time when people are feeling the pain of the rising cost of petrol, continuing rises to the cost of energy, soaring food costs, rent, insurance—you name it—having a bill that's supposed to deliver 10,000 homes each financial year, with a total of 40,000 places, you could be fooled into believing that the government has thought through this piece of policy to increase home ownership.

When my family first arrived in Australia from refugee camps, we knew that if we worked hard and saved we'd eventually be able to own our first home. Back in those days cost of living wasn't an issue. My sisters and I eventually did, moving out of our public housing in Western Sydney to own our own homes.

However, successive governments' policies have now brought us to this juncture, where the cost-of-living and housing crises are forcing the government of the day to come up with policies that are so disconnected from reality.

A recent 9News article revealed that one in six people are depending on credit cards for daily expenses, just so that they can survive cost increases. There's barely any equity for them to even consider saving for their own property. Saving is no longer an easy feat.

This reality is nowhere more acute than in my community in Fowler in Western Sydney. Fowler is one of the lowest socioeconomic electorates in the country. Every dollar that's spent counts. My constituents often have to choose between paying for bills and groceries or saving for a house. The rental market is another conundrum, with Fowler recorded as the fourth-worst for rental affordability in Australia.

This proposed Help to Buy Bill is reportedly designed to alleviate stress on low- to middle-income earning Australians to purchase a home through a national shared equity scheme. Under this proposed scheme, eligible Australians can enter into a shared equity scheme arrangement with Housing Australia on behalf of the Commonwealth, whereby the Commonwealth will provide an equity contribution of up to 30 to 40 per cent of the purchase price. I understand that the states would need to opt into the scheme by referral under the Constitution or adoption of the Commonwealth legislation.

Other crossbench members have spoken on this bill, with support for this initiative based on the concept that is intended to help middle working Australians own a home.

It is my understanding that such an initiative operated in New South Wales, whereby the government could contribute up to 40 per cent of the purchase price for a new home or 30 per cent for an existing dwelling. Where this scheme fell short was with its limited take-up. Not everyone had a fair go at accessing the scheme. It was almost like a lottery draw where only lucky individuals could pluck a spot, while others looked on with anxiety, wondering when it was their turn.

While the idea sounds altruistic, with Help to Buy providing equity of access to ownership, it doesn't really address the most critical issue—the shortage of supply and the affordability of buying—making it out of reach for many working Australians.

The pain points of the housing crisis can be reduced to two key words: supply and demand. It's therefore imperative for the government to address concerns with any potential supply imbalance. The government must commit to coordinating further supply-boosting measures with states and territories such as tax incentives—taking off the layers of taxes that are burdening the building of new homes, to assist first home buyers.

Whilst there is significant demand, there are not enough incentives to massage the streams of housing supply.

Fowler has settled nearly 10,000 refugees in the past few years, and the number will continue to rise. As such, the demand for housing will grow exponentially. It is inevitable that the proposed 10,000 positions available across the nation will fail to satisfy the ever-growing demand for housing. If the government has a stake in the property via the scheme, there is a bigger incentive for prices to increase.

I also call into question the accessibility of this equity scheme. Irrespective of the minimal spots open, the income and property price caps further impose barriers that narrowly restrict access and increase the difficulty of earning a place in the scheme. Irrespective of the minimal spots open, the income and property price caps further impose barriers that narrowly restrict access and increase the difficulty of earning a place in the scheme. It is my understanding that a single Australian citizen must earn $90,000 or less in order to qualify for the scheme. A large number of my constituents fall under this threshold. According to the ABS data from 2021, the median weekly income of an individual in our electorate was reported to be about $521 a week, as I mentioned earlier. This amounts to about $27,092 annually, a stark difference from the national median annual income of $41,860. If this scheme were to be implemented, many constituents in Fowler would be vying for a loan, and there's no way the demand will be met. On the other hand, for a single individual earning $90,000 in income, with a monthly net income of approximately $5,707, after paying for the necessities of rent, utilities, insurance, groceries, a car and likely servicing a HECS debt, there is little left over. How would this measure allow for an individual to put a roof over their head when the numbers just don't add up?

Co-owning a property with the government is a very interesting concept, according to one of the local brokers in Fowler, but she questioned whether mums, dads and the older generations would allow the government to have a hand on their property. Even if they did, who's going to be responsible for maintenance? How will that be managed? But, even before we go to who's going to be responsible for maintaining the property, based on my simple calculations above, an individual earning $90,000 can only get a loan of around $410,000. If the government is to provide 40 per cent of the support, 60 per cent of $950,000 is $575,000, yet a person on an income of $90,000 can only get a loan of $410,000.

What about their ability to repay the debt after taking out all the costs that an individual on $90,000 has, such as food, petrol, car loan, car registration, health insurance and phone bills? I did a rough estimate and calculation, and all these costs amounted to about $4,855 a month, including for those who have HECS debt. This individual would be left with about $852 a month, so how would they be able to take to take out a loan and manage the mortgage?

Just from those simple calculations and that example, the thresholds are too low. For example, an experienced teacher's income exceeds the cap for a single person, and they cannot apply. This is why the proposed salary threshold should allow for a 10 per cent increase to accommodate critical first-home buyers who are key workers, single parents with dependent children, singles aged 50-plus and domestic violence victims. Alternatively, the thresholds should be upped by 10 per cent for everyone.

The price cap imposed on properties—$950,000 for capital cities and regional centres and $750,000 for the rest of the state—is surely not sufficient. In one of the areas in my electorate, Canley Vale, the median house price was reported to be over a million—$1,069,000—and this is expected to increase by 11.2 per cent. This is just one example of a region in my area that would be barred from the scheme despite the constituents in my area needing additional support for affordable housing the most.

We have yet to address how young people can even get a loan when their HECS debt is accruing at 7.1 per cent indexation and possibly rising. Lenders don't like young people with HECS debts, which means the road to getting a loan is a tedious one. Again, why can't we freeze indexation for these HECS students? I call on the government to take this into consideration and listen to the next generation, who are crying out as home buyers are facing the worse mortgage affordability in more than three decades.

Although affordability of property is the desired outcome, this may not be the case. Additional demand for houses under this scheme may place pressure on prices, which ultimately benefits sellers and not buyers. Furthermore, the implementation of this scheme may encourage those in financially vulnerable situations to take on undue financial risk. There are still grey areas on what happens if someone were to default on their Help to Buy agreement. It is also worrying that the scheme does not accommodate or clearly define what happens if someone on the scheme exceeds the annual income threshold. It is my understanding that the Help to Buy scheme allows for the eligible person to buy back the government's equity stake five percent at a time. I question why ownership needs to be limited to a percentage at all.

I appreciate the government's incentive to reduce the burden and relieve the financial stress for homebuyers to purchase their dream home. However, we are still faced with the issue of limited spots for the scheme, thus the housing crisis and supply crisis will continue. Let's move beyond the headline-grabbing policies into real policies to show that this government is connected with working Australians and understands the crippling challenge that the majority are facing with the cost-of-living and housing crisis.

Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The great Australian dream embodies the typical aspiration of every Australian family to own their own home. For generations, the image of owning a home on a block of land has been deeply engrained in the collective consciousness as a symbol of success and stability. For many migrants, the aspiration to own a home reflects their desire to establish roots, build a sense of belonging and provide stability for their family in their adopted country. The pursuit of homeownership is not merely a financial endeavour but a deeply personal journey rooted in values of hard work, perseverance and the desire to provide a better life for oneself and one's loved ones.

This dream is one my family has pursued and is why I am proud to stand here today to speak for the Albanese Labor government's Help to Buy Bill 2023 and Help to Buy (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023. These bills are crucial steps in fulfilling our commitment to the Australian people, a commitment made during the 2022 election, to make the dream of owning a home a reality for thousands of Australians. This significant proposal stands as the pillars of hope and progress in our ongoing efforts to address the housing affordability crisis gripping our nation. At the outset, it is important to provide context regarding the prevailing housing landscapes in Australia. For too long, skyrocketing property prices and stagnated wages have conspired to push homeownership further out of reach for many Australians, particularly those on low and middle incomes. Young Australians have had it the toughest, with many giving up on homeownership all together. The dream of owning a home, once considered a cornerstone of the Australian way of life, has become an elusive aspiration for far too many.

Homeownership rates between generations have been on the decline significantly. At the same age in their life, 55 per cent of millennials own their own home, while this rate was 62 per cent for gen X and 66 per cent for Boomers. In my electorate of Holt, where 24.4 per cent of the population are under 15, gen alphas leave me with the question what will be the future for them? The average time to save for a deposit for a house on an medium income now exceeds a decade. In 2001, the average home was 4.7 times the average income. Today, in Melbourne the average home is over 10 times the average income. This means people need to save for twice as long and pay twice as much for the same properties as they did 23 years ago.

Recognising the urgency of this issue, the Australian Labor Party made a commitment to the Australian people during the 2022 election to implement a help to buy scheme aimed at supporting up to 40,000 Australian households in their quest for homeownership. Today, with the Help to Buy bill before parliament, we are taking tangible steps forward towards fulfilling this promise—tangible steps forward helping those new families in Cranbourne, in Clyde, in Hampton Park and in Narre Warren South buy their first home. Central to these bills is the Help to Buy shared-equity scheme, a groundbreaking initiative at the national level. It is designed to provide crucial financial support to aspiring homeowners. Under this scheme, the Commonwealth will provide an equity contribution of up to 40 per cent for new homes and 30 per cent for existing homes, significantly reducing the burden of saving for a deposit and servicing a mortgage.

This means that, in my electorate of Holt, a young family could build a new three-bedroom home worth $650,000 for only $390,000. At a 6.5 per cent interest rate and with repayment over 30 years, this would result in weekly payments of $570, slightly more than the $470 per week to rent a similar property. The benefits are that you end up owning a house at the end. The benefits are that you have stability and do not need to negotiate with landlords on the volatile rental market every 12 months. The benefits are that you secure a legacy for yourself and your family. For a nurse or a teacher earning $75,000 a year, this keeps the cost of homeownership under one-third of their post-tax income, meeting that critical definition of affordable housing.

This represents a remarkable shift in our approach to homeownership, offering a lifeline to individuals and families who have long felt excluded from the property market. By reducing the required deposit down to two per cent, it keeps the initial deposit in reach for most families, compared to a five or 20 per cent deposit as required on most mortgages. On a $650,000 home in Cranbourne, this is only $13,000. By requiring participants to contribute at least a two per cent deposit, we are instilling a sense of ownership and responsibility and fostering a culture of self-reliance and resilience.

It is essential to emphasise that the Help to Buy scheme is not only a mere handout; it is a hand up—an opportunity for hardworking Australians to achieve the dream of homeownership through their own efforts and determination. Furthermore, the Help to Buy scheme is underpinned by the principles of fairness and equity. By sharing both the financial risk and benefits between the participant and the Commonwealth, we are ensuring that the burdens and rewards of homeownership are distributed equitably. This collaborative approach not only enhances the sustainability of the scheme but also underscores our commitment to fostering a more inclusive and equal society.

The Help to Buy scheme will be delivered through Housing Australia. Eligible participants will be able to access the scheme through participating lenders alongside a standard mortgage. Crucially, the Help to Buy scheme is just one element of our broader strategy to improve housing affordability and accessibility across Australia after a decade of inaction from those across the floor. Under our government, we've already been able to help more than 100,000 people to buy a house through the Home Guarantee Scheme. This scheme has allowed people to buy a home with a five per cent deposit without paying for lenders mortgage insurance.

We have re-asserted federal government leadership over housing policy after a decade of chaos and inconsistency by working with the states and territories to set a goal of constructing 1.2 million new, well-located homes over the next five years. This target underscores the collective determination to meet the growing demand for housing and enhance affordability nationwide. In support of this objective, the federal government has pledged $3 billion in performance based funding through the new homes bonus initiative, incentivising states and territories to exceed their respective shares of the housing target. By encouraging reforms to bolster housing supplies and affordability, this funding aims to make a tangible difference for Australians aspiring to homeownership. The goal is bolstered by the endorsement of the national planning reform blueprint, which outlines measures such as updating strategic plans, promoting medium- and high-density housing in well-connected areas and streamlining approval processes to enhance housing supply and affordability.

We have also established the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the largest investment in social housing projects in decades. This fund will support the delivery of 30,000 new social homes over the next five years. Likewise, the $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator payment is a testament to our commitment to providing safe and secure housing for the most vulnerable members of our society. It will allow state and territory governments to build 4,000 additional social housing units through to 2028. Moreover, the significant increase in Commonwealth rental assistance, the largest in 30 years, reflects our unwavering commitment to supporting those struggling to meet the cost of renting. By bolstering rental assistance, we are providing much-needed relief to individuals and families facing rental stress, ensuring that no Australian is left behind.

The Help to Buy scheme shines as a ray of hope in a housing market that has been steadily declining for young Australians. By empowering Australians to achieve their dreams of homeownership we are not only building strong communities but also laying the groundwork for a more resilient and prosperous nation. I thank the Hon. Julie Collins, the Minister for Housing, for her hard work on this vital reform and putting homeownership back in the reach of so many families. Whether individuals are approaching retirement, just entering the workforce or anywhere in between, Help to Buy stands ready to provide support, welcoming them into the housing market.

I urge all members in this House to support the passage of these bills for, in doing so, we will reaffirm our commitment to the fundamental principle that every Australian deserves a place to call home. I say to the Greens: I call on you not to hold this legislation hostage. Do not delay this bill like you delayed the Housing Australia Future Fund. Do not hold hostage the dream of homeownership for 40,000 Australians. Do not hold up this vital reform on some aspirational hill. This reform is practical and can be implemented immediately and will deliver for working Australians across this nation.

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since the 47th Parliament first convened on 26 July 2022 we have had 187 pieces of legislation pass this place, with a further 113 still under consideration. This means that, in 18 months, over 300 pieces of legislation have been considered here at a federal level. On behalf of my community of North Sydney, every piece has been critically reviewed, not just looking at what is said but trying to understand what problem the legislation is trying to solve and how its effectiveness is going to be measured. Frequently I've been asked to support legislation moved before the provision of substantive details. In every case this has made me extremely uncomfortable and I have voiced this discomfort to the minister involved. And so it is that that's where I find myself today: being asked to support the passage of legislation that, in my opinion, raises more questions than it provides answers.

While the headlines generated by the Help to Buy Bill 2023 and the Help to Buy (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023 look good, there are very real questions I believe all of us should be demanding be answered before we pass this legislation. Currently it's difficult to have any sense of whether this legislation will have an impact on housing availability and affordability. Yes, many in the sector have been calling for this type of government intervention at the federal level for some time. And, yes, there are people right across this country who would benefit from additional support to help them get a leg up in the housing market. But, ultimately, while we are told this legislation will address both of these desires, the truth is that the how of it is simply not addressed here. Rather, on the face of it, this legislation presents as something that is simply bureaucratic. It's objective is to empower a government body—that being Housing Australia—to enter shared-equity arrangements on behalf of the Commonwealth in relation to residential property. It goes on to say that this empowerment is required so the agency can improve housing outcomes for Australians by assisting low-income and middle-income individuals to buy homes. But it's silent on how that support will be offered. It is silent on how such a small program, which underwhelmingly only seeks to support 10,000 purchases, will even make a dent in the challenge we currently face or how we will know if it's working.

The North Sydney community consistently raises the issues of housing accessibility and affordability and rental stress with me, with many concerned not only for themselves but for future generations. They are concerned that their children will not be able to live nearby in the communities they've grown up in. They're concerned that, when couples separated, individuals can't afford to stay near their support networks, schools and friends. The lack of details and specificity within this legislation ultimately leaves me questioning what its purpose is. How can I go back to my community and tell them that, yes, this legislation will address those concerns?

Stepping right back, I'd argue that fundamentally the problems of homelessness, housing inequality and housing unaffordability stem from a failure to protect the basic human right to housing. In the international human rights context, the right to housing comes within the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which articulates the right to an adequate standard of living. Australia is a signatory to this important treaty and thus recognises, at least in theory, the right for everyone to have an adequate standard of living, including housing and the continuous improvement of living standards. Yet as a nation we have failed to embed these international treaties into domestic law, and this government continues to pass up an opportunity for a human rights centred housing policy. Instead we find ourselves here, debating patchy, piecemeal approaches that lack an overarching and clear objective and fail to adequately deal with the cause of the problem.

I wonder, then, in this instance: is the positive headline really worth the delay in real reform that results as a consequence of its pursuit? From my own perspective, the electorate I represent, North Sydney, is wonderfully vibrant and diverse, and we want that to continue. But, for this to be possible, people must be able to access affordable housing. We want our teachers, our emergency service workers and our healthcare workers to be able to afford to live within a reasonable distance of their workplaces, not, as is often the case, to have to travel 30 to 50 kilometres to get to work or to pay more than half of their salary for a small apartment in the local area.

What, then, would my community like to see us debating in this place today instead? Well, in October last year we undertook to address the issue of housing affordability through a process of deliberative and participative democracy. After we invited 5,000 randomly selected but demographically representative constituents to participate in a one-day community forum on housing, 30 individuals were selected to form a diverse and representative group. These people then spent an entire day discussing the issue amongst themselves and with a range of housing experts, and they were tasked with coming up with a key idea they wanted me to champion in this place. This is a hugely complex and multifaceted issue. The group ultimately presented me with their desire to see more medium-density diverse and affordable housing around public transport hubs, with federal infrastructure funding made contingent on the zoning requirements. They saw this as a way through what is an issue that has been building for years.

Low interest rates, migration, property investment and other drivers have pushed home prices to record highs, locking a growing number of Australians out of homeownership, particularly younger, poorer Australians and those who have lost their family homes following a separation. Indeed, research by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute released last week shows just how broken our housing system is, with the ability to buy a property becoming increasingly out of reach in Australia and the proportion of higher income earners that rent growing. In our case, 40 per cent of the people who live in North Sydney rent, and they rent for longer than they ever have.

This shouldn't be a surprise, as even back in 2021 the census told us that ownership rates were dropping, with 67 per cent of people owning a home in 2021 compared to 70 per cent in 2006. Back in 1971, two-thirds of 30- to 34 -year-olds owned their own home, yet by 2021 that had dropped to 50 per cent. For Australians aged 25 to 29, the difference was similar: 50 per cent of them owned their own home in 1971, while only 36 per cent owned their own home in 2021. Homeownership rates have also gradually decreased among people nearing retirement. Homeownership rates for those between the ages of 50 and 54 fell from 80 per cent to 72 per cent over the 25 years from 1996.

At this point in time, then, I think it's worth noting that there are already a number of government programs that offer support for first-time homebuyers, low-income households, Indigenous Australians and vulnerable people, with the four main types of support being home purchase assistance, the First Home Owner Grant scheme, the First Home Super Saver Scheme and the Home Guarantee Scheme. In fact, in the 2020-21 year about 44,200 instances of home purchase assistance were provided across Australia. Of these, over a quarter of the main applicants receiving assistance were aged 35 to 44. About a fifth of the recipients earned a gross income less than $700 per week. More than half were in major cities, with a quarter in inner-regional areas and one-in-10 in outer-regional areas. Only a very small proportion were in remote or very remote areas. At the same time, lending commitments to owner-occupier first-time homebuyers increased from 81,650 commitments in the 12 months to May 2017 to 138,400 commitments in the 12 months to May 2022.

With so much movement around what is commonly known as the 'great Australian dream'—that being to own your own home—as a parliament, I can't help but think that we need to ask ourselves the really hard question: do we really want to continue to set homeownership as the ultimate goal of our nation, or is it time that, as a parliament, we bravely lead a discussion around what constitutes a home and how people can have the security of one without necessarily needing to own it or bear the burden of massive debt to keep it? Ultimately, a help-to-buy program such as this one is one of several short-term, demand-side initiatives that the government has at its disposal to assist those in the community hoping to make the great Australian dream a reality. It is, in general, a more cost-effective measure than other types of first-home buyer assistances as the government recoups its investment. It contributes less to house price inflation, as the homeowner has less capital to apply to their next home purchase once the government recoups its equity stake.

After many decades of neglect, this sort of short-term relief does not provide what we ultimately need, which is longer-term, real reform. The fact that many of the key components of the Help to Buy scheme are found only in the explanatory memorandum, with the program details to be set in non-disallowable program directions rather than in primary legislation, is particularly concerning for me. Many of the details of this program, including the upper limit of the Commonwealth contribution and the minimum deposit requirements, will be in the program directions, which are proposed to be a legislative instrument not subject to disallowance and exempt from sunsetting. This leaves several questions unanswered, including: why is the program being designed with a four-year tenure rather than making allowance for the possibility of a reinvested revolving fund? What is the economic return to the government? Is the government relying solely on capital gain? Is it also exposed to loss? How is the return recouped if a loan is paid off before the property has sold? Does the cost base change with any future capital investment by the purchaser through property renovation? Is the government's loan subordinated to the participating lenders mortgage? If an owner chooses to purchase a larger stake in their property, how will the value of that share be calculated? What are the assessment criteria measures of success vis a vis other homeownership support initiatives? Perhaps most crucially, what is the process for allocating or awarding program places, given the number of qualifying applicants are certain to far exceed the number of investments made each year?

While I acknowledge it is argued the limited scope of the program mitigates against the potential for it to significantly impact house prices, I am concerned that, with only 10,000 places available yearly and over 700,000 homes currently changing hand each year, the process by which applicants are assessed and selected is currently opaque. Surely it cannot be the case that this government is asking this parliament to greenlight a piece of legislation that would see the government invest over $300 million over four years with no obligation to agree how that money is to be distributed. If this reform is important enough to do, it deserves to be done well. Australians deserve more than a headline. Notably, given its lack of specificity or targeting, the proposed scheme would seem to bring little benefit to the people in my community. It doesn't appear to be targeted towards essential workers needing to live closer to their jobs, nor does it seem to be targeted towards young people who wish to live near their families, where they grew up. It definitely doesn't seem to be geared towards offering support for women over 55, who are rapidly becoming the highest-risk population for homelessness in our community. With median prices of $3.4 million for a house and $1 million for a unit in my electorate in 2022, the proposed state cap on dwelling purchase prices for New South Wales cities of $950,000 will limit participation for those who wish to live in North Sydney to units.

Ultimately, Australia's housing system is desperately in need of long-term reform. Sugar hits, bandaid solutions and glamourous headlines alone won't cut it. The government's National Housing and Homelessness Plan was supposed to lead long-term reform. It was meant to provide coherence to the initiatives delivered since the 2022 election, to coordinate activities across all levels of government and, more importantly, to provide a roadmap for the much wider housing reforms that Australia badly needs. Yet the narrow remit of the National Housing and Homelessness Planissues paper, which was published in August last year, leaves many, including myself, concerned the plan will not achieve its aspirations and ultimately fail to deliver the fundamental change needed to fix the housing crisis.

Specifically, the lack of overarching goals and objectives, the lack of consideration of policy areas relevant to housing, including migration, the settlement policy, income support, financial regulation and tax, and the lack of any clear recognition that the housing system status quo is in need of fundamental change all mean, as we stand here today and are asked to pass this legislation, that we're asked to do so in a bubble of hope rather than the pursuit of tangible change in course. While I can acknowledge there is appetite for a scheme such as this and that this may be a small step towards helping more Australians into homeownership, we need much more ambitious reforms to address the fundamental and enduring housing problems that have been escalating in this country for decades. We need to move beyond headlines and towards true reform.

Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Help to Buy Bill 2023 and the Help to Buy (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023. Growing up, it was normal to own your own home. In fact, it was the ultimate goal for any young person entering the workforce to be able to work hard, save your money and be rewarded with the achievement of buying your very own patch of land with your very own house. If you're anything like me and many other Aussie dads and mums, you own your lawn. You put the effort into it, keeping it perfect and green, just for it to eventually die.

I feel that this dream has died for too many young Australians. For too many, regardless of how hard they work, buying their own home just isn't within reach anymore. This is a devastating reality for future generations, and, as a father, this really concerns me. I want my daughters to be able to know that, if they get out there and have a go, they will be able to see the fruits of their hard work when they get back to their own homes at the end of the day. I want them to be able to have the same aspirations of homeownership that the past generations have been privileged to have.

That's why it is our responsibility as a government to make this possible. It is our responsibility to give our young people a chance to own their own home, and that is exactly what we are doing by introducing the Help to Buy scheme. You only have to go back to 1997 to see how quickly things have changed in this country. In 1997, the great Darryl Kerrigan said, 'You can acquire a house, but you can't acquire a home.' But today, 27 years later, it seems like many can't acquire a house either. A man's home is his castle, and everyone who works hard should be able to afford their own home and feel the pride in their own castle. It's a part of the Australian character.

Help to Buy will help Australians be able to afford to buy their own home. It's a straightforward scheme, but it will have a real impact. This scheme will support up to 40,000 eligible Australians to purchase a home by providing an equity contribution of up to 40 per cent of the purchase price for new homes and up to 30 per cent for existing homes. The scheme will help those who need it most. The scheme will give those on low and middle incomes an opportunity to buy a home with at least a two per cent deposit, allowing them to access homeownership, which is linked to short-, medium-, and long-term economic security. In other words, this scheme gives an opportunity that would not otherwise be available to own a home and set yourself up for the future.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to buying a house is saving the deposit and servicing the mortgage. This bill will help to make these challenges a little easier. With the Commonwealth providing an equity contribution scheme, participants will have lower ongoing repayments on a smaller home loan. Another way pressure is eased for eligible home buyers is that the financial risk and benefit will be shared between the participant and the Commonwealth, balanced to their interests.

This bill shows the real power for positive change that can come when the federal government works with the states with a common goal in mind. Each state and territory will be required to pass legislation for the scheme to operate in their jurisdictions. They all agreed at the National Cabinet in August last year to progress legislation so that this scheme will run nationally. They aren't wasting any time, with all states and territories expecting to have this legislation passed by the end of the year. We are all on the same page and the support is nationwide when it comes to this bill and to addressing the housing crisis, and that can only be a good thing with the states and the federal government working together.

I know how hard it is for everyday people who want to buy a house and set themselves up for the future. I know that often this is just not possible because I see it every day in the Hunter, which has soaring house prices. I am confident that this bill will help the hardworking people of the Hunter to be able to afford their own home, and that is why they deserve this bill to come through. They deserve a government which looks after what's in their best interests and helps them to be secure in life, whether that be through employment, health, education or—in this case—housing affordability.

I would like to remind the House that this is a government completely committed to housing in this country. This bill is only one part of a whole range of steps we have taken to improve housing affordability and to get more Australians into their own homes. We have already introduced the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the $3 billion Social Housing Accelerator scheme and the largest increase to Commonwealth rental assistance in 30 years.

The difference between us and some of the others in this place is that when we say we care about an issue like housing, we actually do and we actually want to address it and we are addressing it. Others say they care, yet they stand in the way, blocking progress from being made in areas where they have the chance to make a difference.

The Greens have shown time and time again they are willing to let the perfect get in the way of the possible when it comes to housing policy, and with their lack of support of this bill it is clear that their attitudes have not changed. The Greens will find any reason to have a sook, and this is one that they are sooking about now. It's like they think that rather than actually helping to follow through on what they said was one of their priorities—helping renters and making housing more affordable—having a cry will win them more votes.

I can see right through their rubbish. They aren't genuine, they don't care about housing and all they care about is votes. That's all the Greens party is about. And because they will never be a party of government, the best way they can achieve this is by playing political games and lying through their teeth. You only have to look at the rot that comes out of the member for Griffith to come to this conclusion. The member for Griffith tweeted, 'The Housing Australia Future Fund will do nothing for renters.' I am not sure if he is ill-informed or whether it is a straight out lie, but either way, he is wrong.

The fact is that Labor policies will deliver tens of thousands of affordable rental properties. As the Minister for Housing said:

Of the 30,000 social and affordable homes, we're talking 20,000 social rentals and 10,000 affordable rental homes. We are adding to the supply.

That is what we can do and that is what we are doing.

The member for Griffith and the Greens don't care about housing. If they did, they would support our policies, which have made a real impact for real people looking for a house or a rental. But instead they spread misinformation and make it harder for progress to be made, all while voters who are relying on us to fix the mess that is our housing market are literally left out in the cold. So the next time you hear any of this rubbish coming out of their mouths, do as Darryl Kerrigan would do and tell them they're dreaming.

In the Hunter we are fed-up with the Greens stopping houses from being built—all for their own selfish and petty political games. I'm here on behalf of my electorate to tell them to get stuffed. Get out of the way and let us build houses. Let us make sure that people who want to buy their own house are able to actually afford it, and let us make sure that the housing market is set up for our future generations to benefit from it.

If the Greens don't support this bill, they will be the ones responsible for preventing 10,000 people every year from being able to own or buy their own house. They will be blocking help from going to those who need it and they'll be going against what they say and against what their own values are, apparently. I have no doubt they're considering voting no to this bill, yet still they wonder why they will never be taken seriously as a political party in this country, and we all know why in this place right now, but we'll talk about that another time. They will have to live with the guilt of having weak morals. But I'm proud to be part of the only party in this place that really cares about housing and about making sure that as many people as possible can achieve the great Australian dream of owning their own house.

Not only do we say we care, but this bill shows that we do care. Owning your own house is an amazing thing. I am lucky enough to do this, my parents were lucky enough to do this and many other Australians are, but there are so many other Australians that aren't lucky enough to have this happening for them. It's such a sad thing that there are so many people in the Hunter, so many people in Bennelong and so many people in so many different areas of Australia that unfortunately can't afford to buy their own house right now, and this bill will really help that.

So we need to make sure that we keep this bill going. We need to make sure that we shut the Greens down and stop their petty, pathetic little games that they're trying to play over there on their side just to try to win more votes. That's an absolute disgrace by them. I don't know how they can continue to come into this place day in, day out, saying they care about Australians, everyday Australians, when all they do is try to block every single bill that we put forward. I'm sure that those on the other side of this building will back us up in saying how pathetic the Greens have been and how disappointing they really are as a party.

I'm the member for Hunter, and I know I have a lot of people in my electorate who do like the Greens. I'm happy for them to have their vote however they like, but they need to understand that the Greens party is standing in the way of people owning their own home—and just because they want to have something that they think is an ideal. Ideal isn't always what happens in this country or this world, unfortunately. Look at what is happening in the world right now. There are not many people that would say it's an ideal world right now, that's for sure.

We need to make sure we all get on top of the Greens party and really make sure that they come to their senses, get on board with us and pass this bill. I'm sure the opposition would love to get on board and pass this bill as well, because I'm sure they're nice people on that side, too. I reckon we could all work together here with a bit of bipartisanship and make sure this bill passes through the House. We need to get it through us and get it through the upper house with no changes. It'd be lovely to see it get through.

We also need to make sure that we continue to work together in this place. I'm a new member to the parliament, and we need to make sure that we have a lot of things that we do together on both sides of this place. I do ask of those opposite that we make sure that we can see some more bipartisan work going forward. I know that we won't always see that from the Greens, but I'm sure that us on this side, in government, and those opposite can put some of our moral differences aside. I'm sure that we can put some of our differences aside and make sure we're doing the best thing for Australians. I know that Australians in my electorate want to see us working together to make Australia a better place. I commend this bill to the House and I look forward to seeing what the Greens have to say in response.