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

If the Labor Party want any advice on why the Australian people are losing confidence in their political party, they need to look no further than housing. It was 870 days ago that the Prime Minister announced the Help to Buy scheme at the Labor Party's campaign launch. And here we are, at the back end of this parliamentary term, with the government now seeking to legislate Help to Buy after having presided over a massive failure on housing. We are seeing fewer houses built, and we are seeing fewer Australians getting into the market for the first time. The number of first home buyers in Australia is down over the last few years of the Labor Party being in office, and that is a huge regret for our nation.

In terms of affordability—that is, the nexus between how much money you earn and how much you pay for your mortgage—we are looking at 60 per cent of people being under very serious mortgage stress in Australia. Since the election in May 2022, there has been a massive influx of people into Australia. We have always welcomed migrants in this country, but there's always been an agreement, generally speaking, that the people you bring into the country need to be housed. What we've seen is over a million people coming into the country but only a couple of hundred thousand houses being built. If you go back just eight years, we were building 230,000 houses in this country. Now, under this government, we're only building 160,000 houses, so we are going backwards. You don't need to be Einstein to work this out: if you build fewer houses, you make the problem worse. This is a massive supply problem. We need to be building over 250,000 houses a year to arrest this major problem, and what we're seeing is Labor building only 160,000 houses.

Labor has had two major supply policies. The Housing Australia Future Fund, which is a massive boondoggle fund, spends millions of dollars on administration and paying the CEO a big salary, but it builds no houses. Housing Australia now has former Labor members of parliament on its board. It has the back door open to the CFMEU. The CFMEU's favourite super funds—First Super, Cbus, and the other one—can go in and access taxpayer funds through the Housing Australia Future Fund. That is also partly linked to the housing targets. So the government say they've got a housing target. They want to build 1.2 million houses over the next five years, but their own adviser, the Housing Affordability and Supply Council, says that will never happen. All the independent economists say the government has no chance of ever meeting its supply target of 1.2 million houses. You've seen the government put in place a boondoggle fund that builds no houses, and they have housing targets that they will never, ever, ever meet. It's a huge failure on supply.

Then we get to demand. How will the government help first home buyers on the demand side? How will the government tilt the scales in favour of first home buyers? They have one answer: Help to Buy. Announced 870 days ago, it's a puny scheme that will help 10,000 people. When we need to be building 250,000 houses, they have a solution for 10,000 people. That's it. The cupboard is bare. They have one idea: Help to Buy, announced 870 days ago. So what on earth has this government been doing over the past 2½ years? Not very much. They seem to be very boxed in with their ideological problems. The Help to Buy scheme is culturally jarring in this country because the Australian people don't want to co-own their house with the government. The Australian dream is about people owning houses; it is not about the government co-owning their house. I'm not sure that Mr Albanese is such a good landlord anyway; we read in the papers that he hasn't been so good to his tenants. So the Australian people do not want to co-own their house with Mr Albanese. Peter Tulip, the economist from the CIS, said this is a distraction. John Piggott, another economist, said it's not to scale.

This scheme with 10,000 places is a pimple on the elephant's backside when you consider the scale of the problem here. We need to be building 240,000 houses a year. This scheme would cost $5.5 billion, and one of the most serious problems with the design features we found in the Economics Legislation Committee inquiry was that the caps are far too low. The median house price in Sydney is $1.4 million, and the Help to Buy cap is $900,000; in Brisbane, the median house price is $920,000, and the Help to Buy cap is $700,000; and here in Canberra the median house price is $970,000, and the Help to Buy cap is $750,000. So this is a hopeless scheme. The scheme caps are way too low for the median house price, so I'm not sure who it's designed for.

But the most troubling part of it is that this is their only idea. They have no other ideas on demand. They have no other ideas on how to help first home buyers. They're too afraid to look at superannuation, which is the biggest pool of capital the average worker has today. Unless you are lucky enough to have access to the bank of mum and dad—which is now the sixth-biggest lender in Australia—super is likely to be your only hope if you are an average worker. But Labor say, 'No, we can't let you use your own money.' In fact, they say you'll be raiding your own money if you use your own money to get into the first-home market. The key fact, though, is that the key determinant for success in retirement is not your superannuation balance; it is your homeownership status. Labor is closing the door on the most practical, useable solution for first home buyers.

The other thing you never hear from Labor is anything about lending, mortgages and banking policy. One thing the Commonwealth government has in its preserve is banking policy, under the corporations power. They never talk about how hard it is to get a mortgage and how high the regulatory burden is on people trying to get that elusive first mortgage; they never talk about that. They only have one idea: Help to Buy, a discredited scheme, run by almost all the states and territories—and it's always undersubscribed; no-one wants to use this scheme. In fact, the Victorians are closing theirs down.

Just to give you another insight into the maladministration here in Canberra, only one state, Queensland, has referred its powers under the Constitution, which is necessary to give effect to this scheme. We just heard Senator Green talk about that. Only one state has made the necessary referral. So the idea that these are urgent bills, after 870 days, is an absolute joke. The new housing minister has the same problem as the old housing minister: the policies are completely cooked. No wonder young people are going crazy about housing, because housing in Australia is getting so much worse under this government. There are fewer first home buyers, there are fewer houses being built and the government has one callous scheme—Help to Buy, which it knows won't touch the sides in every major capital city except for Melbourne.

The idea that we've got to rush in here today, debate these bills and pass these bills in the next few days is a cruel hoax. Help to Buy will help very few Australians. This is a massive problem requiring a serious solution from a serious government. Australia does not have that at the moment, and that's why it's urgent that we get on and have the election so we can get rid of this terrible government and get the Australian dream back on track.