Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Deakin proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

This Government's weak response to the CFMEU driving up the cost of housing.

I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

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

Not that you would know it from question time last week, but nobody questions the fact that the actions of the CFMEU over a long period of time have driven up construction costs in this country, including in the residential housing industry. What does that mean for everyday Australians? It means that, for a young Australian couple or individual looking to buy their first home, the bar to getting into that first home is higher and harder because of the actions of the CFMEU.

I'd say that that was what we expected to be well understood on both sides of the chamber until last week, when the hapless new housing minister, who has failed her way into the housing portfolio, made a quite extraordinary claim at the dispatch box. The housing minister claimed—and this is novel; I've never seen anyone argue this, let alone a minister or even a member of the Labor Party—that there were experts out there who believed that the CFMEU does not drive up construction costs. I thought that was a very interesting throwaway line. So, on a number of occasions, I gave the minister an opportunity to name who those experts were. I asked her on multiple occasions whether she was willing to illuminate us as to who those experts were that claimed that the CFMEU has no impact—none whatsoever—on housing costs in this country. It was a pretty cringeworthy effort, and I saw members opposite putting their heads down as the minister filibustered and weaved and couldn't answer the question, of course, because we know that there are no experts that claim that the CFMEU doesn't drive up construction costs.

The truth is that the CFMEU drives up costs by 30 per cent in this country. If you're a first home buyer desperately scratching around for every single dollar so you can put it into a deposit to get into your first home, imagine what a 30 per cent reduction in the cost of that home would do. Imagine the difference it would make for that young couple or individual trying to buy a home in this country. The truth is that every single member of the government is complicit with that tax on first home buyers. It's a 30 per cent Labor tax on first home buyers. Let's be honest: this is the CFMEU's business model. Their business model is funding and putting Labor members of parliament into this chamber. So they're like puppets. They've got to do what the CFMEU ask. Every single one of them has benefited from the millions of dollars kicked into their campaign coffers every single election. It's just like the famous Bill Hunter line in Muriel's WeddingDeidre Chambers! There's bad behaviour in the CFMEU. I'm seeing the acting that's going on on that side of the chamber. Their feigning ignorance as to the costs that are imposed on Australians has, I think, been one of the more shameful episodes for this government.

There's been independent modelling undertaken. We talk about 30 per cent. We have people in the gallery today. Australians are listening in. We talk about a 30 per cent increase to construction costs and what that will do for first home buyers. The Queensland Economic Advocacy Solutions, which was commissioned by Master Builders Queensland, did some work on what it practically means. What does this unholy alliance between the thuggish CFMEU and the Labor Party, the people that they put into this parliament, do to first home buyers in this country? The truth is, according to this modelling, for a one-bedroom apartment in Queensland, the CFMEU tax imposed by the Labor Party on first home buyers is $128,543. Every single member of the government is happy to impose that $128,000 tax on first home buyers because it means more money into their coffers each election, with more thugs on their polling booths handing out their how-to-vote cards. That's what they are willing to do. For a two-bedroom apartment in Queensland, what does Labor's CFMEU tax on first home buyers amount to? It's $257,086. I know there's theatre in this place and I know that I'm having a go at the government here, but does anyone on the government benches have a conscience? First home buyers should not be bearing that additional tax. Surely every decent person in this chamber wants more first home buyers to get into the market?

We know the deposit hurdle is one of the hardest parts of getting into a home. I'm sure many people in this place have experienced the same thing. You decide: 'I want to buy a home. This is the amount I think I'm going to have to save before I can go to the bank and get finance and buy something.' Often by the time you've saved that amount, the market has moved, house prices have increased, construction costs have increased and what you thought was going to be your deposit is short. One of the reasons that deposit is short and one of the reasons it's even shorter than it should be is the Labor-CFMEU tax imposed on first home buyers around this country.

There are howls of protest from those opposite when I refer to the fact that they are just part of the CFMEU business model—shake down employers for money, make first home buyers pay more for their homes, kick money into the coffers of the Labor Party and—heck!—actually pre-select the candidates with their votes on the floor of their state conference. What does that get you? What it gets you is this: one of the first items of business of this government was removing the ABCC. It was No. 1 on John Setka's hit list. John Setka had his wish list—'Here are the top 10 things you need to do.' Labor has been busily going about it in a studious fashion, crossing those things off. First on the list was the ABCC. Ernst and Young conducted a whole-of-economy modelling exercise to look at the impacts of abolishing the ABCC. For those who don't know what the Australian Building and Construction Commission did, it was the cop on the beat to try and deal with the thugs in the CFMEU—the bikies, the criminals and the Labor Party members who cavort with them—and get them under control.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

So what did this government do? What did every member who is now interjecting do? They voted to abolish the ABCC. That did this. It reduced worker productivity by 9.3 per cent, a total economic loss of $47.5 billion. It cost 4,000 jobs and contributed to that CFMEU Labor tax on first home buyers that I've just referred to.

It's quite shameful that this government would continue to run protection. It's even worse that it's a new minister. It's a minister who, quite frankly, failed so badly in the Home Affairs portfolio that she was moved. As I've said repeatedly, housing is far too important to Australians to treat the portfolio as a dumping ground for a failed minister. It only took us one day of question time to see why the issues with housing are likely to get worse, not better, under her stewardship. She couldn't even level with the Australian people that the CFMEU has increased construction costs. To debase yourself so badly by claiming that the CFMEU has not impacted on residential house prices and construction costs is something that, quite frankly, I know, shocks many people on the other side of the House. Even the Daily Mail reported colleagues of the housing minister asking the question, 'Is it too soon to have another reshuffle?' The truth is that, if the minister cannot even agree that the CFMEU imposes a tax on first home buyers, what hope does this government have of addressing the housing crisis that their big Australia migration policy has created?

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My grandfather Roly Stebbins was born in a tent in 1922. At age 14, in the middle of the Great Depression, he left school to provide for his family. He worked as a boilermaker. Then, after World War II, he and my grandmother Jean Stebbins, a teacher, set about building their first home. They got a cheap block of land in Seaholme near Williamstown and fired the bricks by hand. Roly would get help from his mates, building the house bit by bit when they could.

My grandfather's story was the story of Australia in those postwar decades. Through the interwar period, the homeownership rate in Australia was about half. By 1966, it had risen to nearly three-quarters. This was a huge surge in the homeownership rate spurred initially by the Curtin and Chifley governments and, to their credit, continued by the Menzies government. But it's a very different situation today. Under the former Coalition government, the homeownership rate hit a 60-year low and their policies only made the problems worse. We had the HomeBuilder program, which blew out to five times the expected budget and which, according to the former Governor of the Reserve Bank, Philip Lowe, increased construction costs. We had the former government's policy of raiding your superannuation to pay for a home, which Malcolm Turnbull referred to as the 'craziest idea I've ever heard'. We had the government walk away from social housing and from investing in tackling the problem.

As a result, here in Canberra you have families like Michi Moses and her husband, a professional couple who say that they may have to leave the city in order to buy a home. We have the second-highest house prices in the country. Australia faces a huge challenge on homeownership. But to hear the Liberals talk about it is like hearing the arsonist shouting, 'Fire!' It is coming from a party that did nothing to tackle these serious challenges. Believing the Liberals are the party of homeownership would be like believing they're the party of multiculturalism and Medicare, the party of gender equity and workers' rights.

They are anything but. Since coming to office, Labor has set about investing in housing. In just our last budget, we invested more in housing than all of the nine Liberal budgets put together. That's how important it is to us and how unimportant it was to them. We've ensured that 110,000 people move into homeownership through the home guarantee scheme—twice as many people as under the former government. We've put in place back-to-back increases in Commonwealth rent assistance, helping a million Australian renting households to the tune of more than $1,000 a year. We've set an ambitious target to build 1.2 million homes over five years. That will involve working with states and territories. Next week, the housing minister will be out in Western Sydney bringing together state and territory housing ministers. This is usual business for us, but for the last five years of the former government, it didn't happen once.

While we have the Liberals who are blocking any serious moves to act, we also have the Greens—the housing supply denialists, whose spokesperson says that Australia has enough homes, against evidence from every serious think tank and the fact that on the OECD measures the number of homes per person in Australia is lower than the advanced country average. While Labor is building, the coalition and the Greens are blocking. 'Build to rent' and 'help to buy' are being stalled by an unholy coalition of Liberals and Greens, and now we have the Liberals claiming that the reason that homeownership is pushing out of reach for many Australian families is construction workers are being paid too much.

Let's go through some of the facts. The biggest factor driving up costs in the construction sector are supply chain issues such as the cost of materials driven by the war in Ukraine and the Houthi rebels restricting access through the Red Sea. Labour costs as a share of total expenses have actually been falling over the recent period for which we have data, from 2020-21 to 2022-23. Labour costs in the most recently available year were 18.7 per cent of total costs—they were 19.6 per cent of total costs two years before that. And if you look in building construction, labour costs are 10.2 per cent—significantly less than the average for the construction sector as a whole. Labour costs in construction have been growing more slowly than other costs, suggesting that labour costs are not the primary driver of total costs. Don't take my word for this—this is Treasury analysis that I'm speaking about today. Differences across states don't support the idea that the chief driver of housing affordability is labour costs. It is the cost of materials that is the single biggest challenge on housing affordability.

That's not to say that we shouldn't be tackling bullying and thuggery in the construction industry. The construction union members and construction workers deserve a strong, effective union—that's why this government has moved legislation to put an administrator in place in the construction division of the CFMEU. If the Liberals had supported that last week then the administrator would have been more quickly at work cleaning up the CFMEU. Extraordinarily, we've had the Greens political party voting against that—voting against an administrator going in and cleaning up the problems in the CFMEU which are undermining the rights of workers to get a strong, effective union.

Housing affordability is a major issue for Australia, as is the cost of living more broadly, but while we have those opposite asking not a single question in question time about the cost of living, we on this side of parliament are getting on with the job, with tax cuts for all Australians and energy bill rebates for all households. We've got an increase in the Medicare levy low-income thresholds, benefiting over one million low-income earners. We've had an increase to the JobSeeker payment, and our cheaper medicines policy ensures that Australians are better able to access the medicines that they need.

Around three million Australians have benefited from the change to HECS-HELP indexation, championed by the minister at the table, which has benefited those who have gone to university in order to get the additional skills that the economy needs. Capping the student loan indexation rate to the lower of the CPI and the WPI ensures that debt can't outpace wages or prices.

We're also investing in the skills that we need in the construction sector. Not only is this government committed to vocational training for early childhood workers and for aged-care workers but we also recognise it's vital to have a pipeline of construction workers. Fee-free TAFE has been vital in the construction sector for ensuring that we have more well-trained workers to build the homes that Australia desperately needs.

We've also been dealing with the cost of living through our competition reforms. When we came to office we banned unfair contract terms and raised the penalties for anticompetitive conduct. We're making the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct mandatory, and we've tasked CHOICE with quarterly grocery price reporting so that people can ensure that they get the very best deal.

We've got the biggest merger shake-up in 50 years, and we're tackling unfair contract terms that make it harder for workers to move to a better job. We understand that competition is a Labor value, and it is vital to ensuring that we put downward pressure on prices and upward pressure on wages.

Only Labor can be trusted to build the homes Australia needs. Only Labor can be trusted to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. Only Labor can be trusted to deliver back-to-back surpluses, turning Liberal deficits into Labor surpluses and delivering for all Australians.

Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think some of those comments from the member for Fenner are, quite frankly, laughable. Let's look at who it was that said, 'It's time for the corruption and criminality to come to an end.' The admission is from the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, when he leaned into his apparent watershed moment and realised what the activities of the CFMEU were and that the government could no longer avoid the truth about the situation. It's like it was an epiphany—a light bulb moment. The light actually went on. It's like the government had no prior knowledge of the activities of the CFMEU. See nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, as if the ALP had just heard about the corruption and criminality that's been allowed to run roughshod through the construction industry for at least two years under this government and, most likely, for two decades. It's indefensible.

So what do those opposite do? They act surprised. That's what they do. In fact, it was a moment in time when the Prime Minister, his ministers and the ALP—all of those opposite—were forced to admit what they knew all along, but they did it with faux outrage. The outrage is that the Albanese government has been making life too easy for the CFMEU, their mates, since one of the very first acts of this Labor government was to abolish the ABCC—the cop on the beat—on those worksites, and they have been out of control ever since. The ABCC successfully brought 91 per cent of cases for 1,661 contraventions of IR law against the CFMEU into the courts. The courts found the CFMEU were in breach of industrial law on no less than 80 occasions.

I've been getting text messages from members in my electorate that are thanking the coalition for fighting back with amendments—from the shadow minister the Hon. Senator Cash—against Labor's bill. This is one of text messages that I got:

In a free economy, enterprise needs to respect the rights of the workers and at the same time the organisations have to be able to increase productivity and create more efficient production for the betterment of the public.

We agree with that. They say:

We are suffering in Australia with housing affordability and yet the main reason is the cost that we have to pay because of a corrupt system that no one wants to accept.

The cost of our production—

that is, for a builder—

can be reduced by 30% if we don't have unions.

Another developer says:

The Government keeps talking about Housing affordability and the lack of supply on one hand but on the other continues to allow the CFMEU to operate in thuggery that is completely driving up house costings. It costs more than 30% extra to construct housing because of them. The CFMEU needs to be stripped of all its powers and deregistered.

It's pretty clear that the CFMEU has been pushing up the cost of housing for Australians through its demands, its thuggery, its bullying and its intimidatory tactics.

It's not just true of housing and the cost of housing and how this is pushing up that cost for Australians; it also has flow-on effects for taxpayer funded construction. One example is stage 3 of the Gold Coast Light Rail from Boradbeach to Burleigh in my electorate. It's 6.7 kilometres of light rail that will transform the central Gold Coast for tourists and Gold Coasters alike. Originally it was costed at $709 million. The most recent cost has blown out to $1.2 billion. Now, the public has every right to ask why. Firstly, you could say that it's the Miles state government's and the former Palaszczuk state government's inability to manage their budget, and you would be right on the money there. So I urge Queenslanders to show them the door in '24. But you would also be right to say it's because of the demands of the unions to be paid more per hour to work at night and on the weekends, with time and a half and loadings, to stop work when it sprinkles with rain and, of course, for higher hourly rates, including for stop-go sign holders.

These are examples of why housing construction in our country is out of control. This is why young families cannot buy their first homes. They can't keep up with the price of housing, which is increasing because of the actions of the CFMEU, enabled by the Australian Labor Party. Those opposite cannot defend the indefensible.

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do enjoy it when those opposite get up and talk about cost-of-living measures. I enjoy it because, at every single opportunity that they've had, they've voted against cost-of-living measures that would help Middle Australia. At every single opportunity, those opposite have come into this place and opposed measures. They have opposed the caps on coal and gas prices. They've opposed every single measure to help with housing prices. Every single time that we've brought in a wages policy that is going to increase the wages of working Australians, those opposite have come into this place and said, 'Not on our watch.' Thankfully they don't have the numbers to stop that, and thankfully our cost-of-living measures have flowed through to Australians, no thanks to those opposite.

It's funny when they come in here and give us lectures about the way in which we're managing the budget and managing our economy right now, because costed policies aren't exactly their strength right now. Costed policies are not the strength of those opposite. I'm yet to see a costed policy of their nuclear arrangement. I'm yet to see the numbers on their nuclear power plan—all seven plants that they are proposing build. Maybe they don't have enough ink in their printers to print all the zeros on that one. But what they have printed before in the past are some mugs. I remember the mugs, the 'Back in black' mugs. You can just imagine what it was like in the coalition party room. They're all there with their boxes. 'Make sure you take a mug into question time. Make sure you grab one of the "Back in black" mugs.' Except, of course, they weren't back in black. What they delivered was the largest deficit in the history of our country. It was close. I'm a glass half-full kind of a guy, but that wasn't quite the case. They didn't quite get their 'Back in black' mugs to come to fruition.

But we on this side of the House have a different approach. We are serious about ensuring that Australians have cheaper medicines. We're serious about ensuring that Australians get real wage increases. We're serious about how we want Australians to pay less for childcare so that women can be back in the workforce, especially because we know that it has been a prohibitive measure. We know that childcare and early education is an economic policy as much as it is a social policy. But we also know that, on this side of the House, we want to see cheaper electricity prices. That's why we capped coal and gas prices, that's why we've been putting in renewable energy—the cheapest form of energy—and that's why we have looked at the economic madness and vandalism of those opposite wanting to put in nuclear power plants.

The other thing that is also a big contrast between those on this side of the House and those on that side of the House is around housing policy. I remember the mover of this MPI, the shadow minister—during the dark days when he was the housing minister in this country—when he said that social housing was the responsibility of the states and territories, and that the federal government had nothing to do with social housing. We take a very different approach. One of the first things we did was set up the Housing Australia Future Fund. And while the Greens like to rant and rave, they were eventually shamed into supporting the construction of thousands and thousands of social housing homes for Australians who need it, including for women and children who are fleeing domestic violence. We're very proud in this House that we are ensuring that there are more homes for more Australians.

What's their approach—the cost of policy geniuses on that side of the House? They want Australians, and especially young Australians, in my electorate to raid their superannuation in order to buy a home. I'm not sure if anyone on that side of the House has ever spoken to someone who's under the age of 30, but the average superannuation for most young Australians isn't enough for a house deposit. The average superannuation for young Australians is $20,000 to $30,000 if you're in your 20s. That's not enough for a deposit. All they're doing is making it harder for Australians to afford their own home, and they're also leaving Australians with less superannuation.

If you contrast that with this side of the House, we are making sure that Australians who take time off work and receive paid parental leave are going to get superannuation paid on their paid parental leave. We're also ensuring via the bill in the other place, that there is a help to buy scheme—much like governments have set up in states and territories—that will ensure that people can get into the housing market with only a two per cent deposit. Just like the cost of policy geniuses on that side of the House, they are opposing it, just like they've opposed each and every cost-of-living measure that we have put forward in this place.

We are not going to be guided by those people. We're going to do our bit for the Australian people and that's what we'll continue to do.

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

I'm a great fan, as many are, of that wonderful 1942 movie, Casablanca, with Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart. One of the classic scenes in a classic movie is where the French chief of police Captain Renault is ordered to shut down Rick's Cafe. Rick says to Captain Renault, 'How can you close me? On what grounds?' Captain Renault says, 'I'm shocked! Shocked to discover that gambling is going on here.' At which point, a croupier comes over and says, 'Your winnings, Sir.'

I can imagine that this is sort of what happened in the Australian Labor Party when the media exposed what we all knew that there's thuggery and bullying in the CFMEU. 'I'm shocked. Shocked to discover that there's bullying and thuggery in the CFMEU. We could never have known that was going on. We better do something about it!' To their credit they did put forward a bill—one that has been significantly improved by the coalition.

When we tried to discuss this issue in question time, a perfectly reasonable question was asked of the housing minister about whether the CFMEU's behaviour—the bullying, the thuggery and all of the associated stuff—has pushed the costs of construction up, the minister said, 'Some experts believe CFMEU corruption and illegality has no impact on residential construction.' There was then this back and forth for the next couple of days asking, 'Which experts? Tell us the experts. Tell us who made the quote. We'll look up the research. We'll interrogate it!' But there was no furnishing of the experts. There was no furnishing of where this information comes from. If you get up, as a minister in this place, and you say, 'some experts' and make a claim, you should be able to come back in and answer a question backing it up. I think that's standard.

The ALP, which was elected with the support of the CFMEU, has now, because they were so shocked, put forward a piece of legislation to put the CFMEU into administration. I do give them credit for that. The bill has been significantly improved by the coalition, and there are a number of amendments that Senator Cash has been able to get Senator Watt to agree to which improve the piece of legislation. But, if the government were really serious about ending this thuggery and bullying in the CFMEU, which are obviously pushing up the costs of construction—if you make it harder for business to do business, the costs go up; Blind Freddy sees that—it would support the Leader of the Opposition's bills that were put to the House. One would restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which the Albanese government scrapped in one of its first actions after the election, and a separate bill would enhance integrity measures and combat criminality on our nation's building sites. I think that's really important.

As I said earlier, I give the government and the ALP a little bit of credit for at least being shocked and putting forward some legislation, which is now going to be improved. But, while Captain Renault and the ALP were fake shocked, I was genuinely shocked earlier today when I saw the Greens defending the indefensible.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You shouldn't be that shocked.

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

I am shocked. I'm a naive first-termer! I was shocked that the Greens would come in here and say: 'There's nothing to see here. The CFMEU are fine. There's no bullying. There's no thuggery.' And it looks like they're going to oppose the bill. We'll wait to see when the vote happens. But it just shows you where the Greens' priorities are. They're interested in talking about housing, but they're not interested in doing anything that would reduce the costs of construction, which flow on into the residential sector. Of course the CFMEU's actions have increased the costs of construction, and of course that has led to increased costs in residential housing.

Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know we live in a post-truth world, but, even by those standards, today's MPI is pretty extraordinary. Let's just review what's happened here. The shadow minister for housing has called on a matter of public importance, and that matter of public importance is the impact of the CFMEU on housing costs in Australia. He's come in here and he's delivered his speech on that impact. He said, 'The CFMEU is raising housing costs by 30 per cent.' That was the key fact that he used in his speech not once, not twice, but six times. He loved this fact so much that he said it over and over: 30 per cent is the amount by which the CFMEU is increasing housing construction costs in Australia.

Well, I love a good fact. I've been known to be partial to facts. So my ears pricked up, and I thought: 'I wonder where this fact comes from. I wonder where the fact that the shadow housing minister has built his entire speech on, his speech about his portfolio, comes from. I wonder where he drew that fact from.' Thirty per cent is quite a big number. If you think about housing construction costs, you've got 10 to 20 per cent profit margins. Presumably the CFMEU isn't impacting the builder's profit margins. You've got materials costs of about 50 per cent. Again, presumably the CFMEU isn't determining that. You've got labour costs of about 30 per cent. Does he think they should be zero? Is that the margin? There's no room in these costs for a 30 per cent CFMEU premium.

So I thought: 'Where would he be getting this number from? Where is this fact? Where's the report that backs it up? Where's the evidence?' This is a senior member of the opposition. This isn't somebody who is just going to come in here and spend his entire time talking about a fact that he has totally made up—surely not. So I decided to do a bit of work myself. Sitting here, using the parliamentary wi-fi, I had a bit of a google: where does this 30 per cent number come from? The only thing I could find was that it has been used by the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition also loves this number. He's used it three or four times. 'The CFMEU increases costs by 30 per cent.' In fact, once he gave himself a little bump up and he said to 2GB that the CFMEU actually increased the costs of construction by 40 per cent. He didn't source that one either. So then I thought, 'Let's go to the ABS.' The ABS is always going to give us some quality facts on this type of thing. And the ABS does show that housing construction costs in Australia have been going up. They've been going up quite markedly but, unfortunately, not in the way that the shadow housing minister would want us to believe.

According to the ABS, this is the trajectory of housing construction costs over the last three years. Over the last year, housing construction costs have gone up 4.3 per cent. That's a lot, but it's not as much as the previous year. It's less than the previous year, where housing construction costs went up 7.3 per cent. That was the first year of the Albanese Labor government. Then I did a bit of a scroll backwards to the previous year, the last year of the Liberal-National government. What does the ABS say that housing construction costs increased by under their watch? Just to preview: ours was 4.3 per cent this year and 7.3 per cent last year. What was the increase in housing construction costs in the year to June 2022 under the Liberals and Nationals? It was 19.8 per cent, five times higher than this year's increase. So if it's the CFMEU causing increases in housing construction costs, it's the combination of the CFMEU and the Liberal-National government.

Now, the ABS is also helpful on this question. They outline a few different areas about where housing construction costs have gone up. They talk about timber increasing 37 per cent over a period of time and concrete and cement going up 16 per cent. Nowhere do they mention or source the fact laid out by the shadow minister. This is an important question. If you're a serious political party and you come into this House on a serious question like housing costs in Australia, you need do two things. You need to be serious about the causes of that problem and you need to propose real solutions. Those are the two tests for a serious political party. We saw the shadow minister for housing come into this House, give an MPI on his own topic, make up a fact to describe a problem which has very little relationship to the actual serious problem and proposed not a single thing to resolve it. This is not a serious political party, but it's a serious issue. (Time expired)

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

I'm grateful to come after the member for Parramatta, who gave us a lecture on being serious. My good friend quoted Monsieur Renault from Casablanca, a great movie, but I'd like to quote John McEnroe, another famous person: 'You can't be serious. You cannot be serious.' To accept the premise as put by the member for Parramatta, Nick McKenzie wasted his time. There was nothing to report. The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald wasted their time putting all of those stories on the front page. In fact, this entire bill that we saw come back down to this House was a waste of time because there's nothing to see here. The entire reason for the CFMEU existing is a waste of time. The fact that you go to all of the large construction projects throughout this country, particularly in the state of Victoria, and they have tagged those projects like a teenager tags graffiti, they have put their flags there—not the Australian flag, their flag—and they have done so because they are rubbing it in everyone's faces. They are rubbing it in your face, but that side of politics is denying it. You cannot be serious.

There is nothing more serious than the cost of housing, because, next to the day-to-day costs that people are paying to hold themselves together, the topic of housing is a serious, first-order issue for dining tables throughout this country. They are looking to this parliament to do better. So, when we put this matter of public importance together, we do it very seriously because it is a serious topic. When you address an issue, you can address it either based on a position of principle or from a position of power. The test is, if you change the characters or the labels, what would you do? So I ask the member for Parramatta this question: Suppose it were not the CFMEU but the IPA, the Institute of Public Affairs. Suppose it were not John Setka but John Roskam. Imagine a picture of John Roskam with a tattoo around his neck that says, 'God forgives; the IPA doesn't.' Imagine an institution that requires membership on big projects, that donates only to this side of politics, that demands extra staff with right of entry and that has a premium—and, yes, it is a 30 per cent premium, because, again, the CFMEU are not doing their job if they're not achieving that for their members. That's why they get elected. That's why they exist. Imagine if, in big construction projects, there were no ticket and no right of entry unless you were a member of the IPA. Imagine if the IPA had extra positions, the holders of which could walk into any worksite and demand to see the books. Imagine if, in return for legislation and removing a watchdog that had oversight of the IPA, this side of politics saw extra donations from them. Imagine—we've seen this movie play out many times before—if a new government came in and said, 'We must do something about the IPA's influence in big construction,' so it created a watchdog, and that watchdog saw 1,661 contraventions over 91 cases. Then, when the party that receives those donations comes back and removes that watchdog, we say, 'Well, it's politicised.'

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

You didn't list the convictions.

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

I'll take the interjection. There were no convictions, but there was a 90 per cent success rate. That's a much higher rate than most public prosecutors.

So again we say: you can't be serious. We saw that at all levels of government, from a political party that is intertwined with an organisation whose whole reason for existing is to extract a premium and lift prices. That's their whole purpose. So the speech by the member for Parramatta was a speech saying: 'Well, bad luck, CFMEU. You failed. You achieved nothing in your entire period of existence—nothing.' Well, when you come to Victoria and see that the cost of the North East Link in my electorate has gone from $10 billion to $26 billion, you can see that they have succeeded, at the expense of taxpayers. When you see that the Suburban Rail Loop, which again comes into my electorate, is projected over 30 years to cost $216 billion, you can see that they are doing very well, not for the people of Victoria or the people of Australia but for themselves. This is about power, not principle. You can't be serious.

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

Those opposite obviously can't stand on their own record on tackling housing supply, because there is no record worthy of speaking to, nor was there ever a real plan for the future. You'd be forgiven for thinking they weren't governing for nearly a decade. No wonder they can't formulate any policy that actually responds to issues, because they're always hiding behind an acronym, a bogeyman or false facts—as the member for Parramatta so eloquently revealed—rather than putting forward policy or a positive plan. We're building; they're blocking. If you want to know what that building looks like, the Albanese Labor government is bringing to the table real dollars, driving real change and building more homes for Australians like those in my electorate. Those homes in my electorate form part of an ambitious housing agenda which includes the delivery of 30,000 social and affordable homes through our Housing Australia Future Fund. That's shovels in the ground and roofs over more people's heads.

Just one example of the Albanese Labor government's building of more homes is the creation of a blueprint for the long-term renewal of the Banksia Gardens neighbourhood in Broadmeadows—all part of the Albanese government's Social Housing Accelerator program. This is an investment of more than $80 million through the accelerator, delivering 120 new social homes for those who need them most. Built on vacant land facing Coleraine Street, the new homes will be modern, comfortable, energy efficient and located close to shops, transport, schools and services in the heart of Broadmeadows. The ground floor of the new housing development will include new facilities to support both future residents and those who already live on the Banksia Gardens estate.

I know people in my community are experiencing challenges finding a safe and secure place to call home, so these 120 new homes will make a significant difference to their lives and to those of their families. Also importantly, the construction of these new homes will create more than 700 local jobs. We know that the concept of job creation is foreign to those opposite. The simple fact is that Australia has a housing shortage. We need to build more homes more quickly and in more parts of the country. That's why the federal government has landed a once-in-a-generation accord with the states and territories, with the ambitious goal of building 1.2 million homes by the end of the decade. We know this is a challenge, and it would be the most homes we've built in Australia's history. But it's a challenge that this government knows we must meet—and will meet. That's why we're making record investment to build new homes—a record of $32 billion.

Another important fact is that there was more money in this last budget alone than in all the budgets combined under the former government. This plan means we're unlocking all parts of the housing system to build more homes, including providing national leadership, funding and incentives, and, importantly, training more tradies, funding more apprentices and growing the workforce. We know one of the key challenges is working to address constraints in the construction sector to boost the supply of housing right across the country. That is why we are also working to address skill shortages, with record investment in additional fee-free TAFE places, with a further $90 million in this budget to support a further 20,000 apprenticeships in construction sector courses.

The previous government's inaction did absolutely nothing to address this issue in a way that sees more roofs over people's heads. That's why people in my electorate know and understand the importance of a functioning government. They know it is critical for government to intervene and put forward policies that reverse negative trends.

So, what do housing experts in the industry have to say about the Labor government's policies? Alex Waldren from Master Builders Australia said:

Help to Buy is a sensible policy approach that looks at lifting housing affordability measures while not negatively impacting the investment market.

And Brendan Coates of the Grattan Institute said: 'The government's Help to Buy Bill would establish a national shared equity scheme that would help level the playing field' when it comes to accessing home ownership. In contrast, reflecting on the Liberals' policy framework, independent economist Saul Eslake said that if it were enacted it 'would be one of the worst public policy decisions of the 21st century'.

The contrast between that and the Albanese Labor government's housing policy couldn't be clearer. The Labor government is one that builds; the opposition is a rabble that seeks to tear down.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't drink, but if I did drink I reckon I wouldn't mind having a beer with the member for Hunter. But let's just shoot the breeze here a little bit. I've been a carpenter. I finished my apprenticeship in 1990, I think it was. Let's just say I worked on a residential building site, and let's just say the member for Hunter was a carpenter on a CFMEU building site, and let's just say we were having a drink on a Friday afternoon and I asked, 'Old mate, what do you earn?' He says: 'Well, I earn over 200,000 bucks a year. In fact, even the lollypop lady out the front'—or the lollypop bloke—'is on 200,000 bucks a year.' Now, as a carpenter and joiner working on a residential building site, if I was getting paid by the hour, I might be earning 40 or 50 bucks an hour. I'm going to be thinking, Hang on a minute: that's not very fair; I'm going to go and see my boss on Monday morning and say, 'Listen old mate, old boss: I want some more money, because I know the member for Hunter, who's on a sideline, working on a CFMEU building site'—hypothetically; we're still in that pub environment—'is earning 200,000 bucks a year, and I want some of that action!'

The member for Parramatta just said residential builders are earning a 10 to 20 per cent profit margin, which goes to show how absolutely little members opposite know about economics, particularly in relation to the building industry. Do you want to know what builders get as a profit margin? The member for Parramatta is about to get a whole lot of emails from all the builders in his electorate, because I can guarantee that there wouldn't be one builder in this country who is on a 10 to 20 per cent profit margin. Most builders are going backwards at a great rate of knots because they can't make any money in building. Why? Because, going back to my analogy, they are having to meet and pay wages to try and keep up with building sites. This is one of the things which are driving the costs of construction in this country.

We all know—and it really concerns me—that all of those members opposite, in the government, have come in here and tried to defend the CFMEU in this MPI, as though the bill that we're about to go back and debate shortly weren't even being introduced. It's a bill that the government has introduced which is going to put the CFMEU into administration, yet those members opposite have been playing a protection racket for the CFMEU for decades.

This is now the 66th time I have spoken about criminal activity in the building industry in eight years, and I can see those people opposite who have constantly shaken their heads and said, 'No, that doesn't happen.' Well, we now know what the actions of the CFMEU have been, and the member for Watson has had this 'come to Jesus' moment. He has seen the light, looked up and said: 'Look, I'm surprised. I didn't know it was this bad.' The Prime Minister has said the same thing.

I would have thought that the member for Watson in his previous roles, when he was the shadow minister for industrial relations and when he was the minister for industrial relations, would have kept an eye on court judgements—the same sorts of court judgements that have repeatedly, time and time and time again, handed down some $20 million in fines over the last two decades.

Those members opposite say, 'We had no idea.' If you're not involved in a particular portfolio, fair enough. But, for the member for Watson, who has been the minister for industrial relations or in that shadow for several years, not to have been aware of these Federal Court judgements, where judge after judge has said that this behaviour is intolerable and that the CFMEU are treating fines as the cost of doing business and just think that they are above the law—well, those members opposite have finally woken up. Finally we're starting to see some justice.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin by thanking the member for Parramatta for exposing the absurdity of the coalition's claim that a 30 per cent increase in the cost of housing has been caused by the CFMEU. What exposing that claim highlights is the desperation of those opposite in trying to link the two together in a political attempt to somehow smear the Albanese Labor government.

No government has invested more money in Australian housing than the Albanese Labor government. But the reality is that it will take more than money; it will also take time to fix the mess left after nine years of the coalition government in office. In 2007, when the last coalition government left office, under Howard, homeownership rates in this country were at 70 per cent. By the time the last coalition government left office, they were down to a percentage in the mid-60s. As mentioned earlier, it was the lowest number of homes owned in this country in history. That's from nine years under their watch.

We then have all of the bills brought into this place by this government delayed as much as possible by those opposite in order to deliberately stop the production of new houses in this country. Then they come in here and try to blame the Albanese Labor government for the housing crisis of today. Housing prices and rental prices are directly linked to supply and demand, and this government has been trying to increase supply from the day it was elected. The reality is that the housing numbers not only fell markedly under their watch. If you want to improve the issue, then you have to go to the key issues that ensure that more homes are built—land availability, infrastructure, availability of building materials, skills and trades and access to finance. In the very brief time that I have left, let me talk about each one of those.

Land availability means that you have to work with the states. This government is doing that with the $1.5 billion Housing Support Program, the $1 billion for the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, and the National Housing Accord, all aimed at ensuring that there is land available, that there is the necessary infrastructure to that land and that, where possible, even Commonwealth land is made available for new homes. It's all about doing the preparation work that is absolutely needed.

We then go to the availability of building materials. This one has to be one of the ones that is most laughable when it comes to claims from the other side. We currently have before this House the Future Made in Australia policy, which is all about rebuilding Australian manufacturing so that the very materials we need do not have to come in from overseas, and what are those opposite doing? They are trying to block that legislation every step of the way. Well, the fact is that it will ultimately get through, I believe, and it will ultimately make a difference to ensuring that we have the building materials that we need.

If you look at skills, again, when the last coalition government left office, there were tens of thousands of apprentices fewer than what we had when they came to office. We had an apprenticeship shortage in this country because they failed to fund it. And, again, we are putting $88 million for 20,000 fee-free TAFE spots, including pre-apprenticeship programs for the building sector and so on. Again, we're investing in trying to rebuild those skills whilst those opposite continue to oppose.

And then you come to the access to finance. We've got a build-to-rent scheme. We've got a help-to-buy scheme. We've increased rent assistance by 15 per cent the previous year and 10 per cent last year. We have the Home Guarantee Scheme. Each one of those proposals was opposed by those opposite. Every time the Albanese Labor government attempts to fix the very crisis that they come into the chamber and talk about, they stand in the way, either by obstructing it or at the very least delaying it.

The truth of the matter is that the Albanese Labor government has invested $32 billion into housing. It's the biggest investment on any single project ever I can recall in my time in this parliament. We have an ambitious plan of 1.2 million new homes by the end of the decade, and we have a plan to build 30,000 social and affordable homes. What is the plan of those opposite? They don't have one, other than to raid the superannuation funds of members, leaving them with nothing when they retire.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the discussion has concluded.