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

I take the interjection, and I take the opportunity to remind Senator O'Neill and the government members that in 2018, under the coalition, there were 220,000 houses built, and this year there will only be about 170,000 houses built. So, after spending billions of dollars on boondoggle bureaucracies for the unions, the government is building fewer houses than before. The government is building fewer houses than were ever built under the coalition.

This is the problem with this government. It is so focused on feathering the nests of the rent seekers and the unions that it has no time to solve the problems of today. The key problem facing so many Australians is the ability to get access to a first home, and Labor could not give a rat's. All they're worried about is how they can feather the nests of their rent seekers in terms of policy and in terms of dollars. So, after having spent billions of dollars on boondoggle slush funds, we are going backwards on housing. You can step through all the policies. On supply, the government has two policies: the Housing Australia Future Fund and the housing targets. Both of these are huge failures, and it shows in your willingness and the willingness of government members to constantly interject. It's because you are so embarrassed about your failure to fix housing. You have made housing so much worse, and that is hugely regrettable for Australians who want access to a first home. This has always been a country where a person on an average wage could buy a home, but not anymore. That is the problem facing so many Australians, and all the government has is callous and cold responses.

Then we move to the demand side. We have the Help to Buy Scheme which was, in fact, abandoned last week in the New South Wales budget by the state Labor Party, which said, 'Shared equity schemes are so bad and so unpopular and so horrible that we're going to remove this scheme.' The only demand-side policy the government have here in Canberra is Help to Buy. It was the centrepiece of their election announcement from two years ago, and it is still not legislated. They have no other ideas on the demand side. We have a demand-side policy that is out there which is for people to use their own money and the reason that the government won't countenance relates to the same charge I always lay at their feet: it is a government for vested interests. It is a government that only gets out of bed for its favourite fellow travellers, and the reason it won't consider this idea is that it will hurt the super funds. The government cares more about the super funds than the government cares about people. This is a government for big super funds and unions—not a government for people—and it's disgusting.