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

I am very pleased to support this motion from Senator McKenzie and Senator Cash, this reference to this Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee. I hear other senators refer to this as a stunt. If you go through and look at some of the reporting of these matters in the past few months, they are anything but stunts. There are serious issues here that have been canvassed, serious issues where there has been a deliberate attempt to inflate construction costs on CFMEU projects. This is hurting people who want to buy an apartment. Particularly people who live in cities, their first house may well be an apartment, and the CFMEU tax of 30 per cent is going to make that Australian dream much more elusive.

We've also seen that there have been, through industrial disputes, certain exemptions given to CFMEU, Cbus and Cbus Property sites in Sydney. I'm making these statements in relation to the Endeavour Energy issues. Effectively, if you're a private developer you pay a 30 per cent CFMEU tax, but you get exempted from that if you are the CFMEU or its subsidiary bodies, the Cbus fund or the Cbus Property organisation. These are pretty insidious issues in relation to the inflation of construction costs. The Australian dream is based on the idea that a person on the average wage is able to afford a house. By inflating construction costs this is making the Australian dream further and further away for so many Australians, and it's a particularly callous government to indicate that it will vote against further inquiry into these matters when its housing policy overall has been a disaster.

You can work through all the various permutations of the policy. In fact, if you go back to the last federal election, which we had back in May 2022, and the Labor Party's launch, the centrepiece of that launch was a housing scheme called Help to Buy, which is the idea that the government comes in and buys 40 per cent of your home. These schemes have been tried at the state and territory level, and they are friendless. They are so friendless that some of the states, during this term of federal parliament, have abolished their help-to-buy or shared equity schemes. So this was the centrepiece of the federal Labor campaign launch from 2022, Help to Buy. We haven't seen the government bring it on for debate. We haven't seen the government bring it on for a vote. Therefore, we have to wonder whether they are serious about this idea that the government should own 40 per cent of your house.

I really wonder whether the Labor Party has changed much since the days of the Chifley government when it had ministers like John Dedman attempt to pillory members of the Liberal Party who were supporting private homeownership. Private homeownership went from the mid-fifties to the low seventies under the Menzies government, from 1949 to 1966, and I don't think it ever would have happened if there had been a continuation of postwar Labor government. I think the Labor Party generally has an antipathy towards private homeownership, and this Help to Buy scheme doesn't seem to be a policy it has any particular conviction about.

Then we go through the next policy, which was the Housing Australia Future Fund, which is a multibillion-dollar boondoggle scheme which is yet to build any houses but has spent millions of dollars remunerating its executive and its board. Of course, the Housing Australia Future Fund has ambitions. We see that it wants to work with Cbus and the CFMEU, and the Labor Party president, Mr Swan, who is also the chairman of the Cbus fund, has made statements indicating that the Cbus fund will commit $500 million of members' funds to work with the Housing Australia Future Fund. I may be wrong about this, but last time I looked Mr Swan was not the chief investment officer of Cbus. That may have changed, but I think he might be the president of the fund or the chair of the fund, and the last time I looked the chair of the fund didn't go round making investment judgements. A bizarre thing it may be, but I think it would be in the interest of the Labor movement as well as the economy that they take very seriously this proposal that we put forward to prevent the Cbus organisation doing business with the Housing Australia Future Fund. The conflicts and the risk of corruption and malfeasance are very serious.

Then we go to the housing target. The housing target is 1.2 million houses to be built in five years. We know, from Housing Australia's own projections, that the government will come in 250,000 or maybe 300,000 houses short of the 1.2 million. Then, bizarrely, we see the newly-minted housing minister, who is desperate to give all these sit-down interviews about how good Labor's policies are, recommit to these failed housing targets. I mean, if I was the new housing minister, I wouldn't be walking around telling everyone that we've got a 1.2 million housing target, which we know is 25 per cent short and is never going to be met. When the Commonwealth has so few levers when it comes to housing, why would you stick to something that you know is a failure? So the housing target, again, is a fail.

So far we've got Help to Buy. We haven't seen it anywhere near this parliament yet; we haven't seen any attempt to try and debate that or vote on it. The Housing Australia Future Fund has been legislated, but, I would say, is rife with governance and probity risks, particularly for the government. Maybe Mr Swan, if he wants to proceed in the roles of both the chief investment officer and the president of Cbus whilst being the president of Labor, may want to recuse himself from one of these roles; that could be a good idea. Then we get to the housing targets, which have been a complete flop.

The last policy that the Labor government have on housing is, I would say, easily the strangest policy of all. It is known as the 'Help to Buy tax-cut for foreign fund managers'. Having given up on average workers being able to buy a house of their own, Labor pursues the idea of an Americanisation, a corporatisation, of Australian housing, by seeking to cut taxes for BlackRock and Vanguard—and probably for Cbus as well—so that they can establish build-to-rent developments. The idea of build-to-rent developments is that these are perpetual renting facilities, which are owned by foreign fund managers and then leased out to Australians as if we were serfs. So not only does it give up on individual agency and individual homeownership aspiration; it locks in this Americanisation. We've now seen cities like Atlanta and Jacksonville in the US where 25 per cent of the rental stock is owned by BlackRock, Vanguard, Franklin Templeton—asset managers. This is the future that Labor wants. It's a bizarre future, but I think it is the future that you arrive at when you are surrounded by vested interests, when you are surrounded by a party which has become the party of organised capital—organised capital through big unions; organised capital through superannuation funds.

As to the build-to-rent policy, I note with great interest that the Greens, to their credit, agree that the build-to-rent agenda, where foreign fund managers own these properties, is very dangerous. They agree with us. This is not a good idea. It shows how far Labor have drifted from their original ambition to be a party of the worker; they are now a party of organised capital, completely beholden to big super funds and unions. In 2½ years, what have they done? They have worked through their laundry list of issues that are important to the rent-seekers and bloodsuckers that fund their campaigns and run their party organisation.

So, after having spent 2½ years on their failed Help to Buy scheme, failed housing targets, failed Housing Australia Future Fund and also this disgusting build-to-rent concept—this corporatisation and Americanisation of Australian housing—they now want to say, 'Well, we're going to vote against this motion that's going to look at corruption in the housing sector.' So thank you very much. Thank you for nothing, effectively.

All you've got to do is look at their published research to see that people under 40 are extremely frustrated. People under 40 feel that they will never own a house in Australia, and they want their government to do better. I think they'd want their government to do better and they'd expect that this government, now having done a reshuffle and changed the housing minister, would have some new ideas, but this government is clinging to these same four failed policies. We can only hope that the government has a process—that somewhere in the ministerial wing, somewhere on the blue carpet, someone's got a piece of paper and a pencil, and a phone that's not connected to the CFMEU, and they're trying to get some ideas from the private sector.

The benefit of them doing this inquiry is that it would be a report to this parliament and they could actually use it to formulate some ideas that they could take to the election—some new ideas, maybe. One of the ideas might be getting the CFMEU and Cbus to work with the Housing Australia Future Fund. That's a bad idea; they shouldn't do that. Tick! Maybe we could look at the inflated construction costs in apartment building, which all the builders and developers say is a major issue wherever the CFMEU is involved. Maybe they could look at the skills issue.

We all have stiff backs from time to time, and we all value yoga. We think that yoga is valuable if you have a sore back or just in general. It's good for your health, but right now the country is in great need of people who can build houses. Yoga teachers are very virtuous people, but we need more builders than we need yoga teachers right now. The reason we haven't had any more builders or tradespeople is that the CFMEU told the government, 'No, we don't want people who won't be members of our union, so don't let them in the country.' Instead, we have all these yoga teachers. They are very good people, but right now the need for us as a country that is going backwards on housing construction is for people who can build houses. Eight years ago we were building 230,000 houses, and this year we are building 160,000 houses. With a massive influx of over a million people since the election, even with the proposed cuts to permanent migration, the ratio of new migrants to housing is massively out of whack.

I think it's very shortsighted for this government to be voting against this inquiry, because this inquiry could be their only chance of getting some new ideas—having some public hearings, taking some submissions, listening to people who might give them some new policy ideas that aren't based around improving the financial position of the CFMEU, Cbus and other various associated union people. The other thing about this motion that I would like to say in closing is that the cost of construction is one thing, but it is also the cost of materials. If you talk to any builder, they will say that that is also an enormous issue, as is land banking. There are a number of things that the Commonwealth can do. We have limited levers in relation to housing, but we can make big improvements in relation to skills policy because we run the migration scheme. That is a Commonwealth lever as are the banking and superannuation laws. We make payments to the states, and we also run a large part of the taxes here.

So, as for the idea that the Commonwealth government is out of options, Labor have only canvassed four little policies, all of which have been failures. The idea that the Commonwealth can't do anything is also very dangerous thinking. It is true that for a good reason the states run the planning systems. I don't think anyone in this building would like to take over the planning systems, but there are many things that we in this building can do that would help young Australians get access to that Australian dream much faster. At this rate, this government has failed on housing. They've had 2½ years, and I would say that it has been the biggest failure out of all their policies, which is a very big call. But I would say that Labor has failed on housing.

We want the government to do better. We will put forward a very serious alternative at the election. If this motion is to be adopted by the Senate, we will also use this process to develop some more ideas of our own, because we understand the value and the virtue in inquiry. The Australian people would expect that a motion to examine misconduct in procurement processes in the critical industry of building and construction would be supported by this parliament, because this parliament has a duty to inquire and investigate into wrongdoing. That is the role of this Senate, and voting against these sorts of inquiries is a very bad precedent. So I encourage everyone in the Senate—particularly the crossbench, given that I have been quite generous in some of my remarks—that this is a very worthwhile endeavour and should be supported.