Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I rise to speak to Senator Hanson's important MPI—the need to limit the number of new dwellings which can be purchased by foreign non-residents. Buying a home is the single biggest investment in most people's lives. As the first rung on the ladder to home ownership, the first home purchase is the single most important step people can take towards financial security and independence. What homeownership comes down to is the principle that Australians can own a share of our own country. The very idea that successive governments have allowed this to be put at risk by foreigners is utterly repugnant. The birthright of ordinary Australian working families is being stolen by foreigners, aided by incompetent governments. We had a mining boom yet how many young people these days can afford to buy their own house thanks to energy policies, overregulation and tax that is destroying investment and destroying employment, disrupting markets and smashing freedom?

As our leader has informed the Senate, in 2014-15 alone, over 17 per cent of all new residential properties in New South Wales and over 15 per cent in Victoria were bought by foreign—that is, mainly Chinese—buyers. As these were concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne, this means that around 30 per cent to 40 per cent of all new properties in the cities are now bought by foreigners. And where are house prices rising most quickly? Sydney and Melbourne. Where are most immigrants and most foreign purchasers? Sydney and Melbourne. This is a shocking yet totally deplorable fact that around 30 per cent to 40 per cent of all new properties in these cities are now bought by foreigners. Anyone who imagines that adding up to 40 per cent of extra buyers to a market of limited supply does not drive up prices are economic troglodytes.

Never mind negative gearing, it is clear that it is foreign Chinese property speculators together with the flood of new immigrants that are pushing up house price and locking Aussies out of buying a home. Do you remember Kevin Rudd? How could anyone forget Kevin Rudd? Prior to Kevin Rudd, changing the foreign investment rules nearly 10 years ago to allow open slather buying up of Australia properties by foreign owners would have been illegal. The ALP and former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were too busy buying headlines, flinging billions of dollars around and claiming the greatest moral threat—based on a lie—while people were homeless.

In the words of our leader, Senator Hanson, we need to slash immigration numbers. We need to limit all foreign buyers to just one property and actually enforce the law to prevent foreigners buying any established homes. We at Pauline Hanson's One Nation have the courage to say what people think, the courage to cut the number of immigrants and also to raise the discussion on the quality of immigration. We also need all foreign owned empty properties, whose darkened windows blight the Sydney and Melbourne landscapes and skylines, to be returned to the marketplace. What was the government's response to this in the budget? Senator Hanson has already discussed that—tokenism, window-dressing, like so many ineffectual Turnbull budget measures that will have no effect. How much will it cost to enforce this window dressing? How much more regulation will cripple buyers of houses?

So what is the government's response to date? It is to talk about the supply side and to say that it is a state problem. Yes, supply is obviously a part of the equation. However, the other side of soaring prices of the demand problem is firmly the result of federal government policies. The demand problem is all about unrestricted foreign speculators and too many immigrants. Unlike some members and senators who will sell out this country and its interests for a fistful of yuan, One Nation will stand up for the birthright of Australian workers. Just as One Nation senators will never take a plum $900,000 a year job on retirement in return for selling our vital strategic assets to China and just as we will never take a bribe to support Chinese military aggression and the illegal seizure of another nation's territory, so too One Nation will never betray the right of Aussie working families to own their own home. If Chinese investors dare to complain about One Nation's unapologetically nationalist policies, they need only look to their own government that does the same. You and I cannot buy property in mainland China, so why should we let the Chinese snap up all our property here? We should not.