David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

We know that our housing crisis is feeding growing intergenerational inequality and underpins the cost-of-living crisis in this country. Australians have had enough of the lack of housing to buy or rent, the evermore unaffordable prices and the cynical political games that are played with what should be a fundamental human right. They want politicians and decision-makers to step up and start to turn this around.

This week we saw willingness to compromise from colleagues on the crossbench. I want to acknowledge and welcome that. There are no silver bullets in housing policy, but we will never get out of the very deep hole that is this national housing crisis unless we start somewhere. That is what the Help to Buy Bill 2023 is; it's a start. I back the intent of this bill because it will help people who don't have wealthy parents get into housing. While technically a demand-side measure when what we need is more supply, this bill will help some of the most vulnerable people in our community get into homeownership. But the bill can be better, and I'll be moving amendments to reflect that. There is so much evidence to show that access to safe, secure and affordable housing is a key factor in improving health, educational and social outcomes. It can be the break in a vicious cycle—the difference between life and death for people.

I want to see the object of the bill amended to explicitly acknowledge the need to focus on supporting people who would otherwise be permanently excluded from homeownership and accelerate their access. I also want to see the scheme expanded to 30,000 places per year, with at least one-third going to older women, First Nations people, people with disability and other historically disadvantaged cohorts.

If the government believes in this scheme as much as they say they do, it should also be extended beyond the forward estimates, and I'll be moving an amendment to allow for that. Four years is not long enough to fix the housing crisis.

Finally, I'll be moving two amendments to the review of the scheme. The first is to tighten the focus of the evaluation so that it explicitly looks at how effective the scheme has been in supporting people who have been historically disadvantaged, including First Nations people and older women. Secondly, the scheme should be evaluated on how effectively it has been integrated with other first-home-buyer assistance programs across the levels of government.

Like I said earlier, there is no silver bullet for the housing crisis. This measure, a supply side one, will be helpful, no doubt, but we will also need to start putting measures in place now that really address some of the root causes of the crisis that we're in. We need to talk about a broad-based social housing program. The federal government needs to step up and work with states and territories to ensure that they deliver on their commitments when it comes to social and affordable housing. We also need to look at housing assistance and ensure it meets people's needs, whether it is Commonwealth Rent Assistance, or what we can do to replace the thousands of affordable rental properties that will exit the market when the National Rental Affordability Scheme wraps up. Speaking of rentals, coordinating national rental reforms to limit unfair rent increases, enacting minimum standards, and ending no-cause evictions would go a long way to meeting what Australians want and need.

We also need to talk about tax reform. The major parties don't want to talk about a tax system that means that investors are at an advantage, a system that has created a situation where you turn up to auctions and first home buyers are routinely outbid by property investors. Reforming the capital gains tax discounts and putting some limits and conditionality on things like negative gearing should be on the table if we're serious about fixing the housing crisis, and I hear from Australians that they want us to be serious. They're sick of the tinkering and they want some of the root causes of this crisis dealt with. Senator Lambie and I have the Parliamentary Budget Office to do the modelling on what changes could look like. No doubt, Treasury have also done their own work on this. I urge the Senate to look at it objectively and do the greatest good for the greatest number of people—the Australians we all represent—in this and the other place.

Finally, we need to talk about population. Not in a dog-whistling, 'blame the other' type of way but in a sensible way to ensure the relationships between immigration and population growth, change, and housing affordability and availability are better understood, to ensure that we learn from the past and what has and hasn't worked, and to ensure the supply and demand for housing are in a better balance. It's currently unfair on Australians in a housing crisis and it's unfair on new immigrants. People arrive in Australia with hopes and dreams and find it almost impossible to find somewhere to live, and if they can find somewhere it is simply unaffordable unless you come here with some decent money behind you.

We have to ensure that we have the right sort of housing in the right places so that living in Australia can still be living in a country where it doesn't matter how wealthy your parents are, where people can still believe in the egalitarian ideals that so many Australians have held dear for generations. Any and all of this is going to take some political courage, and I believe it would be easier if there was a legislated national housing and homelessness plan. The Prime Minister has agreed to deliver a plan. I've been calling for one, and I think that we should be legislating this plan. As a Senate, we can at least agree on objectives when it comes to housing.

Yes, the government of the day will have their different means of trying to achieve that end that we agree on, but, for me, something as fundamental as housing should be legislated. We legislate all sorts of targets in this parliament. When it comes to housing, why is it that, at the moment, we don't even have a plan? Labor announced that they had plans to make a plan. They currently are trying to make a plan, I guess, but there is no plan, which is frankly outrageous as we are in the last sitting week of the year of this term of parliament.

The housing system in this country is in trouble—there's no doubt about that; just get on the street and talk to people—but it's not beyond hope. These proposals that we're voting on today have their place. They're part of it, but they're clearly not going to solve the whole thing. So I'd urge the Senate to support these sorts of measures but then really get on with addressing some of the root causes, which, unfortunately, I think we're often not very good at, at times. I look forward to supporting the Help to Buy Bill as one part of helping people—people who can't rely on the bank of mum and dad to get them into the housing market.