Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Hansard source

The answer in question time this afternoon from Senator Gallagher really did bell the cat and reveal the fact that Labor has no real interest in ever meeting its supply targets on housing. After almost two years of Labor, you would have to say that their housing policy has been one of their biggest failures. That is because Labor have shown no capacity to meet their own housing targets and because they've showed no creativity in trying to help Australians get into a first home.

This whole issue of homeownership has been made so much more acute because of the recent data that shows 660,000 people coming into the country in the last year and only 170,000 houses being built. So, for every four people who come into the country, there is only one house built. That's a major problem. To make matters worse, all of Labor's policies to try to alleviate the housing disaster either have been stalled in this parliament or have already failed. The HAFF is a $10 billion boondoggle which will be only a minor bandaid on a gaping wound. The Help to Buy scheme, which has already failed at most state levels, is jammed in this parliament for good reason. I agree with the Greens when they point out that the Help to Buy scheme is an absolute joke. No-one wants to use it at a state level, and most Australians don't want to see a politician or the government sitting around their dinner table when they go into the house that they own.

The central problem here is that Labor has given up on homeownership. That is actually the problem; they've given up on it. The only solution is to have super funds own the houses. We're going to give them tax breaks. We're going to have foreign fund managers own the houses, and we'll also give them tax breaks. Then we're going to allow the government to own up to 40 per cent of the equity in your house. So it is a trifecta of giving up on people owning their own house, with the only solutions Labor is willing to countenance being big government, big super funds and foreign fund managers. That is why the issue of housing is getting worse, not better, in Australia. People feel that they will never get into a first home.

The most troubling part of this debate, though, is that Labor will not even countenance thinking about allowing people to use their own money to buy a first home, for example. They don't like the idea of people using their own super, even if that might be their only pool of capital. For many Australians, particularly older millennials, absent the bank of mum and dad, which is now a major lender in Australia, using super may be their only shot at ever getting into that market.

The key determinant of your success in retirement is not your super balance; it is your homeownership status. Labor don't seem to care about this fact. They would rather people be forced to save in super for 40 years, where you have to pay huge fees to the fund managers and where you also have to pay high interest to a bank if you ever get into the market. We are seeing that a large number of Australians are now getting to preservation age and they're using their super to retire their mortgage, so what was the point of super? Why force people to pay huge amounts of interest to a bank when they could've owned their own house faster? It is absolutely crazy.

Labor has given up on homeownership, which is very regrettable for the Australian people, because we're stuck with this government for the short term. The Greens' policy, of course—which is probably less whacky—is that there should be a government property developer, and that should be allowed to build and then sell the houses. That is a Soviet-style approach. It is very interesting but is at least consistent. Then, of course, you have us in the Liberals and the Nationals. We are the only parties that want the people to own their houses. We don't want the super funds, the foreign fund managers or the government to own the houses; we want the people to own their houses, and we want people to be able to use their own money, including their own super, to own their own house. That is why we are committed to—

I will take the interjections—it is why we are committed to seeing more supply, particularly in the cities. We know that you only solve this problem with a huge amount of construction. Therefore, the demonisation of the property sector by the Greens and Labor is just bizarre. These are the people and this is the sector that could actually solve the problem. They could build the houses we need in the cities so that our children have places to live. So it's pretty bizarre, and we thank Senator Gallagher for being honest today about Labor having no plan to solve the housing crisis.