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:

The housing crisis which is putting the Australian dream at risk.

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

MPIs are really all about fire and brimstone. I think, given the wonderful contribution we've just seen from the member for Maribyrnong, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, I will try to find the right tone. But the truth here is that there's no doubt in Australia right now that, when talking and reflecting on some of the comments of the member for Maribyrnong, when we think about young Australians, think about their opportunities and think about the solemn duty that we all have as members of parliament to hand on a country and a future that offers more to the next generation than we had ourselves, this government is massively failing in relation to housing.

It doesn't matter how much the Minister for Housing gets up and rattles off a range of talking points that have no meaning, that are delivering nothing for Australians. It's not helping the next generation of Australians who, quite frankly, right now don't believe that even if they do they right things—work hard, improve themselves, improve their lot in life, make wise decision—they will ever be able to own a home in this country. That's why today's MPI is titled 'The housing crisis which is putting the Australian dream at risk'.

I think the biggest shame from this government is that they have waved the white flag on homeownership. We've not heard anything meaningful from the government on homeownership in 2½ years. And now, 2½ years later, they are desperately scrambling around, trying to find some sort of narrative on housing. But the inconvenient truth for the failed minister, for the housing minister, for this failed Prime Minister is that the numbers don't lie; the scoreboard doesn't lie. There's no point sitting at the footy and screaming at the umpires, bagging your opponents. In the end, the scoreboard tells the story. And on every single metric that you can measure housing on in this country, things are demonstrably worse as a result of the poor decisions of this government—on every single metric.

The housing minister gets up every question time and says the answer to our housing crisis is to be build more homes. So why on earth are they building fewer homes? We have rarely, in recent history, seen housing supply get to the level that it is at now. We had housing approvals at just 158,000, the lowest we've seen for decades. The problem with housing approvals being down is that it means that if the housing crisis is bad now then it's just going to get worse. Those housing approvals are for the homes that will be built over the next 12 to 18 to 24 months. So, if those housing approvals are down, I have very bad news for any Australians who are watching this debate: this housing crisis is set to get worse.

As a result of fewer homes being built, fewer homes being approved and fewer homes being completed, we see that rents have gone up by 25 per cent since this government came into office. We see Australians who have a mortgage paying more than $25,000 more in interest on their mortgage repayments—that is an additional $25,000 in after-tax income just to service a mortgage. And we see nothing meaningful whatsoever from this government to assist first-home buyers. So we've got fewer homes built, we've got fewer homes in the pipeline to be built, and in effect the government is saying, 'Well, there's nothing really we can do here, although we've got a $32 billion housing program'—a totality of $32 billion in programs devoted to housing.

We're not in the first six months of this government. We're not being unreasonable to ask the government, 'How many homes has your so-called $32 billion housing program built?' It's built none! This is the dirty secret of the government. This government, because of programs they have put in place, have not delivered one new home. We're not talking about an unreasonable opposition in the first five minutes of a government asking, 'How many homes have you built?' It's 2½ years later. We're on the eve of the next election, and the government's going to be going to that election saying: 'Trust us to fix the housing problem that we've done absolutely nothing about in 2½ years'—three years, by then. Not one single home has been built under any policy brought forward by this government.

It's an absolute disgrace, yet we have the new housing minister, the failed former minister, who gets up in question time and says that the government is doing all it can. The government has done nothing.

The only thing I will commend the government on is trying to rebadge and take ownership of coalition policies. The minister gets up in the House and talks about having helped people through the Home Guarantee Scheme. Can I remind the housing minister that the Home Guarantee Scheme is a proud coalition achievement? It is a proud coalition policy to help first home buyers, rather than having to save the full 20 per cent deposit, to purchase a home with a five per cent deposit, supported by a government guarantee. When we announced that policy and when I implemented it, Kristina Keneally called it socialism. The government was scoffing at the policy. Now, it's the only policy that's meaningfully supporting first home buyers.

Not only did we put in place the Home Guarantee Scheme, which is now helping nearly 40 per cent of all first home buyers, but we put in place the First Home Super Saver Scheme, a scheme to help people accelerate their savings through superannuation. At the last election, we took to the election a policy to help first home buyers get over the deposit hurdle by getting access to a portion of their super for a deposit and then being required to put it back into super when they sold their home.

What we did as a government every single day was wake up and think, 'What can we do to help young Australians get into a home?' Yes, we're going to cop flak from the opposition for doing it. Yes, they're going to fight us every step of the way. But, if we do it and it works, in the end they will become converts. Well, they have become converts on the First Home Super Saver Scheme and on the Home Guarantee Scheme. They promised to abolish them, and they haven't, presumably because they understand that these are policies that work, but they have delivered nothing for first home buyers.

Today we see the Minister for Housing accusing the coalition—the party of homeownership and the only party, quite frankly, in this parliament who still fights for young Australians to own a home—of blocking their Help to Buy scheme. I will say unashamedly that we are blocking their Help to Buy scheme because it will do nothing. It will do absolutely nothing. It's the sort of policy you come up with when you want to have something to talk about but you really don't want to do anything meaningful.

Their Help to Buy scheme is a vanilla shared-equity scheme. Almost every state and territory around this country has had or has at the moment a shared-equity product that's offered to its citizens. Guess what? In New South Wales, their shared-equity scheme, virtually identical to the Help to Buy scheme, still has around 90 per cent of its places available because Australians don't want the Prime Minister at their kitchen table. They don't want to be booted out of their home when their income gets above a certain level. They don't want to be the ones that have to wear all of the repairs and the maintenance and the costs associated with a home just to have the government come along when they sell it and say, 'Give us our 40 per cent of the proceeds, even though you've paid for and maintained this property.' It's a Claytons policy.

On this side of the House and in the lead-up to the election, there are two parties, the Liberal and National parties, who will be fighting for first home buyers in this country. It will be the defining feature of the next election, and it will be the reason why we become the government after that election.

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

At the outset, I acknowledge the remarkable valedictory speech that the House has heard from the member for Maribyrnong. On a personal note, it was a real honour to serve as a shadow minister when the member for Maribyrnong was the Leader of the Labor Party, and it is a great honour to serve alongside him as an assistant minister in the Albanese government.

It's pretty extraordinary to hear the words of the former housing minister and now shadow housing minister. It's no surprise that he has scurried out of the chamber, given his lacklustre record when it came to housing.

Under the former government, for most of their time in office, we didn't have a housing minister. Under the former government, homeownership rates in Australia fell to a 50-year low. Under the former government, building approvals were at an almost decadal low. Under the former government, there was a skills deficit through the entire construction industry. Under the former government, they went for their last five years failing to hold a meeting of state and territory housing ministers. Under the former government, social housing increased by less than 10,000 homes over nine years, compared to a 30,000-home increase under the Labor government that had preceded them.

It is certainly true that the Liberal Party once cared about housing. But that ended with the end of the Menzies era. The fact is the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments didn't give two hoots about housing policy. Instead, they pursued policies that actively made problems worse. We've just had the COVID-19 response inquiry report handed down, co-authored by Robyn Kruk, Catherine Bennett and Angela Jackson. This is what they had to say about the former government's HomeBuilder program, championed by the now shadow minister for housing:

There are clear indications that the infrastructure measures taken – in particular, HomeBuilder – overheated the industry and contributed to inflation in the post-pandemic era. The program was designed explicitly to stimulate aggregate demand and support the residential construction sector. It acted to stimulate consumption expenditure and lowered the significant household savings built up during the pandemic. However, the measure failed to appropriately take into account the supply-side effects of the pandemic.

It goes on to quote the HomeBuilder national partner agreement review: stakeholder consultation report:

It could be said that the HomeBuilder did partially contribute to the constraints in supply of labour, materials and land that resulted from this industry overheating.

The report goes on to say:

Recent media articles have also criticised the HomeBuilder program in particular for favouring middle- to high-income earners rather than lower income earners.

And it notes that it contributed to inflation costs. The program blew out to five times the expected budget.

Also under the former government, we had them go to their final election—which, fortunately nor the Australian people, they lost—with a policy that you should be able to raid your superannuation to pay for a home, a policy Malcolm Turnbull referred to as 'the craziest idea I have heard'. When the former government came to office, the average home cost around seven years earnings. By the time they left office, the average home cost around 11 years earnings. According to the data crunched in Battlers and Billionaires: The Updated Story of Inequality in Australia, throughout the period from 1880 to 2022, housings affordability was never as bad as when the former government left office. They left us with an unholy housing mess to clean up.

We have been focusing on doing that. We have set an ambitious target of 1.2 million homes over five years, aiming to galvanise efforts across all levels of government and industry. We are working with states and territories to unlock land, improve zoning and build the infrastructure we need to support new homes. We're training the tradies we need through fee-free TAFE and bringing in more tradies from overseas. We're directly investing in more housing through the Housing Australia Future Fund, which in just its first round is directly helping more social housing than the previous government did in nine years. Relevant to my competition portfolio, we are working with states and territories through national competition policy to explore opportunities to remove barriers to the uptake of modern construction methods. Right now the planning system in industry is geared towards traditional on-site construction methods. National competition policy will look at ways to level the regulatory playing field, delivering significant cost savings and reducing construction times. It's also good for our net zero transition, with less waste generated from an uptake in off-site construction.

Under Labor we're helping renters doing it tough. We've had back-to-back increases in Commonwealth rent assistance, boosting Commonwealth rent assistance by 40 per cent, helping around a million Australians.

More affordable homes are absolutely critical to tackling inequality in Australia, and since Labor came to office nearly 4,000 homes have been built, boosted by Labor's policies like fee-free TAFE and by training the workers we need to build homes. That includes more than 10,000 homes built through Labor's housing programs like the Social Housing Accelerator program and new builds under Labor's expanded Home Guarantee Scheme. We've got more than 20,000 homes in the pipeline through direct Commonwealth investment, including the 13,700 under round 1 of the Housing Australia Future Fund.

Right now, we have the unholy coalition of the Liberals and Nationals and the Greens blocking two significant housing measures. The 'build to rent' and Help to Buy bills are being stalled by the Liberals and the Nationals, who don't want to see more young Australians able to buy a home, and by the Greens, who are the housing supply denialists of Australia. Their spokesman has said that Australia has enough homes, against evidence from every serious think-tank in Australia and the fact that Australia has fewer homes per person than the average advanced country.

The Greens policy on housing is to support rent caps. As the Economist magazine recently noted of a similar policy pursued by the Scottish National Party and its then ally the Green Party, they temporarily capped rent increases at three per cent a year. A new housing bill allows ministers to control rents for longer. As a result, as the Economist magazine noted, in a panic some developers cancelled build-to-rent projects. Others switched from rental flats to student rooms, which are not covered by the bill. The fact is that housing markets have a supply side too, and, when you put into place rental caps of the kind that the Greens would suggest you're simply going to cause a housing supply shortage. I point to the ACT—a jurisdiction which doesn't have an absolute rental price cap. The ACT has limits on the extent to which any one landlord can raise rents above the ACT average.

You have, from the coalition, a claim that labour costs are driving up the challenge of housing affordability. Treasury analysis shows very clearly that labour costs in the most recent year were 18.7 per cent of total costs, compared to 19.6 per cent of total costs before that. In building construction, labour costs are significantly less than the average for the construction sector as a whole. Labour costs in construction have been growing more slowly than other costs. So attempts to blame workers in the housing industry for housing supply challenges are simply off base. We need assistance from this parliament to put in place those build-to-rent and help-to-buy measures so we can do more, but even without that support we're strengthening renters' rights.

The housing minister is meeting with state and territory counterparts. We're building more affordable rental homes and we're taking action after a decade of inaction from the former Liberal-National government. While they had programs like HomeBuilder which made the inflation challenge worse for Australia, we're putting in place programs to boost housing supply in this country. Labor understands that housing supply is at the core of dealing with inequality and opportunity in this country. We're getting on with the job. We're building. We need the Liberals, the Nationals and the Greens to stop blocking and let us start building.

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

WARE () (): I rise to speak on this matter of public importance—and, indeed, is there any issue in our country at the moment that is not more important than the issue of housing? It is talked about at barbecues. It's spoken about around the water coolers at work. It's spoken about at dinner parties. We speak about it constantly in this place. Most worrying for me is that, for the first time in my life, we have teenagers who are suffering mental health issues and talking about their stress and anxiety about being unable to buy a home.

When I was a teenager back in the 1980s, I recall worrying about a lot of things but never about whether or not I would be able to buy a home.

This government was elected on the campaign promise of cheaper mortgages and cheaper rents, and it has failed abysmally. I have no doubt that the intention is there—the 1.2 million homes they've spruiked, the billions and billions of dollars going into trying to solve this—but it is not being solved. The houses that the former housing minister and now the current housing minister have said will be built haven't been built.

I accept a lot of the things the minister just said then about housing being an absolute social imperative. But the bank of mum and dad is now the sixth biggest lender for homes. That means, for the first time in the history of this nation, whether or not you own a home will largely depend on the circumstances of your birth. That is a travesty, and that is something we must fix. It is something I came into this parliament to fix, as a former planning, environmental and housing lawyer, having worked in both the private sector and the public sector. In my first speech in this place I said I want to fix housing.

We need to fix housing supply. With all respect to those on the other side, the minister talking about having meetings with state ministers—that's been occurring for over a decade, and nothing has changed. It's a talkfest. We need to empower the local government sector. We have now got the slowest and the lowest number of housing approvals in the history of local government, which started in 1919 in the great state of NSW.

What is needed at that level? First of all, the reason DAs are taking so long is that we have a chronic shortage of planners in this country. But, when I hear those on the other side talking about free TAFE and all the other allegedly fabulous things they're doing to address the skills sector, I don't hear anyone over there talking about what they're doing to address the chronic shortage of planners in this country. They are the ones needed to prepare the DAs for developers and then to approve them at local council level. They are also the experts who have to do the up-zonings and the rezonings in all of the local government areas throughout our country to increase housing supply.

I have never heard the Minister for Housing and I haven't heard the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government talking about any of this. That says to me that with all the goodwill and intention in the world on that side—and I have no doubt that they want to fix the housing problem. There is no-one on that side, with respect to them, who even understands the problem at a grassroots level. Until we start looking at that and until we start talking about that—

I hear the member for Hasluck. The member for Hasluck exactly has the same things being said to her in her electorate as they're saying to me in Hughes. They are saying, 'The government's been in for 2½ years and it hasn't fixed our housing issues in Hasluck.' You know it. We know it. The whole country knows it. We must fix this housing crisis for the good— (Time expired)