Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my colleague Senator Bragg for this motion on housing and homeownership because housing affordability is a really significant issue in our society today. Owning a home is a dream that most Australians hold. It is the case that today it can take many years to save a deposit for a home, a home that costs several times the average Australian income at least. I think that we are agreed on what the challenge is here. The question for us as a parliament is what to actually do about this challenge after a decade of a Liberal agenda where absolutely nothing was done for housing. There was no strategy for housing in this country under those opposite. There was no investment in housing over a decade from those opposite. There was no plan. There was nothing.

So, again, the question is: what do we do today when we face this challenge? According to Senator Bragg, who has just spoken, what you do to help people buy a house is block the actual plan that is in front of the parliament to help people buy a house. That is the great solution from those opposite. The Help to Buy plan is a good plan. It will help 40,000 Australians buy a home. It will help them do that with as little as a two per cent deposit, and it will help them do that with a smaller mortgage to service. It is a good plan, so what is incomprehensible to me is why those opposite are blocking it and why they are joining with the Australian Greens to block the plan that is in front of the parliament to help people buy a home today.

The next step in the plan of the coalition, after blocking the Help to Buy legislation, is to become the government and legislate super for housing. The next step of their plan is to ask Australians to raid their superannuation savings in order to make a deposit for a house. This is a choice that no other generation of Australians has been asked to make. Asking people to pour their superannuation into housing will have two results and two results only. One is that it will push house prices up further and make housing less affordable. All the experts who come to our committees, the committees that I share with Senator Bragg, say this: super for housing is inflationary. It will push house prices up. The second effect of this policy is that it will push people to retire in poverty, to rely on the age pension without their superannuation.

Every expert agrees that the answer to housing affordability is building more supply. Now, the one policy that the coalition has, their super for housing policy, only contributes to demand. It pushes prices up. It doesn't build a single home. There is no policy from those opposite to increase supply. There is not one single policy to build one single home.

This is a Liberal Party masterclass on how to do absolutely nothing about a problem that people are actually experiencing today, so it's no wonder they have found new friends with the Australian Greens, the other party in this chamber that likes to give us a daily masterclass in doing absolutely nothing, talking up a good game and then joining with their friends—the Liberals, the coalition, those opposite—to block the policy that is in front of the parliament right now to actually help Australians buy a house. For 40,000 Australians, it means a two per cent deposit and a smaller mortgage, and what we have is the Greens joining together with their new besties in the coalition to block that policy.

There is no policy from those opposite to build more houses, and there is nothing from the Greens.