Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

You would be surprised if I didn't say it was an absolute delight to rise tonight to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Tax Integrity) Bill 2017 and the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Fees Imposition Amendment (Vacancy Fees) Bill 2017. I'm pleased to be following Senator Leyonhjelm. I'm not sure I share his negative outlook on this legislation; I tend to think these are positive steps in the right direction. I'm not sure I would agree, either, with Senator Cameron's characterisation of Senator Hume's contribution: that this bill was the be-all and end-all of dealing with the issue of housing affordability—which, of course, is a significant issue. No-one in this place can deny it. No-one in this place has to struggle with it either, frankly. All of us are on in excess of $200,000 a year, and I hope the seven people listening across the country don't forget that fact: anyone who has made a contribution to this debate is doing very well out of the taxpayer, thank you very much. So for us to sit here and lecture one another on housing affordability is a bit rich, I suppose. But those of us who do get out into the community and listen to those we seek to represent would, hopefully, have an understanding of the problems we face when it comes to ensuring that we have a supply of affordable housing that is accessible to those in the community who need it, in all parts of the country.

It's not a simple issue. It's not one that can be dealt with by one pull of a policy lever and then hopefully it's all okay tomorrow. I don't think it is as simple as has been made out by previous contributions in this debate, and it's something that we need to take very seriously. In reflecting on what I was going to say tonight in my contribution, I had a bit of a look at the previous considerations of Senate committees on the particular issue of housing affordability. In the last parliament, the Economics References Committee considered this very issue. It published a report entitled Out of reach? The Australian housing affordability challenge, which aptly set out some of the challenges that are faced. That report states:

… no single measure can capture the diversity of Australian experiences of housing affordability … most indicators point toward a deterioration of affordability in recent decades. This decline is keenly felt by a broad array of people, including people wanting to become homeowners, renters and people living in community and public housing. Homelessness, meanwhile, is a tremendously complex problem, and it would be reductive to suggest it is simply a corollary of housing affordability and nothing more besides. Nonetheless … poor housing affordability creates pressures throughout the housing system …

I think that's an important point for us to take on board as we consider what is, as this report states, a very complex issue. To suggest it is simple, to suggest that we can just fix it by tweaking one set of tax arrangements or creating an incentive for affordable housing to the exclusion of any other policy measure, is naive, to be frank. So I think the report in that sense is a very helpful one to consider before moving to exactly what's being talked about in the bills we are considering today.

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Tax Integrity) Bill 2017, the principal bill that we are considering tonight, at its heart, is about housing affordability. In the Australian way of life, having access to housing and housing that you can afford is fundamental to wellbeing. To be able to provide shelter for your family and for yourself, to ensure good health, and to be warm in winter and cool in summer and the like is so incredibly important. Having access to those things, either by way of home ownership or being a renter, is so incredibly important.

Home ownership, or having access to reasonable standards of accommodation at an affordable level, is a driver of social and economic opportunities in this country. We all know it. I heard Senator Cameron in his contribution —and I'm sure I'll refer to this a little later on—refer to getting onto the housing ladder when he was talking about the need for penalty rates. When he bought his first home, he needed that money to afford that property. That's the reality of home ownership in this country and has been for time immemorial. People buy homes, and—hopefully, for anyone who does so—they increase in value. That is what we want so that that increased value can be translated into assets that we can realise the value of and we can invest in something else—a smaller home, a holiday, things like that. That's what we do with home ownership. We save for the future to pay for our kids' education, to pay for the things we need in life. It is about those social and economic opportunities, which are really a part of the Australian dream that we often talk about in this place.

The need to deal with the rising cost of housing across the country has long been talked about. My home state of Tasmania, particularly the southern half, with the city of Hobart, is no exemption. If I look at some of the recent examples of housing prices in the city of Hobart, various real estate agents, including representatives of the Real Estate Institute of Tasmania, have talked about the fact that, although a decade or even five years ago, houses rarely reached the $1 million or $1.5 million mark, it's now quite common to see houses selling for that price or well in excess of it. In recent years, one house in our little city of Hobart, which has a population not far in excess of 250,000, sold for $6½ million and another one for $8 million. They are record-breaking prices and they are certainly outliers, but it indicates that, when the market is hot, the prices go up. That has a flow-on to the other parts of the market which are more within the reach of most of the people that occupy this chamber.

In her contribution a little earlier, Senator Hume did talk about the government's plan to try and tackle this matter, and the bills that we have before us today are just part of that. It's not the whole thing, as Senator Cameron tried to characterise it as; it is just part of it. We also need to look at increasing the supply of affordable housing, which is something that many states and territories, if not all of them, are doing ardently. State and territory governments, who have responsibility for social housing and for many of the policies that relate to the supply of housing in each of their jurisdictions, are looking after this policy as well.

I know it was acknowledged by previous speakers in this debate that it is a matter that comes up at ministers meetings or COAG meetings. We can't ignore that. To assume in this debate that housing affordability is purely the domain of the federal government is naive and just plain wrong. It is a priority for this government. I'm sure it is also a priority for all Australians—particularly for those of us who have children who I hope will be growing up in this country—to be able to access affordable housing, to make sure that their kids can live, as I referred to before, the Australian dream, and to have a home with a yard and whatever else they need to raise their kids. That's what we need to be able to provide for.

The bill itself, as has been referred to by previous contributors in this debate, has a couple of measures that will go some way to dealing with this issue. First of all it will limit foreign ownership in new developments—in other words, there will effectively be a cap. We will see foreign ownership in new developments being limited through a 50 per cent cap on the number of properties that can be sold to foreign investors through developer pre-approvals and as a condition on New Dwelling Exemption Certificates for new property developments where an application was made after budget night. We are talking about reserving the supply of new houses, with at least half the level being made available to local buyers, preventing them going, as seems to be the popular belief for the most part, to foreign investors.

There is also, as I heard Senator Hume talking about earlier on, the penalty for properties being left vacant. I think that is an important step in addressing the matter relating to the cost of rentals in this country. An annual charge of at least $5,000 on foreign owners of residential real estate will be applied where Australian residential property is not occupied or genuinely available on the rental market for at least six months of the year. The measure is designed to free up more dwellings for Australian renters, and this measure builds on the government's existing foreign investment regime by seeking to increase the number of houses available for Australians to live in. These are just two parts of the bill, with the other one being the tightening of tax rules to reduce the use of the current taxation arrangements to the advantage of some property owners. This will ensure that we actually receive revenue on these investments, which can then go towards investment in essential services across this country.

I will just briefly go back to the Tasmanian experience and look at some recent reports from the last 12 months—the year of 2017—about what's been going on in Tasmania. I think we'd all have to agree that Tasmania is probably one of the more affordable states when it comes to housing, notwithstanding the two examples I gave earlier on. Saul Eslake, who is a respected economist that some of you may be familiar with, has commentated on this issue. He said on 24 June 2017 that 'Tasmania is now getting net migration from the mainland after a period of out-migration' and pointed to the issue of housing affordability as one of the things that is attracting people to Tasmania. Obviously people will make decisions about where they live and the occupations they pursue based on how affordable buying a house is.

Real estate agents in Tasmania are increasingly noticing that young families are moving back, drawn by affordable housing. 'It's happening more over the last 12 months', said Ant Manton from Ray White real estate in Tasmania. He pointed to the markets in Melbourne and Sydney as being factors that are driving people out of these mainland major cities to places like Tasmania, which I think is a great thing. That, in turn, has a flow-on effect for places like the state of Tasmania. Let's reflect on home prices in Tasmania. In Hobart, for instance, home prices jumped 5.8 per cent to the year ending 31 May of this year to a median of $350,000, while Sydney and Melbourne each added more than 11 per cent, with medians of $872,300 and $665,000 respectively, as reported by CoreLogic. These are significant differences in the affordability of housing in this country.

It takes me to another point I want to make in relation to this debate—that is, reflecting on the difference in housing prices between major metro cities on the mainland and the prices we have in Tasmania. There has been a lot of discussion about trying to attract people to these regional cities and regional communities. Part of that, of course, is the decentralisation process being undertaken. It was being led by the former senator and former minister—a very good minister too—Fiona Nash. It is about getting Public Service agencies out of Canberra and into our regional communities. I would think that, for many of the people who work in these agencies, it would be a great thing to be able to unlock the value of your home here in Canberra, Sydney or Melbourne and head out to somewhere beautiful like Hobart and invest probably one-fifth of the price and snare yourself a five-bedroom mansion down on the waterfront somewhere.

Reflecting further on some of the experiences in Tasmania more recently: on 3 November it was reported that Tasmania is breaking records with regard to the housing market. It passed $4 billion for one year of sales in the state. The interesting thing about this article, which appeared on news.com.au and also in The Mercury newspaper in Hobart, was that first home buyers purchased 220 properties, at the median price of $275,000, and they remain steady at 13 per cent of the market. There were only 13 sales to foreign investors, blowing out of the water this notion that all of our properties are being snapped up by foreign investors. The majority of homes sold to interstate buyers were to interstate buyers moving to Tasmania to live, not to investors who wanted to buy a home to rent out and to prop up their bank balances, as those opposite would claim. Vacancy rates in the rental market continue to tighten, with Hobart now at historical lows below two per cent. Of course, that does lead to the problem we've talked about previously—the affordability of rental properties in Tasmania.

I do just want to briefly touch on what the Tasmanian government is doing with regard to housing affordability. Every state and territory does have its own housing affordability strategy and programs that address this issue. In Tasmania, their strategy is a significant one. It is a 10-year strategy which will improve access in all sectors of the housing market. It runs from 2015—so it has been going for two years—until 2025. It's supported by an action plan which provides $73½ million over a number of years. It will see 1,600 vulnerable Tasmanian households housed. It is supported by the construction of 900 new homes. It is a significant number for a small state the size of Tasmania. Of course, that policy, that action plan and that strategy have all been developed after exhaustive consultation with stakeholders, social services, peak groups and those who actually need the services as well. I commend the Tasmanian government for the various initiatives they have, including the home-share initiative, which will develop 250 homes for people on low to moderate incomes. The Streets Ahead incentive program is a deposit incentive program, offering $12,000 to people looking to purchase Tasmanian dwellings. There are supply initiatives where we are seeing nearly 30 homes developed by private developers. And there are community housing stock leverage programs which will see 172 new homes in addition to 31 upgraded homes. That's just the tip of the iceberg in the little old state of Tasmania.

I will reflect briefly on the contributions made by a couple of others in this debate. I was listening to what both Senator Gallagher and Senator Cameron had to say about the issue of housing affordability. It seems to be that it's all care and no responsibility in opposition. I heard Senator Gallagher say that this government has had five years to fix it and, 'You've just got to do it.' The last time I checked, those in opposition have a responsibility to provide serious policies that would help to address issues that this nation faces. I didn't hear one utterance from either Senator Gallagher or Senator Cameron on how they would deal with these issues. All they want to do is stand on the sidelines and throw stones. They don't actually want to be constructive. They don't want to talk about ways and measures that might tangibly and properly improve the situation we face as a country when it comes to housing affordability. They, we can't forget, are the aspiring government. They are the people who want to be on this side of the chamber, and they owe it to the Australian people to provide and explain their policies and be subject to the scrutiny that the government is.

One thing that we did hear was mention of a minister for housing. I'm not a firm believer in creating new bureaucracies or new ministries just to solve a problem—in fact, quite the opposite. The last time I checked, if you went out onto the main street of any of the towns I represent, the creation of a new political position or a new ministry would not inspire anyone, and it certainly won't fix the problems that our country faces. The centrepiece for the Labor policy seems to be the creation of this new minister for housing. I look forward to seeing what this new minister for housing would ever do if, one day, this mob ever got into government.

I go back to my starting point: the position of privilege that most of the people in this chamber occupy. All of us are on a good income and many of us in this place own multiple properties. So it is interesting to listen to Senator Cameron talk about the working-class individuals, the people who really struggle. I don't know how many homes Senator Cameron owns. I know he has one in New South Wales and a very, very nice one in Hobart.