Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Australia's housing market is totally and utterly cooked. Rather than a home being considered as a human right—something that everyone should have secure access to—housing has been turned, through the deliberate choices of the neoliberal parties in this place, into a game of speculation. As a result, across the country the cost of a home is much more than it should be. Houses are too expensive and rents, as a consequence, are far, far too high. That's because over decades the market has been rigged in favour of the speculators and the banks, who profit from ever higher levels of household debt and ever higher rents.

None of this is an accident. It has come from a range of things, from tax policy to tenancy laws, from banking regulation to decades of underinvestment in social housing and, of course, the Reserve Bank having printed hundreds of billions of dollars of cash and pumping it into the banking system. The banks, of course, have turned around and lent it out on mortgages, which has driven house prices up. The system is designed to make homes more expensive, which is just what the government likes.

Just last Friday, the Treasurer, Mr Frydenberg, said, 'Overall it's a good thing for the economy when house prices go up as opposed to going down.' Mr Frydenberg, tell that to the over one-third of Australians who do not own their own home and are forced to rent, to rely on relatives or friends or, ultimately, to become homeless. It's worth noting that over the last 20 years house prices have increased at nearly twice the rate that wages have in this country. So, when the Treasurer says that it's a good thing for house prices to go up, what he means is that it's a good thing for investors. But it's not a good thing for new home owners, who have to borrow more than ever or not get into the market, and it's a terrible thing for the one-third of Australians who rent and have to use more and more of their income to pay their landlord's mortgage. That's just the way the Liberals want it, because this government is all for property speculation and all for helping out its mates who benefit from it, be they developers, the banks or their rank and file, who lord over massive property investment portfolios.