Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, President. President, I ask through you: what sorts of dirty deals have been done in dark, smoke-filled rooms with the Greens to enable this bill to be brought back on? We know today that a billion dollars has been put on the table. That's on top of the $2 billion that was thrown around earlier this year in an attempt to try and get the Greens over the line so that they could move forward on this ill-conceived policy to try and deliver social and affordable housing in this country.

But what we really want to know is what other deals have been done with the Greens in these dirty, smoke filled rooms to enable this to come forward. We know from reading the paper this morning that the Greens have now come back and said that they will secure the fund, but, in the words of one of the Greens representatives in the other place: 'We will not stop fighting until there is a freeze on rent increases.' Following the decision this morning or over the last few days, what will we see turn up in MYEFO for this deal to be done between the Greens and the Labor Party? The question also has to be: 'What other deals are there?' I asked Senator Lambie. Obviously, she's done some sort of deal for her support. What are the deals? Have you managed to get a billion dollars out of the government for what you want—a billion dollars for Tasmania? I ask Senator Tyrrell that, as well. What did Senator Pocock get for his support for the Housing Affordability Future Fund? What deals have been done with Senator Hanson, Senator Babet and Senator Thorpe?

We come into this place to try to have open and transparent dialogue, and all we see is that, every time the government mucks up on its determination in relation to a policy, which we see time and time again. All they do is heap a whole heap of taxpayers' money at it. This is taxpayers' money that keeps getting thrown to buy the reparation of ill-conceived policy that you hadn't done your homework on when you put in the policy in the first place. Guess who ends up being the poor sucker to pay for this? It's the Australian taxpayer. If you'd done your homework in the first place, we would have had this housing affordability bill negotiated and consulted. You wouldn't have had to throw $3 billion at the Greens and God knows how much more that we don't even know about. Who knows what's hiding in MYEFO when it comes to decisions that have been made for you to try to buy a deal to try and make sure that your signature policy doesn't go down the tube because you didn't do the work, consultation or modelling. You have refused to be transparent about this. Once again, we see the Labor Party just saying: 'Taxpayers? Don't worry about you. You can pay to fix up the mess that you didn't make in the first place.'

But the greatest travesty that we see here is in spending all this money that you guys at the other end of the chamber—through you, Mr Deputy President—put through the dirty deals and the smoke filled rooms that Senator Shoebridge is so happy to come in here and talk about all the time. You're quite happy to go and do those dirty deals in smoke-filled rooms when it suits your purposes. But, at the end of the day, it doesn't change that this is really bad policy that has had to be funded by dirty deals in order to get through this place. It is still really bad policy, because this is financial engineering like you've seen before. This is to keep it off the balance sheet so you can get your budget surplus. There is no consideration whatsoever of the implications. Who knows whether any money will end up in social and affordable housing? The only money that will end up in social and affordable housing is the $3 billion that you've had to pay to get your policy out because you didn't do the homework on your policy in the first place.

We stand here today as a coalition who support good policy. We support policy that's transparent and uses the right financial levers and policies that have stood the test of time. The Minister for Finance should be absolutely ashamed that she has allowed this policy to go through. Not only is it $10 billion off the balance sheet that Australians will have to continue to pay the interest on forever, but they've had to fork out at least $3 billion to buy the support of those at the other end of the chamber. Australian taxpayers are the ones that pay for your bad policy.