David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator McKim for bringing forward this motion and for the opportunity to speak on it. When we talk about housing, we often jump straight into the details of the HAFF and Help to Buy and all these other things. We need to sit back and ask: what is housing for? Is this something that is fundamental to human wellbeing, to human flourishing and to communities doing well? Or is this something that we want to set up as an investment vehicle and have a tax structure that rewards people to invest in property? I'm hearing from the people I represent that they want this as a fundamental human right. If we can agree on that as a parliament, we will take very different policy solutions forward. One of them that can no longer be taboo is to talk about our tax system and the very generous capital gains tax discounts and negative gearing on investment properties. There are sensible ways to turn this around.

Senator Jacqui Lambie and I got PBO costings to look at a range of options, from grandfathering to different rates of incentivising to new supply with a reduced capital gains tax discount. There are options going forward, if the major parties will be a part of this conversation. To date, I haven't heard anything that indicates that they are willing to take this on and act in line with what I am hearing that the vast majority of Australians want, and that is for them to take the housing crisis seriously as a crisis. When you are in a crisis, all options are on the table.

Currently we hear a lot about the HAFF. Just to address some of the accusations which were levelled at the Greens—probably levelled at the whole crossbench—let's go and look at what was delivered as part of the HAFF negotiations. The Jacqui Lambie Network secured a minimum of 1,200 homes per jurisdiction to ensure that, regardless of how small your state or territory is, you get a cut of the HAFF, given it's only 30,000. The Greens managed to get $2 billion extra in the Housing Australia Future Fund. That's a not insignificant amount of money. I managed to get an agreement to have it indexed, which is $6.5 billion over the life of the availability payments, which is in line with what the sector was asking for. On top of that, there was the equal remuneration order for the sector of $70 million. So let's tell the whole story to Australians—that, when you have a crossbench that is standing up for the communities they represent, you get better outcomes.

I welcome more debate going into this next election so that we can actually put some action to the rhetoric of saying that we want young people to be able to afford to buy a home or to be able to rent and have renters' rights and not see their rent jacked up.