Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:The need for a national affordable housing strategy to be developed, involving all levels of government and all political parties, to address the serious and ongoing crisis in housing affordability.

This is a very urgent and important matter. The crisis in housing affordability in Australia has gone from bad to worse over a number of years. In my view, part of the reason it has gone from bad to worse is neglect, benign or otherwise, from both state and federal governments over that prolonged period of time. There has been too much finger pointing and state and federal governments blaming each other and sitting back, leaving it to the market and hoping it will work itself out. Maybe there is a theoretical argument to say that leaving it to the market could work, but the simple fact is it has not worked. I will not give a dissertation on the distorted nature of the housing market and the issues involved there; the simple reality is that market failure has occurred.

I draw attention to an article by Tim Colebatch in the Age last month which pointed out that for the first time the average household in Australia can no longer afford the average home. That is based on figures released by the Housing Industry Association and the Commonwealth Bank last month. Housing is now more unaffordable than at any time in the 23 years they have been measuring it—going back to the early 1980s. That is an indictment on governments of all persuasions but particularly the current federal government that has been in power for a long period of time. It has allowed that situation to develop.

The situation was sufficiently bad a few years ago that the Treasurer, partly as a way of trying to get the issue off the front pages, called an inquiry, as governments do from time to time to make it look like they are doing something. He got the Productivity Commission to inquire into the cost of home ownership for first home buyers. That produced a report with 10 recommendations, some of which went to state governments and some to the federal government. The response of the federal government and the Treasurer was: ‘No, we’re not going to accept these recommendations; we’re not going to do anything. We’re not going to examine the tax mix and we’re not going to examine the impact of the various interconnected and sometimes totally unrelated and unconnected taxation and financial measures that are impacting on the housing market and housing prices. We’re just going to leave it as is and complain about the states not doing enough.’ I am quite prepared to accept that the states have not done enough in some circumstances—but that is not good enough. It is a national problem and it needs national action.

It is worth pointing out that it is not just a problem of the inability to purchase a home. Because the number of people unable to purchase a home is growing, the number of those forced to rent has swollen and that has made it harder to find properties to rent. That is now having a very dramatic impact on the private rental market, leading in some areas at least to quite rapid rises in private rentals. We have the very strange situation of a rental shortage despite enormous tax breaks for rental investors that have been supported by both major parties over the past 20 years or so.

As Tim Colebatch said, the first step we need to take in this area is to acknowledge that existing policies have failed. We need to put forward wide-ranging initiatives to build more affordable housing. Data released yesterday by a group called Australians for Affordable Housing detailed that on their figures the Commonwealth government spends $24 billion on housing. That is not just the $1 billion for the first home owners grant, which is not targeted; the less than $1 billion on public and community housing; and the $2 billion and growing on private rent assistance, which in many cases is a subsidy for landlords and investors as well. On top of those expenditures there is a great amount on negative gearing—what they estimate to be $13 billion on capital gains tax exemptions and discounts. The vast majority of that money goes to speculators, developers and investors. Only a small minority goes to people who simply want to buy or rent their own home.

I am not saying that people should not be able to invest in housing; I am saying that when you have huge amounts of money—tens of billions of dollars in expenditure or in what is called tax expenditures or forgone revenue—going in various ways to impact on the housing market without any data being collected on what impact it is having, whom it is being applied to and what their financial situation is, then you are not targeting that money most effectively. You are not getting the best value for money. If we are going to provide assistance to people for housing matters, surely we should be ensuring that the majority of it goes to people who are simply trying to get a house to live in before it goes to people who are investing and speculating.

There are a range of other measures out there and I am not going to say that any one of them is going to fix it. There is no one single fix for the problem. But what we need before we can even take that first step is a recognition that it is a national issue, that we need to adopt national affordable housing strategies and that political parties must make it a priority to work together with industry and the community to find solutions that will alleviate what is a major and growing cause of inequality in Australia.