Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Young people are going backwards. They've been going backwards for the last 20 years, and we're only finally cottoning on to it, but we need to act. Governments of all persuasions and at all levels have been letting them down. They're going backwards in terms of their wealth. If you look at a household held by a young person, it has basically gone nowhere in terms of its wealth for the last 10 years. A household held by somebody over the age of 65 has increased its wealth by 50 per cent. That's what's happening. Older households have increased their wealth by around 50 per cent in the last 10 years, while younger households have gone nowhere, and it feels like that when you're out in the community.

A young guy called Hugo came to my office, and he said: 'Look, I did everything right. I studied hard. I went to uni. I've got a good job. I've got a $50,000 HECS debt, and I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to buy my own home.' He feels trapped, and he's not alone. This is where we, all of us in this parliament, need to be a parliament that makes a difference on this, because parliament after parliament has kicked this can down the road and it's not good enough.

Absolutely, the key issue that young people are facing right now is housing, but it's also tax and HECS debt. In terms of housing, we know that young people have been priced out, and we know that the things that the coalition promised over the previous 10 years did not deliver. They're back now saying that they care about young people and getting people into homeownership and that young people should use their super. Well, I ask them: where were you for the last 10 years, in terms of making a difference to those young people so they could actually get into affordable housing, housing that they could actually afford? They were absolutely missing in action. The evidence coming out today suggests that letting people access their super is only going to benefit a very small number of young people and not the majority, who are completely locked out of housing right now.

But, also, it's not just housing that is the problem. It is also about HECS and tax. For instance, on HECS, in the last two years, young people have been paying around seven per cent or five per cent on their HECS debt. Even on top of money that they have already paid back, they're still being charged seven per cent and five per cent on their HECS debt. They're watching their HECS debt grow higher and higher because of the way that it's been indexed. Other crossbenchers and I wrote to the government last year saying, 'fix this'. They didn't. They must fix it in this budget.

Finally, on tax, we know that there are issues, like the way that we tax younger people and workers versus how we tax asset holders. We know we need to fix that, and this is again something that we need to do in this parliament.

Bridget Archer (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' constituency statements has concluded.