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

This has been an ugly period in Australia's economic management, perhaps one of the ugliest periods since the Second World War. Ultimately, when you look around the country, people are most disappointed by the government's failure to move on two things: restraining inflation, because that eats away at the day-to-day living standards of Australians and small business; and housing.

All you need to do is look at any published piece of research in the country to see that people under 40 in particular are going crazy about how difficult the housing market is. This government has presided over the greatest collapse in housing construction in recent memory, yet we're constantly lectured by this government on how much money is spent on housing and how many bureaucracies it's established. Guess what? The most important thing is not how many bureaucracies you build; it's how many houses you are ultimately able to construct in this country.

In a constrained market where the government have allowed a million people to come into the country over the last two years—the highest net increase since 1950s—the collapse in housing construction occurring simultaneously with the greatest uptick in migration since the Second World War has put the biggest squeeze on—and the government then cruelly tells us how great this very niche Help to Buy scheme is. I saw all the social media posts from the Prime Minister and all the ministers today heralding the end of the housing crisis with this Help to Buy scheme—a scheme in which 96 per cent of the houses in Sydney are ineligible for purchase. This is a cruel hoax that the Labor Party is seeking to foist on the Australian people—a cruel hoax indeed.

Ultimately, with the failure to address inflation—we've seen the numbers today: 3.5 per cent trimmed mean inflation—the Reserve Bank, unfortunately, has no prospect of cutting rates, and Australians will pay more for their mortgages because of the spending of this government. The Governor of the Reserve Bank, Ms Bullock, could not be clearer that public demand is causing a problem. It is making it impossible to get the inflation rate down to a point where the Reserve Bank can cut. Until they cut, Australians will pay more for their mortgages and they will, in fact, have a much tougher time than they otherwise should. That is why we need to have a government that is prepared to live within its means and not engage in these spendathons on the Public Service, off-budget items, slush funds—we need to get rid of all these things.