Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and related bills. First, let me say that housing and housing affordability is a core concern of the coalition, and we're proud of our track record on delivering housing. We created the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation, we supported more than 300,000 Australians into homeownership with over 160,000 first home buyers in 2021 alone. That was a 70 per cent increase on the average of the previous decade. We protected the residential construction industry through the HomeBuilder program, which ensured that when the pandemic crisis had subsided Australia still had a construction industry. We provided $2.9 billion of low-cost loans to community housing providers to support 15,000 social and affordable dwellings, saving $470 million in interest repayments to be reinvested in more affordable housing. And we established the First Home Super Saver Scheme, helping 27,600 first home buyers accelerate their deposit savings using their superannuation.

Housing affordability is in the coalition's DNA, right back to the generation of homeowners fostered by the policies of Sir Robert Menzies—his little capitalists. Unfortunately, under the Labor government the Australian dream is now flailing. Right now, 70 per cent of young people don't think they will ever be able to buy a home. That's a damning statistic. What it shows is very clear: we need a solution, one that will actually deliver an outcome for Australians instead of simply inflating already-record levels of construction prices or costing Australians billions of dollars in interest.

It's clear in my own state of Victoria, where I heard from residents that it's becoming harder and harder to afford a home. That's why I am hosting a housing affordability forum in the electorate of Higgins, so that I can hear from local residents directly, and discuss real and practical solutions to this crisis. I encourage any interested Victorians listening tonight to join me and my good friend the Victorian shadow minister for home ownership and affordability, Jess Wilson, next Monday night on 18 September, so that we can work together for our communities.

Unfortunately, the bill that's in the chamber today will not deliver affordable housing. This package of bills is exemplary of when policy collides with flawed ideology. Let's be very clear on what this bill before the chamber is and what has been done as part of a deal behind closed doors between the radical Greens and Labor government to get this bill through. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023 establishes the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council as an independent advisory body to the Commonwealth on matters relating to housing supply and affordability. The bill's explanatory memorandum states:

… the Council will build a strong evidence base to support the Commonwealth in developing housing policy and positioning the Government to closely collaborate with the States and Territories on increasing housing supply and improving housing affordability.

This, in isolation, would potentially be something that the coalition could support. Let's be honest: this Labor government seems to have absolutely no idea of their own on housing, so the idea of having a body that can provide them with some advice is not perhaps the worst one that has come before this chamber. That said, there are still questions to answer on this, and the first one that pops to mind of course is why does the government not have faith in the Treasury to provide that independent advice? That's because it has responsibility for housing. Perhaps that's a question for the government; it's also a question for Treasury, and one that I'm sure we'll pursue at estimates. I will leave that to the Secretary of the Treasury to raise with the Treasurer and with the minister for housing in the meantime.

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023 amends existing legislation to replace references to NHFIC in the NHFIC Act with Housing Australia. It implements recommendation 6 of the NHFIC review, an extension of the Commonwealth guarantee of liabilities of Housing Australia to apply for contracts entered into after 30 June 2028.

The final part of this package, though, is where it really gets interesting. This is the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023, where the poor policy really gets going. Let's be clear: this is a dog of a bill: $10 billion of borrowed money will be put into a fund that invests in Australian equities, international equities, bonds and—hell's bells!—in property, ironically, with uncertain returns. This is borrowed money invested in a fund that has uncertain returns. There is no guarantee of a revenue stream from this fund. There is no guarantee that a single home will be built from this fund before the next election. There are no KPIs on the number of houses built, on where they will be built or by when they will be built.

This is their policy; this is what we're discussing tonight. Senator O'Neill lamented how long this legislation has taken to pass. Well, if the fund had been legislated last year, the Commonwealth would have lost money! It would have lost approximately $370 million. So thank heavens it isn't being implemented until now, because with the 10-year government bond rate at four per cent and rising, that $10 billion borrowing would have cost the Commonwealth around $400 million per annum in interest-servicing costs on that debt. That, combined with the loss on the investment, would have created a total loss for the taxpayer of about $770 million, so not even $1 would have been available for social and affordable housing projects. This is simply a transparent and blatant attempt to deliver an enormous, astounding number—$10 billion. But it ensures that it doesn't hit the bottom line. Ten billion dollars sounds fantastic, but there is no guarantee that there will be a return on investment and no guarantee that a single house will get built. Moreover, the IMF has already warned the government that the proliferation of these funds, these off-balance-sheet funds, should be avoided in the context of our growing debt under Labor.

This fund is bad policy from start to finish; it's just bad policy. But, as we saw this week, bad policy is now complemented with a strong dose of flawed ideology. The Labor government has gone to its natural ideological partners, the Greens, to do a deal. The Greens, let's not forget, have been pushing for radical policies like rent caps and rent freezes—policies that even a moron in a hurry knows will simply push investors out of the market and make it harder to find rental properties. The Labor government irresponsibly entertained these suggestions. One expert witness at the cost of living inquiry said in relation to rent freezes:

… the confidence in the property market at the moment has taken a real hit because of some politicians playing games. If we look at rent control in other OECD cities around the world, it's been an unmitigated failure. I can send you the reports around rent freezes and rent control—Berlin, San Francisco and New York. Dublin even had a crack—even Russia. Berlin had a crack, and it didn't work.

And so this week we've seen the final deal: yet more money, another billion dollars, rushed out the door with no thought, no KPIs, no strings attached. Indeed, it was at that cost of living inquiry that Treasury officials confirmed this. They confirmed that payments to the states and territories were not linked to any requirement to reform planning, reform zoning laws or reform development regulations, or to productivity. Imagine giving $2 billion away without linking it to more housing supply. That is what the Labor government did, and then they added to it again.

Officials also confirmed that there was no commitment sought from state governments to maintain their level of spending on social housing. That, of course, leaves the door open for states to use this payment to simply prop up their budget bottom lines. It's business as usual but it's: 'Have some more money to do it.' And, despite the budget being delivered just weeks before, these were new, unbudgeted funds rushed out the door before the end of the financial year—this, apparently, from a party of fiscal responsibility. Well, save us!

Despite the rhetoric of the Greens and the government, this bill and the $1 billion additional payment that got it through parliament will not actually deliver houses to Australians. The bill won't bring down costs, which have skyrocketed under this government. There have been 11 interest rate rises on Labor's watch. A family with a mortgage of $750,000 has to pay an additional $22,000 per year on their home loan—$22,000 for the average family. That's not the sort of money you find down the back of the couch. That's happened on Labor's watch.

Rather than reducing their spending to get inflation under control so that the RBA doesn't have to do all of the heavy lifting with the one tool it has in the shed, the government has decided, for two budgets in a row now, to spend even more. It's that natural Labor urge to spend more and more—an additional $185 billion more. The last budget was called 'unambiguously expansionary' by Betashares' chief economist. It was called 'stimulatory' by UBS's chief economist. Cherelle Murphy, the chief economist from EY, said at the time:

… inflation is already running at an annual rate of 7 per cent and more than one in every four dollars spent in the Australian economy is by a state, territory, local or federal government—

one in four dollars in this economy spent by government! No wonder inflation is out of control.

Core inflation even now is twice the RBA's recommended band. With inflation at these levels and confirmation just last week that Australia has entered a per capita recession, I can understand why so many Australians, and particularly young people, believe that owning their own home may well be out of reach. First home buyers are at the lowest level since the Gillard government. New home starts have dropped by 6.6 per cent, and new housing approvals are 13.5 per cent lower compared with this time last year—on Labor's watch.

Australians need a policy that will deliver greater supply of land, remove the grit in the wheels, get rid of zoning laws and the gridlock of approvals and get down the cost of new homes, not more vanity funds that are in Labor's stable. So my coalition colleagues and I will oppose this irresponsible and poorly thought out bill that will cost Australians billions more while not guaranteeing even a single new house for one Australian family.

I hope desperately that I have to eat my words, but I will lay odds that, come the day of the next election—the day the next election is called—there will not have been one single house completed from the Housing Australia Future Fund. Shame on you.