Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

and all of us on this side, Senator Day understands that the best way to create more opportunity for people in South Australia, and, indeed, around Australia, to get ahead is by driving policies for stronger economic growth.

I say to Senator Day that I was not aware of the precise figures that he mentioned, though I am aware of the broader issue of course. But, having said that, I am not at all surprised that in South Australia the profiteering, as Senator Day refers to it, is the largest around Australia, because of course South Australia has had a bad Labor government over an extended period of time, and the state Labor government in South Australia, in the bad tradition of state Labor governments and federal Labor governments, has made a mess of the budget, has not been able to live within its means and is always casting around for more cash. Arguably, the state of affairs in South Australia is the worst that it has been since the collapse of the State Bank of South Australia in the period of a previous state Labor government.

So what I would say to Senator Day in relation to the substantive issue that he has raised is that the most fundamental cause of declining housing affordability is that the supply of housing has not kept pace with the strong growth in demand in recent years. I am aware, for example, that growth in private dwellings in South Australia has been relatively low against similar growth in other states. Data from the National Housing Supply Council shows that dwelling growth by percentage is almost a third lower than the national growth average over the decade between 2001 and 2011, and previous Housing Industry Association data has also shown that land values in Adelaide had been around 40 per cent of— (Time expired)