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

The Help to Buy Bill 2023 is a bill that won't help anyone. Right now, Queenslanders are sleeping under bridges and on riverbanks. In one of the world's richest states, working families with children are living in cars. Where do they toilet or shower? It's inhuman. Rents are skyrocketing—if a rental can be found. House prices are reaching record highs. This is a housing crisis, one of the worst we've faced. It's an inhuman catastrophe.

The Albanese Labor government wants to look like it's doing something. Enter the Help to Buy Bill. Under this plan the government wants to own a significant part of your house. If it's an existing place, the government wants to own 30 per cent; if it's a new place, 40 per cent—with the government paying for part of it with low-income earners. While a 40 per cent subsidy might sound attractive, it's fatally flawed. If the government just borrows more money for this plan then one thing is going to happen. When you give people 40 per cent more money to buy a house, house prices are going to go up.

The Bills Digest notes:

In 2022, the Productivity Commission concluded that—unless it is well-targeted … assistance to prospective home buyers presents too great a risk of increasing housing demand and, consequently, house prices.

The government's own Productivity Commission warned them this plan would increase house prices. Even the Labor government recognises this. That's why they've severely limited the number of places available under the scheme—so that house prices aren't drastically increased. There's a contradiction right there. If the government is only opening limited spaces so there's no impact on house prices, then it's an admission the scheme will not help many people.

The problem of increasing house prices is one of too much demand for the amount of supply. This bill will only increase the amount of demand and increase house prices. In the absence of more supply, we need to decrease demand, not increase it. As Dr Cameron Murray from Fresh Economic Thinking accurately said:

If you want people to have cheap housing, give them cheap housing. You can go and do all the financial tricks in the world but at the end of the day if they've paid that price, someone's paying the price.

This bill's core concept and premise is flawed and possibly a lie. We can't subsidise our way out of a house price problem. Looking at the bill's details—or lack of details—we see the problem is worse.

Firstly, let's look at profit and loss and renovations. One of the most concerning questions is how the government will treat profits and losses and renovations. To these questions, this bill has no answers. How much of the profits will the government take if you sell your house? We don't know. How much of the loss will taxpayers pay if house prices go down or the homebuyer defaults on their mortgage? Australian house prices have aggressively and consistently risen for 30 years. What if they fall? The bill is silent on how this would be handled. Would taxpayers be forced to pay for the entire loss on someone's mortgage? The government basically acts as a mortgagor, second to the bank. Does this mean the bank gets first call to recoup all their losses and the taxpayer simply has to cop the loss on whatever is left over? We don't know.

If someone improves the value of the house with renovations, does the government take 40 per cent of the improved value while doing nothing? We don't know. Imagine tearing up carpets, swinging hammers and sanding with bare hands for six months or a year, and the government takes 40 per cent of the profits from that hard work of yours. That's entirely possible under the bill as currently drafted. Under the government's Help to Buy Bill, Australians could become slaves in their own homes. We cannot wait for this bill to be passed and a minister to make a decision later down the track. These matters must be clarified and explained in the bill. Homebuyers and taxpayers deserve to know what the risk is here.

Secondly, let's look at some criteria. The eligibility criteria are clunky and don't cater for differences between states. The maximum income is set at $90,000 for singles and $120,000 for couples. This is despite the average house price and the required mortgage varying hugely between states and between towns. In Darwin, the average house price is $504,000. In Sydney, it's $1.2 million, more than double, yet the same income thresholds apply. The price thresholds are not available in the bill, and it appears the government has not yet published thresholds. When it comes to the housing crisis, one size doesn't fit all, yet that's exactly what this bill tries to do. We're just meant to pass the bill as a blank cheque and trust that the bureaucrats and the minister will get it right down the road—maybe.

Thirdly, let's look at the constitutional basis. This bill is completely outside the federal government's power. Some reviewers have said that Help to Buy is built on a 'complex constitutional foundation'. That may be the understatement of the year. Put very simply, under the Constitution, this is not the federal government's job. To make this bill legal, there are a huge number of constitutional headaches, state government agreements and transfers of powers. Federal parliament simply shouldn't be dealing with this. It's outside of the powers granted to us under the Constitution.

Confirming this bill's complexity, the government has tabled a late amendment to the bill attempting to clarify a set of constitutional issues. The House of Representatives passed this bill way back in February and then immediately introduced it to the Senate, seven months ago, yet we're only now seeing this amendment dealing with core issues. What is going on? Concerningly, the government appears to have given up on getting the constitutional issues correct. The bill's supplementary explanatory memorandum, at 1.34, explains that if any of this bill is unconstitutional—if it's unconstitutional!—the minister will have the power to use executive decree to amend the primary legislation. This is absurd. This is an extraordinary power to give a minister. Fancy putting a bill into the parliament like this.

The late amendment and this insane backup power confirm the constitutional headache this bill is and that we should not pass it. Under our Constitution's foundation, competitive federalism, it's the responsibility of the state governments to come up with their own programs. This fosters innovation and competition policy and makes sure we find the best way to do something—and it ensures accountability. The federal government charging in and taking over areas for which it has no constitutional responsibility won't fix these issues. It will make it worse.

Fourthly, let's look at superannuation. Instead of the government owning your home, One Nation says, 'You should own your own home'—a groundbreaking concept! We propose that Australians should be able to use a portion of super towards their home. Owning a home is one of the best predictors of whether people will be able to have a comfortable retirement. The purpose of super is a comfortable retirement. So why shouldn't people be able to use some of it towards a house? Under One Nation's policy, it would be your own super account that owns 40 per cent of your home, not the government. If you sell your home, the profits go back into your super so that your retirement is still protected, using the money you've saved instead of the inflationary, endless money pit that the government uses to borrow. The risk of this increasing house prices is far reduced. After all, it's your money.

Fifthly, let's look at housing policies. Unlike the government, One Nation has a full set of policies to properly address both supply and demand and get Australians owning their own home. Currently, there is both too much demand and too little supply in housing, and both are putting pressure on housing. To fix the housing crisis, we need to address the core issues: demand and supply. Yet this so-called Help to Buy bill does nothing to fix it. Look at demand. There's a demand side issue that no-one except One Nation is willing to acknowledge. No. 1 in demand is immigration.

The Albanese government's outrageously high, record high, and increasing immigration intake is fuelling huge demand on rent and house prices. Prior to COVID, the number of temporary visa holders in the country was around 2.3 million people. As of the end of 24 July, that number is now 2.8 million, more than 10 per cent of our population. These are hard numbers and facts, yet the government has continued to lie, claiming, 'We're just catching up on immigration.' Oh, really? We haven't just caught up; we've blown the record out of the water. We're nearly half a million people above the record. Using the average household size of 2½ people implies a need for more than 200,000 houses just to cater for new arrivals.

Last year, the Albanese government promised to crack down on the level of immigration, yet there were 335 net arrivals in the first seven months of 2024—that's 15,000 people higher than the same time last year, which was a record, so we're getting a new record. This is a huge reason why we're in a housing crisis, with rents skyrocketing and house prices reaching new records, yet the government won't say a word about it. The person responsible for this immigration program, Minister Clare O'Neil, has now been appointed Labor's Minister for Housing. What a joke! One Nation's proposal is practical, common sense based on real-world data. Simply return the number of temporary visa holders in the country to pre-COVID levels, and that would immediately free up 200,000 houses. From there, immigration would be capped at the level for which Australia can build housing and infrastructure to cater for new arrivals. In the middle of a housing catastrophe, we must put Australians in houses first before we allow more new arrivals into our country.

Under demand: foreign ownership. To reduce demand and open up more supply, One Nation would ban foreign ownership of residential property. Australians are banned from buying a house in China, yet China is the largest foreign buyer of real estate in Australia. A single real estate agent in Sydney sold $135 million in property to Chinese buyers in just six months. New Zealand and Canada, similar countries to ours, recently banned foreign ownership of housing. It's simple, clear and practical—putting Australians first. Until we get Australian citizens out of tents and cars and into houses, we shouldn't be letting foreigners buy residential property. Under our proposal, foreign owners would have to sell to an Australian buyer. If the foreign owners failed to sell in two years, the house would be subject to government auctions open to first home buyers only in the first round and to other Australians in the second round. All this is possible and can be done; it just takes truthful politicians with the guts and political will to put Australians first.

Another demand is about people's mortgage scheme. One Nation would ditch Labor's half-baked housing schemes, including Help to Buy and the Housing Australia Future Fund. We would replace them—the bureaucrats—with a new program called the people's mortgage scheme. We would offer government issued mortgages at five per cent interest fixed for 25 years—no variable, changing interest rates, cheaper than current mortgages from a bank and with minimal risk to the taxpayer thanks to the long-term fixed nature. Forget the government owning your home under Help to Buy; One Nation will make sure the government helps you own your own home in full.

Many first home buyers can't get a loan because of HECS debts, so that raises another point. Under the people's mortgage scheme, first home buyers can roll their HECS debt into the mortgage to pay it off. That will give them access to a mortgage that they can't get anywhere else and let them start paying for their house early.

I now go to the supply side. All these policies must go hand in hand with huge improvements to the supply of housing. We need to build more houses, so look at construction codes and undersupply. Builders are currently drowning in a sea of red tape. Every single new home must be built to an NDIS silver-level standard. Construction consultants estimate that this requirement alone adds $50,000 to the cost of a new dwelling. We should make efforts to take care of our severely disabled, yet we cannot increase the cost of every new home by $50,000 while we're in an affordability crisis. The National Construction Code must be simplified so the tradies can get on with the job. We want them to spend more time swinging a hammer rather than flipping through paperwork.

Next I go to supply and materials. One Nation would apply a three-year holiday for GST charged on building materials. We need more houses built. Government shouldn't be standing in the way of someone building their first house, because they want to make GST on the transaction. And we need to open up our timber supplies. Australia has a huge continent and abundant timber reserves. Despite this, we're in the unbelievable situation of needing to import timber from countries with environmental standards below ours. A sustainable timber industry is Australia's prime renewable resource; it literally just grows back every year. One Nation supports our timber industry so we have the supplies to build houses sourced right here in our country.

In conclusion, the housing crisis—the housing catastrophe—continues to rage on and Australians are suffering. Unfortunately, the Albanese Labor government and the Greens are more interested in looking good rather than doing good. The Help to Buy Bill 2023 will not help Australians realise the great Australian dream of owning their own home. Labor's plan could end up with Australians being slaves to the government in their own home. One Nation cannot support this bill without key details of its operation clarified and without action on the other, far more important elements of housing supply and demand.

One Nation believes Australians should own their own home. We have the solutions and the guts to make the great Australian dream an Australian reality.