Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to comment on the Help to Buy Bill 2023. I want to associate myself with the comments of my Greens colleagues that you've heard in this debate over the course of the day and also some of the outstanding comments—and I will give gratitude where it's due—of some of the opposition members that I have heard speak today in their contributions, particularly Senator Ruston and Senator Bragg. Help to Buy as it stands doesn't deal adequately with the underlying causes of the housing affordability crisis in this country. It is set to only look at a small fraction of the community at a time when we are facing one of the biggest, most widespread and entrenched problems of this generation. It has been referred to as 'the great divide'. It is the great divide between millennials and gen Zs and gen alphas—my children of the next generations, who may never be able to afford a home. The legislation is limited in scope, and it shows that it's a policy designed to make it seem like this government is actually doing something when it's really not. It's window-dressing.

Aside from the scale of this problem, taking a demand-side approach through a shared-equity scheme is the wrong policy for its time. As everyone keeps pointing out, we have a crisis of supply; in fact, we have an acute shortage of supply. The difference between the major parties and the Greens is that the Labor and Liberal parties want to wait for the market to magically correct itself, while the Greens are arguing for state and federal governments to step in and actually build some houses and get back to what it was originally set out to do.

I want to echo in particular the comments of my colleagues, particularly Mr Chandler-Mather in the other place, who is our housing spokesperson, that since this bill was introduced we have been very clear with the Albanese Labor government that our negotiating asks include capping rent increases, a mass build of public housing and scrapping the tax handouts for property investors, who are denying millions of renters the chance to buy a home. But Labor has offered nothing in return. We have a mixed economy, so we need to make the market do its job. It won't while it's being distorted beyond all recognition by negative gearing. These solutions are right in front of us. Negative gearing must be phased out by both state and federal governments in order to get back to the business of building homes. It has worked in the past, and it can and will work again.

In the contributions my Greens colleagues have made here today, they have all outlined the details of our housing program, which has been costed, along with our other policies, by the PBO, so in this speech I'll concentrate specifically on the question of access. Access to government help can involve lots of paperwork, lots of documentation and proof of ID. The First Peoples of this country, with the history that is attached to that, have plenty of horrific experiences with bureaucracy in this country, so we don't always have access to the kinds of documentation that non-Indigenous people do. We don't always have access to the economic opportunities and jobs that other Australians can easily access. So, at the end of the day, these sorts of schemes—schemes based on shared equity—tend to help the people that are already a little ahead of the game, rather than First Nations people or Indigenous people and others who face barriers of one kind or another. This is not an equitable approach. The people who are the most in need will need something more straightforward—a place they can rent at an affordable rate.

Australia is facing shortages of tradespeople and materials at this point. We need governments to step in and make sure that some of the capacity we do have is directed towards building affordable rental properties. That has to be our absolute priority so that the people who are struggling can have an opportunity to get onto the bottom rung of that ladder. We have so many people that that bottom rung is crucial for the whole of our country to ensure that we at least be ambitious enough to get there. It matters for everyone, because people don't just jump from school into homeownership. They don't have the bank of mum and dad, as somebody over that side mentioned this morning. Many people need to rent for a while, particularly while they are younger, before moving on to homeownership. That's even if it's financially possible for them to do that. And, if there's no way into the rental system, how are people supposed to complete that stage of the process before moving on to the point where they might actually even be considering something like the Help to Buy scheme?

As my colleague from Western Australia Senator Steele-John just mentioned, $800 is the average rent for families. This average is out of reach for most people. All over this country we see people who are in overcrowded share houses or staying with their parents well into their adulthood or just flat out becoming homeless because governments just don't get it.

When we consider the state of housing, particularly in remote communities, we are left with a feeling that governments have absolutely lost the plot altogether. They are completely out of touch. I will give you an example of that. In Martu country, in Newman, Western Australia, there hasn't been a house built since 1986—1986! Don't point the finger to that side of the chamber and say they did this in opposition. Don't point the other way and say, 'It was that side.' It was in 1986 that the last house was built, in Punmu.

The state and territory governments are not doing their jobs when it comes to building social housing, particularly in remote Australia. Even when projects are instigated, they are often poorly planned and with no community consultation. As to the housing type, the locations that would best serve those communities, the energy that is required, climate change—they're the critical questions we should now be asking in some of those remote areas as we go into a housing build.

In Western Australia in particular people are being asked to leave country so as to access housing in large towns hundreds of kilometres from their traditional lands, from their homelands. The federal government must take charge of the current housing situation and work with their state and territory partners to create a national set of standards. What we know in Western Australia is that the repairs, the maintenance and the works that operate in housing, in particular public and social community housing, are below standard.

I want to address the comments made in the other place by the member for Perth, Mr Gorman. He stated that this Help to Buy scheme is based on Western Australia's Keystart shared-equity scheme. If that's the case, then it shows us that the Help to Buy Bill is in fact inadequate for the task at hand. The housing crisis in Western Australia is rampant, as it is in many other parts of this country. Keystart does nothing to the scale of what Mr Gorman is claiming. In fact, Keystart home loans are generally more expensive than conventional lending institutions, so we're stitching people up to pay more to a shared-equity scheme.

Presently, you can expect to pay in the vicinity of one per cent more for a Keystart loan than you do for a regular bank loan. For a loan of $300,000, that equates to an extra $200 per month in interest. If you can show me a person in Australia who's a low- or mid-range income earner who has an extra $200 a month to throw around, I will sit down right now. That is ridiculous!

In addition to that, Keystart loans don't have features like offset accounts and the ability to package your banking products to save money. Therefore, you're likely to save money by refinancing with a more cost-effective product, as well as making your banking life much easier and much more efficient, which, as Senator McKim will tell you, is not our favourite subject to even talk about. People in this place, and across the way in the House, need to understand the scale of what we're looking at instead of comparing schemes that are not doing the action that we actually require.

This bill represents a deeply unambitious policy, introduced at a time when homelessness is becoming such an entrenched problem. As I said, the cracks were starting to show with the millennials, and now we're asking whether our gen Zs and even our gen alphas will ever be able to afford their own homes. Once homelessness becomes so entrenched in our community, it doesn't just go away.

Homelessness breeds all kinds of embedded poverty, because a lack of a home base affects all aspects of a person's life. If you don't have an address, the problem I mentioned earlier—with the lack of documentation—only gets worse. You find yourself unable to make appointments with government agencies and prospective employers because you're permanently looking for shelters and basic supplies. If we think things are bad now, they're going to get 10 times worse if governments do not act in a coordinated way and do not address the deep, core issues across Australia.

The government faces a massive problem, but it also has an opportunity. If they start working with the Greens and the crossbench right now to address these systemic issues, they could actually make a massive difference. There's also the opportunity to work with our communities to solve the problems for all Australians. Some politicians in this place have ideological problems with things like public housing, so they might rule themselves out of even having that conversation. The vast majority of sensible people agree that something must be done, and the goodwill is definitely there, but tinkering around the edges will not help the vast majority of people.

The Help to Buy scheme's impacts on house prices will be minimal, but it will increase them, not reduce them. And we need to bring prices down to affordable levels. Public housing brings prices down to the lower end of the market, providing shelter and reducing prices in the private market while, at the same time, leaving the middle and upper markets to operate as normal. The Help to Buy scheme will use resources that could otherwise be directed to more effective solutions to this crisis. Having said that, this scheme could potentially help a small number of buyers, so, as I've already flagged, there is an opportunity. If the government wanted support from the Greens, it could absolutely listen to our solutions to this issue: phasing out negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount for property investors.

As we've said before, this is an opportunity to coordinate a national rent freeze and a cap on increases, and the whole country must increase investment in public housing. The Greens' suggestion of a public developer to direct the building of 610,000 homes over the next decade is a good way to get things done. That's the sort of thing that is needed. That is the scale of what is required. We are in an age where governments have become too scared to do anything meaningful, which is one of the reasons why we have this housing crisis in the first place. We need to take real steps to address the housing and rental crisis. Australians deserve better and need more than the housing lottery bill, where 98.8 per cent of renters lose. We simply cannot afford for this current situation to continue.