Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am not quite sure where Senator Smith is going with his analysis in recognising that we have a housing affordability crisis in this country and that they are going to be tackling it in this year's budget. I will wait with bated breath to see what package of policies and incentives the government is going to put forward. This is an issue that is taken very seriously by the Greens. This is an issue that we continually raise in estimates with the Treasury secretary, in committee work and in this place. We will always stand up for young Australians—we have generational inequality that needs to change in this country—and for low-income Australians, the battlers who want to try and get ahead.

We do have a problem with housing in this country. Depending on where you live, we have a very big problem in some places. We have the dubious honour of spending the highest proportion of income on housing in the world. As Senator McAllister said earlier, we have the highest household debts in the wold. The proportion of young people who own their own home, particularly in certain areas of Australia, is in decline and is now at the lowest level in 60 years. It is easy to see why. It is because housing prices continue to go through the roof, inequality is being created on a generational scale, the economy is being distorted because of perverse incentives that the government refuses to change and the financial system is being loaded with risk.

Australia's housing market is being driven by a tax system that favours investors over owner-occupiers. The Treasurer went to the UK over Christmas, apparently to sit on committees and collect information on housing affordability. That was great. We are looking forward to the new ideas. But what he should have done was come home via Africa and go on a safari—because there are some big elephants that the Treasurer cannot see in the Treasury and in his own party room. Those policy elephants are negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions. The capital gains tax discount is the sixth largest tax expenditure in this country and cost us $6.8 billion in 2016-17. It goes mostly to the wealthy, with 73 per cent of the benefit flowing to the top 10 per cent of income earners. Negative gearing costs us nearly $4 billion a year, and over half the benefits go to the top 20 per cent of households in this country.

There is no reason why wealthy Australians who generate income from investments such as property should be taxed at different rates than everyone else. The Reserve Bank is among an overwhelming number of groups pushing for reform for these tax breaks. We have figures from the Parliamentary Library around negative gains and capital gains discounts. On average, investors are receiving benefits of $4,500 a year. But this rises to $9,200 per household in the highest income quartiles. And guess what, Senator Cameron? The top 10 negative-gearing electorates are all Liberal electorates when you look at the data. The Prime Minister and his wife themselves own nine properties between them, including five investment properties.

If Senator Hanson bothered looking at the data, she would not come in here blaming immigration and migrants in this country, people who flee to Australia from persecution, people whom we should be helping, for the housing crisis in this country. What a ridiculous notion. How many houses do they own? They would be lucky if they own a single house, Senator Macdonald. Most of them are in public housing or on waiting lists or have been put up by their communities in places like Launceston—where I live—by church groups and other community groups who look after them. They do not own nine properties!