Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm really pleased to stand here today and speak about the Help to Buy Bill 2023 and the associated legislation that the Albanese Labor government is bringing forward to the parliament. We have a very firm view that it is the role of our government to help Australians with housing, particularly Australians who deserve to have their own home but who, without this bill, will not have an opportunity to do so.

I suspect that, throughout this debate and in many contributions from across the Senate chamber, we will hear about the Labor government and about politics, and we will hear many contributions from the Greens political party and the Liberal and National parties that seek to frame our government as not doing enough to help people when it comes to housing. I choose to speak about this bill and the people that it will help because, at the end of the day, this is about people. While the Greens political party, the Liberal and National parties and others in this chamber choose to use this bill to play politics with people's lives, I will talk about the people that this bill will help.

We know that this bill will assist 40,000 Australians to buy a new or existing home with a smaller deposit because they'll be backed by the government. These are Australians who want to own their home and parents who want their kids to be able to enter the housing market. We know how difficult it is to do that right now, but the Liberals and Nationals are blocking this bill here in the Senate, which is no surprise. We hear a lot of 'no' from Mr Dutton and his colleagues. But, as has been canvassed already in this debate, the Greens are also choosing to block this bill, even though it's a shared equity model, which is something they had previously supported.

I think it's important in this debate to remember what our government has done, and is doing, to support Australians when it comes to housing. We are backing a boost to rent assistance. We've expanded the Home Guarantee Scheme. We're working with National Cabinet to get a better deal on rent, and we want to add Help to Buy to this list. That's what debating this legislation this week means. We're also building a better future with a suite of policies, including our Homes for Australia Plan to build 1.2 million well-located homes over five years and the Housing Australia Future Fund.

The Liberals and Nationals want Australians to raid their retirement savings to buy property, and no Australian should have to mortgage their future to achieve homeownership today. The Greens are not serious about helping people into homes; they're only serious about using this crisis to win more votes. It is concerning to hear opposition to a bill like this from a political party that has called for action on housing for the last 2½ years.

The Greens political party are choosing to do three things in this debate. First, they're seeking to minimise the incredible and important impact that this bill will have on Australians who otherwise would not be able to afford their own home. We're talking about low-paid workers, including nurses, teachers and childcare workers. These are the people that this bill seeks to assist. But the Greens have framed them as a group of people who are not worthy of support, and that is a shame. Secondly, they're seeking to be misleading about what this bill does, so I'll step through, in my contribution, what this bill is all about and how it seeks to help people. They're doing this to justify their opposition to it. They're saying, 'The bill will do this and that and the sky will fall.' Those two things can't be true. You can't say that this bill is so small and minuscule that it will not help anyone but also that the bill would have such ramifications that the sky would fall in on housing prices. It is a ridiculous proposition, and it really shows that for them this is a debate about politics whereas, for the Labor government, it's about helping people.

The last thing that we will see from the Greens political party and others in this chamber is to make this bill and the debate about this bill about a range of other policies and other issues to claim that somehow blocking this bill will help achieve something and will eventually help build more houses. It won't, and we know that blocking this bill will block houses. That's all it will achieve: houses won't be built if this bill is blocked. The Help to Buy Bill will establish a national shared equity program that will assist low- and middle-income earners to buy new or existing homes. These are the people I'm speaking about today when I talk about who will be assisted: low-paid workers, teachers, nurses and childcare educators. The program will allow them to access an equity contribution from the Commonwealth of up to 30 to 40 per cent of the purchase price, and it'll make a home purchase feasible for up to 40,000 households. I've said this before and I'll say it again: this legislation will be life-changing for those households, for young people who could never feel that homeownership is in reach, for lower-income families who could use the scheme to upsize their family home and look after their growing family, or even for older Australians who have enough savings for a housing deposit and would no longer have to stress about paying off a mortgage before they retire.

The Help to Buy Scheme is an essential piece of the puzzle for improving our housing crisis. The legislation will also have to be passed at a state level, and I'm proud to see that my home state of Queensland is leading the way in this reform. The Queensland state government has enacted their own Help to Buy legislation so that Queenslanders can access the scheme as soon as possible. Like the Albanese Labor government, the Queensland state government is committed to helping more Queenslanders to afford their own home. Whether through Help to Buy, by doubling the first home owners grant or by increasing loan support for regional Queenslanders, they're doing what they can to make homeownership a reality for thousands more.

It should be emphasised that this Help to Buy Bill is just one commitment from our government when it comes to homeownership, renting and housing security within this country. Our government is supporting tens of thousands of new and affordable houses through our $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund—houses and homes for Australians that would have been built sooner if not for the delays we saw from the Greens. Our government is also helping nearly one million Australian households with the cost of rent by delivering $1.9 billion over five years to increase Commonwealth Rent Assistance by 10 per cent. And our government has agreed to a $9.3 billion five-year National Agreement on Social Housing and Homelessness.

Unlike those opposite, who have been more than happy to vote down housing legislation and did not offer a new dollar for a new home, we are taking action. We're working with the housing and construction sector and with other tiers of government to ensure that homes are built on the ground more quickly. And we're going to ensure that owning a house is a reality for more Australians.

I feel particularly strongly about this sentiment for my own community of Cairns in regional Queensland. The Australian government's Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee shows what is possible when the government supports new home owners. It's a perfect example of how these housing schemes are wanted by Australians and their changing lives. The Home Guarantee Scheme report found that 37 per cent of all first home buyer guarantees in 2022-23 were for first home buyers in regional areas. Queensland also has the highest concentration, out of all the states and territories, of regional first home guarantees, with 35 per cent issued to Queenslanders.

It's important that we recognise in this parliament that these schemes are important for all Australians but especially in regional Australia, especially for lower- and middle-income earners, and especially for young people who lack hope that owning a home could be a possibility in the future. We on this side of the chamber know that a national shared equity scheme would help level the playing field for these Australians. And we know that it's not a new scheme within our country. We've seen examples of this before, such as in Victoria, where a shared equity scheme has helped more than 7,000 Victorians to buy a home. New South Wales ran a two-year trial of a shared equity scheme as well. And we know that this bill will change the possibility of homeownership for thousands of Australians.

But unfortunately throughout this debate we will see an attempt to hold this legislation up and to prevent this bill from going through. Unfortunately, it's not about any of the homes that this bill could buy. It is about politics. It's about the Greens having an opportunity to send out more campaign emails, attend more rallies, talk more about the things that aren't being done, instead of just getting down and doing them. Only the Greens political party would rather help no-one than help tens of thousands of Australians. Only the Greens would rather delay and block life-changing legislation for over a year and argue that, somehow, they're actually helping people. We just know this isn't true. We've seen members of the Greens political party attend rallies and rant and shout about all the things that could be done. Here's an opportunity to get something done in the Senate this week.

At the start of this speech, I spoke about the people this will impact, and I want to share a small story because this is real life. We're talking about low- and middle-income earners here. We're talking about teachers, childcare educators and, yes, nurses. My mum is a nurse, and we never owned our own home. We never had the opportunity to draw on the side of a wall the height that we were growing to as the years went on. If we ever did, we'd have to paint over it. We never owned our own home. Mum's a nurse and a single mum. At one stage, we had to leave the home because of family and domestic violence. My family, the one that I grew up in, is exactly the type of family and the type of people that this bill would help. These are exactly the types of people who would be helped into homeownership by this bill. These are exactly the types of people that the Greens political party say shouldn't and can't be helped by this bill. These are exactly the types of people that those opposite are turning their backs on.

It is a real crime in this country that we cannot get this chamber to agree that a small group of people—nurses, teachers, childcare educators—deserve to have a home of their own and that their kids deserve to grow up in a home where they can draw their height as they grow from eight years old to 10 years old to 12 years old and never have to paint over it. That's what this bill is about. It's about people and families and homes to build memories in. But unfortunately today we're going to hear debate after debate about politics, particularly from the Greens political party, who absolutely should know better. There are times for campaigning, rallying, doorknocking and talking about the things that you wish you could do, but sometimes, in this chamber, there are times to just get things done. At the moment, we are in a situation where you have the Albanese Labor government who wants to build more homes in this country and you have the Greens political party prepared to block them. We are building more homes; they are prepared to block them. That's what people will remember from this week and this debate.

Thankfully, we have a government willing to take up the fight when it comes to housing affordability. We've got proposals on the table and an ambitious plan to build more houses all across Australia. I've stepped foot in the houses that our regional homebuyers grants have built. I look forward to seeing more houses built in regional Australia. We are getting on with the job of building houses for Australians. It's something that we committed to when we came to government. I really hope that the Senate looks at this bill, takes the opportunity to work together, instead of working against Australians and blocking housing, and gives this government the opportunity to build more houses and to help more people into houses of their own for their families, for their kids and for the memories that they'll build together over many years to come.