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

This matter of public importance is all about the Labor Party having extinguished the Australian dream. Over the last 2½ years, the Australian dream has become further and further out of reach for younger Australians. Not only has Labor presided over the biggest influx of migrants since the 1950s, but it has presided over a collapse in housing construction from 220,000 houses eight years ago to just 160,000 houses this year and fewer than 160,000 houses next year.

The government has one cruel idea for first home buyers—one. We've heard the Prime Minister and the new housing minister talk, over the last three days, about their one hopeless idea for first home buyers, and that is Help to Buy. It is not really an idea to help first home buyers own a home. It is an idea for the government of Australia to own 40 per cent of a person's home. That is not private ownership, and that is why these schemes, called shared-equity schemes, have been rejected by the Australian people when they have been run by the states—rejected and in many cases closed down due to insufficient demand. That is their one idea for first home buyers.

But the Labor Party have lots of ideas to help institutions build houses and own houses. There's one idea for the people, and there are lots of ideas for the top end of town: the super funds and the foreign fund managers. One idea they have for the big end of town is that the super funds would use the Housing Australia Future Fund to get taxpayer subsidies to build houses and then rent them out to Australians as if they're serfs. An even worse idea is their bill—and we're waiting to see it soon in the Senate for debate and a vote—on the question of tax subsidies for foreign fund managers. Labor want to cut taxes so it is easier for foreign fund managers to build what's known as build-to-rent housing. They're houses that the Australian people will never ever own but that the foreign fund managers like BlackRock and the sovereign wealth funds will own in perpetuity. So they're out of ideas on homeownership—out of ideas on the demand side. That is why the Senate has wisely, in the absence of any good ideas from the government, established an inquiry into lending standards and the cost of lending regulation.

We on this side understand—and it seems parts of the crossbench do too—that it is very hard to get a first home if you can't get a mortgage. In fact, it's impossible. The question of the cost of lending regulation and what that is doing to first home buyers is a very pertinent question indeed at the moment. We know that the serviceability buffer of three per cent that APRA has in place is now at the top of a tightening cycle, a tightening cycle which has been fuelled by the government's reckless fiscal management. That now effectively means that, for a prospective first home buyer, they are being assessed not at six per cent but at nine per cent when they go into a bank or a mortgage broker to get a mortgage. That is pushing many first home buyers out of the market. The Centre for Independent Studies has said in a submission to our inquiry that the buffer is very bad because it applies to all loans, including those on fixed rates, even though those rates cannot rise. This is compulsory protection against a risk that cannot occur. That's from the CIS.

We believe that it is entirely reasonable for the parliament to step in and set some rules in relation to mortgages and lending. This is not like the independent preserve that is required for monetary policy. It is not good enough for the government to say: 'We're giving it all to APRA. We're going to leave it all to the unelected bureaucrats to make all the lending laws in the dark down there in Sydney.' We think it is very important that we look at the mandate of APRA. Can that be channelled to support first home ownership, and can we look at these policies, like the lending buffer, to ensure that they are going to promote first home ownership rather than take away the Australian dream, which Labor has almost already killed with its terrible, failed supply policies and its cruel, mean hoax of a demand policy called Help to Buy.