Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The incorporated speech read as follows—

I rise today to support the First Home Saver Accounts (Further Provisions) Amendment Bill 2008 and the First Home Saver Account Providers Supervisory Levy Imposition Bill 2008.

These bills represent the second and third parts of a suite of legislation intended to implement Labor’s commitment to the electorate with regard to that most significant of our hopes and dreams—the creation of a home for ourselves, and for our families.

The phrase ‘great Australian dream’ has come to epitomise the aspiration to home ownership and all that this implies. This dream has resonated through our culture for many generations.

The enjoyment of shelter from the elements, and of those essential feelings of security and community with family and friends, is part of us - and of the way we want our children and grandchildren to live.

Home ownership provides not only the primary economic asset for most families but also, less tangibly perhaps, stability, inclusion and social cohesion.

But home ownership has been beyond the reach of far too many, for far too long. Indeed, first homebuyers have been to a large extent excluded from the housing market.

A few statistics will suffice to indicate the true extent of this exclusion, though its human cost can not so easily be enumerated.

A report issued just last year by the Urban Development Institute of Australia shows that between 1984 and 2006, house prices across Australia rose by a staggering 493 per cent!

Incomes rose during that same period by 183 per cent. Outright home ownership decreased from 41 per cent to 33 per cent in those same years.

And in the ten years from 1996—when the previous government won office—to 2006, the average mortgage payment rose from $780 each month to $1,300 per month.

Between 2001 and 2007, first homebuyers’ market share fell from 23 per cent to 16.6 per cent. This figure is today much the same.

What a staggering indictment of the previous government!

They have bequeathed us a housing crisis and a housing affordability crisis, mounting inflationary pressure, and an unparalleled series of interest rate rises during the watch of the former Prime Minister and his treasurer.

With the Coalition, you’re on your own—and if you can’t manage, you’re on your own and on the outer.

And yet, they had the hide to tell the electorate: ‘Working Australians have never been better off!’

Labor recognises the community’s shared aspiration and the fact that many despair of ever owning their own homes.

Our Prime Minister indicated, well before the last election, that he was determined to help.

In the lead up to the election last November, in an environment of escalating interest rates, rising inflationary pressure and constantly increasing housing prices under the previous government, Labor outlined its detailed plans to the electorate. And the electorate determined that those plans should be implemented.

These first home saver accounts are unique in Australia. Government contributions combined with a special, lower tax rate are the key elements of the scheme.

From October this year, the Government will make a 17 per cent contribution to the first $5,000 of individual contributions saved each year.

That’s a contribution of $850!

Not only will this encourage people to save hard for their deposit—it will also instil that habit of saving which is so essential to a long term financial commitment such as a home mortgage.

And it will add to our national savings. National savings of some $6.5 billion by 2012 will be an important adjunct to our continuing efforts to decrease inflationary pressures in our economy.

Meanwhile, the reduced 15 per cent tax on the contributions (capped to an indexed $75,000) will be more tax effective as the funds accumulate in the account—just as it is with superannuation.

If a couple earning average incomes saves 10 per cent of those incomes, it will accumulate a deposit of more than $88,000—within five years!

The bills under discussion today are aimed at implementing some final parts of the primary legislative scheme.

The first of the two bills makes provision for the operation of the scheme.

Its terms include a system for dealing with monies that remain unclaimed; they foresee certain family law-related situations, and they establish new information-sharing and secrecy provisions between the Australian Tax Office, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission.

Additional provisions will ensure that the accounts operate as the legislature intends.

The second of the two bills proposes a framework for the imposition of a levy on the financial institutions providing these new bank accounts.

This will provide funding to enable APRA to carry out its supervisory role.

Using the model of the retirement savings accounts supervisory levy, this new levy is congruent with the existing framework by which the Authority’s supervisory activities are funded.

The quantum of the levies is assessed annually and is the result of ministerial determination.

As senators are undoubtedly aware, the Government’s investment in this scheme, including administration costs, is around $1.2 billion over four years.

The full package of measures, which include programs aimed at boosting housing supply and assisting buyers and renters on low to moderate incomes, will cost $2.2 billion over four years. Contrast this with the level of investment of the previous government—there was none!

The First Home Savers Accounts scheme represents Labor’s honouring of its commitment to the electorate. As I said in this place earlier this year:

“The Rudd Labor Government is determined to deliver on its promises.”

In doing so, the Rudd Labor Government is returning decency to the democratic process—confidence which was sorely tried by our predecessors, who (with their core and non-core promises), played fast and loose with the truth for far too long.

The Rudd Government is determined to tackle the housing affordability crisis. It is determined to assist young people—and older people, too—to establish their families in an environment that belongs to them, and that instils a sense of belonging in them.

It is determined to assist industry and the non-profit sector to build affordable rental properties. It is determined to house the homeless and to restore dignity to the lives of those ignored for too long.

I commend the First Home Saver Accounts (Further Provisions) Amendment Bill 2008, and the First Home Saver Account Providers Supervisory Levy Imposition Bill 2008, and look forward to their speedy passage.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a third time.