Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (Senator Evans) to a question without notice asked by Senator Bartlett today relating to housing affordability.

It is disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, that on a day when the latest report showing just how severe the housing affordability crisis is for millions of Australians, the coalition in the Senate, as we have just heard, choose to focus on some opportunity for some minor political point-scoring. This is not to say that the issue of proper declaration of donations to the Electoral Commission is not important, but put it alongside the fact that millions of Australians are struggling enormously with a housing affordability crisis that has been spiralling out of control for years and I can tell you which one the Australian public is more interested in—and it sure as hell is not electoral disclosures.

Disappointingly, the response from the minister in the new Labor government did not give me a great deal of hope that we are going to see the sort of strong and, dare I say it, courageous action that is needed to genuinely tackle and reverse the spiralling housing affordability crisis. Sure the new government has a minister responsible for housing to focus on it, and that is enormously welcome. Sure they have implemented some measures such as proposing a national rental affordability scheme, opening up further release of surplus Commonwealth land, and setting up a First Home Savers Account and their Housing Affordability Fund to provide incentives for developers to invest in lower cost rental housing. Those measures are all welcome, but, as a minister himself said, more needs to be done. While we are at least seeing some focus on the issue, unfortunately they are laying out little programs here and there to try to deal with the consequences of massive market failure in the housing area—both for purchases and private rentals—rather than dealing with the causes, because it is too hard. We saw that with the minister’s clear response to my supplementary question about whether any work is being done, even whether or not consideration has been given, to examine and modify potentially all of the aspects of our taxation system that may impact on the housing affordability crisis. The simple response from the minister—the Leader of the Government in the Senate—was ‘no’. Perhaps that is not surprising, but it is extremely disappointing.

The impact of measures within the taxation system on aspects of the housing affordability crisis has been identified time and time again. It was identified in a report by the Productivity Commission back in 2004. The then government and the then Treasurer, Mr Costello, simply dismissed those recommendations and said, ‘We are just not going to do that,’ and then set about blaming the states. The response from the then minister, Senator Minchin, in the then government was one I remember him saying a number of times. I asked him this question a few times over the years. He would say, ‘Let’s blame the states, and we’ll work on keeping interest rates low.’ Now we have the new minister saying, ‘We’ll work on keeping inflation low.’ Keeping inflation low is good, keeping interest rates low is good and getting the states to do better is good—but it is not good enough. We are simply not going to break the back of this incredibly serious crisis unless we have a recognition of that. We need a recognition of that not just from the government but from the entire political spectrum and the broader commentariat.

There is a total aversion to even mentioning the term ‘negative gearing’ for fear of a scare campaign saying, ‘You’re going to scrap it.’ I am not advocating scrapping it. I am saying, ‘Let’s look at it. Let’s look at the impact it is having and see if we can modify it. Let’s look at the impact of the capital gains tax discounts. Let’s look at the impact of the capital gains tax exemption on the family home.’ This is not about blaming people for failing in the past; this is about trying to alleviate the Australian people from the incredible burden of the housing affordability crisis they are now experiencing.

The Democrats were responsible for putting in place the capital gains tax exemption on the family home back in the 1980s. I am quite willing to say that that was a mistake if that is what the evidence shows when examined. But let us at least look at it. Let us stop ignoring the elephant in the middle of the room and tinkering around the edges and saying that that is going to be enough. I am glad there is at least some tinkering starting, which is more than we had under the previous government. But unless we do more than that then this latest report today from NATSEM will be just one more in a long line in a continually worsening situation. Let us not kid ourselves. If we look at this report we will see that the statistics are appalling and the reality of what millions of Australians are experiencing is even more appalling. The affordability crisis cannot be allowed to continue. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.