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

He's very sensitive about this, isn't he?

We've gone from almost 200,000 houses built in Australia per year under the coalition to 170,000 on average under this government. Despite all the huffing and puffing, the bureaucracies, the Housing Australia Future Fund and all the other garbage policies of this government, this government has built bureaucracies and not houses. That is the reality. The government is embarrassed, and Senator Ayres is embarrassed. I'm sorry that he's embarrassed, but the numbers don't lie. We are down to 170,000 on average, and we need a quarter of a million.

Housing construction has collapsed, and then we have the issue of the never-ending deposit time extending and extending. Under this government, most Australians will now have to wait another 14 months until they get a deposit. Depressing, isn't it? Then, to make matters worse, Labor's solution, Help to Buy, won't get you a house in almost every capital city. In fact, in my home state, just 14 per cent of houses in Sydney are eligible for this scheme, and only six per cent are eligible in Western Australia. So it's quite depressing.

I'll say, before wrapping up and giving other people a chance to say something, my main point is that advancing an agenda around giving a tax cut to foreign asset managers is a warped priority. I think, when the government are able to look at this in the cold light of day, they will also admit that they would have been better off working on trying to get houses built and trying to help people bridge the deposit gap rather than running the government in favour of their favourite vested interests—which, generally speaking, are the super funds. But, in this case, they have been trying to tilt the scales in favour of foreign asset managers and foreign sovereign wealth funds by allowing them to become the perpetual landlords to Australians. Most Australians would say that is a sick distortion of the Australian dream, and this is why housing is in such a terrible mess under this government.

Question agreed to.