Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Unless this country cracks down on those flouting the rules on foreign investment in Australian homes and land, we will never get out of this housing crisis. Unless we can see the true picture of its extent, we will not know where to crack down on it. We are getting significantly different pictures on the state of foreign ownership from different authorities. However, it's been established that in the 2022-23 financial year there were 5,360 properties bought by foreign investors. This comprised of 2,640 new dwellings, 1,823 established dwellings and 897 purchases of vacant land. This gives rise to serious concerns about house and land banking locking Australians out of the market. I was informed years ago about foreign investors dumping money in the housing market to avoid paying tax in their own countries. As I said, the figures are different. Apparently, the ATO's figures on foreign owned housing are about half of what the New South Wales figures are, so something is not adding up.

I talk about a crackdown because it's evident that the Foreign Investment Review Board and the Australian Taxation Office have not allocated the necessary resources to obtain a clear picture and strictly enforce the rules. Australia's housing and rental crisis shows little to no sign of coming to an end. In March this year, the national rental vacancy rate set a new record low of 0.7 per cent. More than 122,000 Australians are experiencing homelessness on any given night. Homelessness services are overwhelmed by demand. Last year, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported that more than 273,000 Australians were assisted by homelessness services in 2022-23. Another 108,000 people sought help but couldn't be assisted, because of the shortage of accommodation staff and services. Research from Roy Morgan published last month showed that more than 1.6 million Australian mortgage holders, more than 30 per cent of the total, are at risk of mortgage stress. Many first home buyers have been forced to sell up because they can no longer afford their mortgage payments.

A lot of these properties are being snapped up by foreign investors. Chinese investors alone have been buying them at a rate of $9 million a day. Australians can't buy investment properties in China, but Chinese people can buy them in Australia. How is that fair? The proportion of the value of Australian residential real estate owned by foreigners is approaching 10 per cent. These are homes that are being denied to Australian owners. Foreign purchases are contributing significantly to the heat and volatility of the housing market.

A lot of foreign investment is by international students, and we've got over 700,000 of those in the country. They are funded by wealthy families back home who are allowed to buy foreign investment homes—established housing—but must sell before they leave the country, which isn't chased up or followed up by the proper authorities. They are only meant to be able to buy established properties. There is quite a lot of evidence out there that the FIRB is not effective in enforcing the rules, and many of these properties remain in foreign hands when they shouldn't.

Other countries are also experiencing housing crises, but some of them are effectively addressing them with new bans on foreign ownership. New Zealand has done it. Canada has done it. Here in Australia, the opposition and has announced a temporary two-year ban as a policy. It's always gratifying to see the coalition come to the party on One Nation's policies. It's been our policy to permanently ban foreign ownership of residential properties to increase the supply of housing available to Australians. It's our policy to give foreign investors up to two years to sell these properties to Australian buyers. Common sense will tell you that, if you're going to flood the market with foreign investors—we have a housing supply shortage of 650,000 houses in Australia. That's how short we are. We're allowing foreign investors out here to bid on this housing. That then drives up the price so Australians can't afford it. Why are we allowing this to happen? We have rules in place that any foreign investor must go to FIRB to get approval to buy a house. That's not going to happen. If they want to go to an auction, what are they going to tell FIRB? So they go and buy it. It's not followed up.

Put the money into the process and make sure they do the job. The last time I heard, FIRB only had six people working in the office, and you've got this number of housing purchases. It is overwhelmingly underpaid and can't do the job. And the states don't want to see it, because the states are actually making that much more money out of stamp duty to the demise of the Australian people. Shame.