Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I must speak on Australia's ongoing housing and rental crisis. This is primarily a problem of supply. We just don't have enough houses and rentals to meet high demand. In fact we have the lowest number of dwellings per head of population in the developed world. Home building in Australia has not kept up with population increase.

The Labor government is only making things worse by increasing our permanent immigration intake. We desperately need to increase supply in Australia and there's one measure guaranteed to work: ban all foreign ownership of Australian residential property, both new and established. We need a regime which requires that Australian citizenship or permanent residency be proven before a dwelling is sold. This must be done at point of sale, and there should be stiff fines for agents or vendors who don't meet this requirement. We need current foreign home ownership properly policed. They are getting around the rule that they can only buy new housing. The Foreign Investment Review Board needs to crack down on this evasion of the law. We need to require all foreign owners to get out of the market, giving them a reasonable grace period to sell property. We must ensure international students who are here on a temporary basis are required to divest themselves of property when it's time to go back home.

State stamp duty must be addressed. Actually, getting rid of it completely would be a good start. New Zealand bans foreign home ownership, and Canada has also put a ban in place. There's no reason why we can't do the same. This would put a big supply of housing on the market for Australian property investors and homeowners at very reasonable prices. We need these tough decisions to be made, given people are living in cars and caravans on the streets. We have a Minister for Housing in this place. I haven't heard a word from the minister about how they intend to address the housing crisis in Australia, so I'd like to hear from the housing minister on the Labor side, who is in government here, how they attend to address it. Here's a start, with some of my suggestions.