Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Senate will now consider the proposal from Senator David Pocock, which has also been circulated and is shown on the Dynamic Red. Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

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

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for more government action to tackle the root causes of housing unaffordability, including capital gains tax discounts and unlimited negative gearing on investment properties, planning and net migration.

We rightly hear much talk in this place about cost of living, with Australians across the country feeling the pinch. Heading into Christmas, they're worried about paying the rent or paying the mortgage, let alone what they're going to do with their loved ones over the Christmas and New Year festive season. The thing that we don't hear enough about, in my opinion, is the link between housing and cost of living.

We've got to start having a more frank and open conversation about housing in this country. I think we need to go back to the big picture: what is housing for? Is housing a human right that everyone in our community should be able to afford? Everyone should be able to have a safe roof over their head, which then enables other things, like being able to have a stable job and family life, attend school and all those things. Or is housing primarily an investment vehicle? Yes, some people can afford to buy a home, but we've set our tax system up to incentivise investment in housing to build wealth. Clearly, if you look at the system now, it's not working for Australians, but it's working as designed. It is working exactly as designed—to incentivise investment in property, above treating housing as something that everyone in our communities should be able to afford.

What I'm hearing from people, even people who've made very good money out of the housing market, is that they have grave concerns about the direction that we're heading in. They may have made money, but they're now looking at their kids or grandkids: what are the prospects for them? I think we're facing a generation of young people who are rightly angry about the situation and who are demanding that people in this place, who can change this, do something now. We look at house prices now that are seven to eight times household incomes. From the fifties to the eighties, they were closer to three or four times. Monthly repayments on a $750,000 mortgage have now increased by over $1,800 since interest rates began to rise. We see that, as housing prices have gone up and up, more and more people are renting, and for longer—almost one-third of the population. This is by design. We need to have the discussion around tax in this country when it comes to investment properties.

The capital gains tax discount cost the budget around $4.7 billion last financial year. The PBO forecasts that in a decade's time that will increase to $7.7 billion. Negative gearing modelling from the PBO shows that, at a cash rate of 2.85 per cent, negative gearing will cost the budget $12.7 billion in forgone revenue between 2023 and 2033. To add insult to injury, the PBO estimates that 39 per cent of negative gearing benefits go to people earning the top 10 per cent of income.

This is having real consequences in our communities. We talk about social cohesion. We talk about income and wealth inequality. We need to do something about housing in this country, and we're not going to do it unless the major parties are actually willing to listen to people and engage in this and get away from the outrageous politics that we've seen around things like negative gearing. There are sensible ways to start turning this around, including by capping the number of properties that can be negatively geared. All the solutions are out there, and there are millions of Australians urging us, willing us, to engage in this and deliver for people. Deliver a fairer system that will create the Australia we want.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the last election, I well recall some people saying, 'Why don't we give those opposite, the other mob, a go, because, really, how bad could they be and how bad could they make things in a single term?' Sadly for Australians, but particularly for Western Australians, they keep exceeding expectations on every front. For Western Australians, with 12 interest rate rises under that mob opposite, the average mortgage holder is paying an extra $24,000 a year in mortgage repayments. Workers are paying 15 per cent more income tax. At the same time, real wages have gone backwards by over five per cent in disposable income. That is the worst in the OECD.

Clearly Australians are not better off. But there is a national housing crisis. The last Labor budget committed to allowing 1.5 million people to migrate to Australia over the next five years. That's fine if there is somewhere for them to stay and to live and they are not taking housing and rental stock away from people who are already living here. Under their policies, what has happened? National rental affordability is the lowest in three decades, with a median income household, now earning $105,000, able to afford only 13 per cent of properties on the rental market. So people earning $100,000 a year or over can afford only 13 per cent of the very miserly amount of stock available.

In Western Australia the situation is worse. In WA the median house rent has increased from $500 to $600 in the last year. This is on top of all of the other cost-of-living burdens that those opposite have placed on their households. All the while, the cost for owner-occupiers purchasing their homes has increased by 10.4 per cent in one year under those opposite. Shockingly, people in Perth under two Labor governments, federal and state, now require an annual gross income of $136,000 to be able to afford a median home. That is a $46,000 increase from April last year alone under those opposite and their policies. At below one per cent, WA has the tightest rental market of any state, equal at the moment with South Australia.

The Cook Labor government is making a bad situation worse. Somehow, with all the billions of dollars they've spent on housing, these geniuses have managed to have less social housing stock available, with 35,000 people on the waiting list. (Time expired)

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate Senator Pocock's interest in this matter and listened to his contribution with interest. I want to acknowledge and thank him for his support over the term of this parliament for practical measures to support better housing outcomes, including his support for the Housing Affordability Future Fund.

It was extraordinary, though, to listen to Senator Reynolds's contribution. When asked to seriously consider what the measures are in relation to increasing the housing stock, it was the stock standard political attack. It underlines what the problem is with this opposition. They have not paused for a second to reflect on how bad a government they were. They've not internalised that message about how bad the Morrison government was on a whole lot of fronts, particularly economic ones, how little progress was made and how bad a Prime Minister Mr Morrison actually was, corrupting the processes of the federal government, including multiple ministries and an absurd bunyip-aristocracy attempt to pervert the processes of government in his own interests. Indeed, there's been no reflection on her own performance.

What I would say about Senator Pocock's proposition is that there are a series of lines of effort that are required from the Commonwealth and then from the states, ideally in cooperation between the Commonwealth and the states. The first and most important, in my view, goes to the supply of housing. That is structurally dealing with the challenges in affordable housing for low- and middle-income Australians by approaching the question of supply. Then there is a series of questions that go to planning, much of which are formally within the province of the states but which, again, in this government's view and in my view, should be the subject of cooperation between the Commonwealth and the states, particularly where Commonwealth funding is engaged in these broader supply efforts. Then there are issues around the supply of labour and skills in the construction industry and making sure that our skills match the requirements of building the homes that we need to build. That is, indeed, an enormous task. Despite the language from what passes for a federal opposition, it will require attending to our skilled migration settings and fixing up the smoking ruin of the skilled migration program that was left by the previous government.

This motion asks us to consider the tax questions. Some of those that have been drawn to the attention of the Senate are within the province of the Commonwealth government, but there are issues around stamp duty and a range of other charges and levies that the states have. I would say two things in relation to the tax question. Firstly, this government, both in opposition and in government, has been very clear about its position in relation to capital gains tax exemptions and negative gearing. There will not be changes in relation to those questions. We will not change our approach on that issue.

The second more substantial policy point, though, is that it is, I think, possible to argue that the taxation settings have been part of the rise in house prices over time, but it is also possible to argue that the removal or adjustment of those measures would have no positive impact on the ill that we are trying to solve. It sounds like a big argument. It sounds like a big proposition—'All you have to do is do these reforms.' But, in fact, they would have a series of perverse impacts on the challenges that we are trying to solve. That is why this government is focused on housing supply and why it rejects the notion that the kind of tax changes suggested by Senator Pocock will be adopted by the government. (Time expired)

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens will support Senator Pocock's motion, but I want to be clear that, from the Greens viewpoint, migrants and migration should never be used as a scapegoat for successive governments' failure to ensure that everyone in this country has a home. Neither should migrants or migration be used as an excuse for the fact that not everyone in this country has a place to call a home. This government and successive governments from the neo-liberal parties in this place have abjectly failed to address the plight of the hundreds of thousands, arguably millions, of Australians who have been crushed under the oppressive weight of spiking house prices and spiralling rents. The policies of the Labor and Liberal parties in this place result in multiple billions of dollars every year being diverted out of the public purse into the already overflowing pockets of property speculators and property investors. That is via mechanisms such as those Senator Ayres just referred to—negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.

I don't have time to address the absurdity of Senator Ayres's argument in favour of keeping those massive multiple billions of dollars' worth of concessions to property speculators while so many thousands of Australians are sleeping rough on the street because I want to talk here about the Labor Party's so-called solution to the housing crisis, the Help to Buy scheme, which is a half-hearted band-aid over a gaping wound. Incrementalism is not going to solve the problem. The Housing Australia Future Fund was incrementalism until the Greens used their balance of power in the Senate to get $3 billion extra, and we are prepared to do the same on the Help to Buy scheme.

Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is not my first speech. I thank Senator David Pocock for raising the important issue of homeownership, because Australia is a homeownership society. The ability to raise a family depends on homeownership, the likelihood of retiring in security depends on home ownership and people's engagement with community depends on homeownership. Homeowners are struggling right now not only because of the record number of rises in interest rates that we've seen under the Labor government, which means that someone with an average mortgage of $750,000 pays $2,000 more a month, but because house prices have sky-rocketed over the last decade and a half. Today, someone on a median household disposable income can only afford 13 per cent of homes in the market.

Why is this? I think it is fundamentally a supply-side issue. We are simply not building enough new homes quickly enough or cheaply enough to meet demand. In my own state of New South Wales we need to be building 55,000 new dwellings per year to meet demand. We haven't managed to do that in the past decade and a half. A comparable housing project that takes six months to get approved in Brisbane and takes 12 months to get approved in Melbourne takes 36 months to get approved in Sydney. Undoubtedly, without seeking to politicise this, this is being exacerbated by migration levels that are much higher than we have experienced in Australia. Half a million people have arrived in Australia over the past year, which is pushing rents up and making housing affordability more scarce.

We need to focus on what we can do to unlock supply, on what we can do to encourage states and local governments to accelerate land releases, to expedite planning approval and to lessen some of the compliance and red tape that currently exists in the construction industry, so we can get more houses built and on line more quickly and cheaply and get more houses for Australians.

Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate Senator David Pocock's interest in the area of housing. I acknowledge his support in the past for practical measures to support better housing outcomes, including supporting the Housing Australia Future Fund in this place, which we know we had to struggle to get through. What I want to bring to this debate, Senator Pocock, is the importance of housing not only for broader Australia but for First Nations people, which is an area that I have responsibility for, and with health in particular.

I am conscious that, just in the Northern Territory alone, we see too often the devastating impact that homelessness and housing stress have on so many people. For those sleeping rough on the streets of Darwin City, those in regional towns like Katherine or even Tennant Creek—Katherine, in particular, which has one of the highest rates of homelessness in this country—and those in our remote communities, so many homes are run down, unsafe and barely fit for humans to live in, and it isn't uncommon to have 20 people crammed into a three-bedroom house.

There's another area for Senator Pocock to be aware of with regard to housing, and that is the lack of support in housing for our homelands and outstations in the Northern Territory. For the previous nine years, there was no movement in that space for First Nations people to move from their areas out on country. We made a commitment when we came to government that $200 million would go towards assisting with housing on the homelands. Homelands are a really important part. For those senators who are unaware, for particular clan groups to be able to go back on country and establish their presence in those homelands has been significant. It was a movement that began in the eighties. It was well funded for quite a number of decades, and, as I said, for the previous nine years, it was not supported and not funded. It also goes a long way to reducing the conflict that we've seen, in particular in places like Wadeye. Over 12 months ago, when I was out there with the elders, many people in Wadeye needed to go back to their homelands and outstation areas. So, for the funding that goes through, when we talk about houses more broadly across Australia, we do want to ensure—as the Albanese Labor government is doing—that it is focused on particular areas, like homelands and outstations.

We're also working towards the development of a new National Housing and Homelessness Plan to help set out a shared national vision on tackling the country's housing challenges. Consultations on the development of the plan have been held around the country and online. We received around 500 submissions from individuals and organisations and held over 40 consultations with nearly 600 attendees. The government will be carefully considering these views as we continue with the development of the plan. We've also committed to an ambitious housing reform agenda, and this includes an over $100 million investment, as I said, with the homelands now. I want to give an example: about 230 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs on the Utopia homelands, father and son Charlie and Zachariah received the keys to their restored homes. Why do I mention this? Within my area of health, one of the biggest things we're facing in terms of chronic disease is kidney failure and the fact that overcrowding is contributing to unhealthy standards for First Nations people. So I hear, very much so, the concerns raised around housing, and I want to continue to bring to the Senate's attention the importance that we place on the broader issue of ensuring more housing as well as the health and lifestyle of First Nations people in trying to close the gap.

That property on Utopia is the first of more than 80 properties to be refurbished under the $100 million program. It is part of Closing the Gap, and I certainly look forward to giving more reports to the Senate on what we're doing in the housing and health space.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I first came to Canberra, the main drag, Northbourne Avenue, had blocks and blocks of public housing. I was pretty impressed, although some looked like they were in dire need of repair. I remember thinking, 'Thank God our nation's capital has housing for low-income people near the centre of town, near services, near hospitals, near schools.' Since that time, I have watched those public housing units be replaced by luxury apartment buildings—this, under a Labor-Green government of all things; you know, the guys that say they care so much about low-income people having a roof over their heads? When I was growing up in public housing in Devonport, the shops were down the road. The school was a short walk away. Services were only a few blocks away as well, and I mixed with kids and families that didn't live in public housing.

Pushing people out to the fringes or our cities and towns, like those Canberrans who were living in Northbourne Avenue, has to stop. The 'out of sight and out of mind' approach is absolutely deplorable in itself. Take Tasmania, for example. We have two blocks in the CBD of Hobart that are dedicated to car yards—yes, that's right, car yards. Tasmania has a thing called a restrictive covenant, which means that land can never be used for public housing. It's rules like these that push low-income people into the suburbs, on the fringes, with often only a shopping centre within walking distance or a 24-hour service station, and you're lucky to get bus stops out there. Anyone who has taken a drive through the outskirts of Western Sydney will know what I'm talking about. Cities that don't cater for all of us hurt all of us—cities where nurses, police officers, teachers and shop workers have to travel hours to get to work. If the only people who can afford to live in our cities are rich people, that hurts all of us.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is in one of the worst housing crises in our history, and everyone knows it because the problem is everywhere. The Greens have been campaigning for many years to phase out tax perks for property moguls, which funnel tens of billions of dollars into the pockets of the top 10 per cent of income earners in Australia, turbocharging inequality and actually pushing up house prices. Negative gearing and capital gains tax perks mean that the government is using public money to make it easier for a property investor to buy their fifth, sixth or seventh home than for someone to buy their first home.

Right now, Labor is giving $74 billion of public money over a decade in handouts to investors and landlords through negative gearing and capital gains tax handouts. In fact, that was their biggest budget expenditure. People who own three, four, five or 25 homes don't need the help. These tax perks drive up housing prices. They insulate the wealthy against the impact of interest rate rises, while rents continue to soar, locking young people and low-income earners out of homes to rent, let alone to buy. Labor should adopt the Greens' longstanding policy to restrict negative gearing to one investment property and to scrap the capital gains discount. Labor should stop giving handouts to property moguls with more than one investment property and instead use that money to fund a rent freeze and to build public and genuinely affordable housing.

Housing is meant to be a human right. It's like cake: no-one should get seconds until everyone's had a piece. The Greens will keep fighting for a rent freeze, for serious reforms to housing tax perks and for serious federal investment in building affordable housing.

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

I thank Senator Pocock for his matter of urgency and for validating the concept of net immigration that we've been pushing for quite some time. Mortgages are skyrocketing, rents keep increasing and two-thirds of young Australians believe they will never own a home, and it's easy to understand why. The housing unaffordability crisis is one of the greatest issues facing Australia. In Brisbane, the median house price is 10 times the median income. Experts consider a three per cent rental vacancy rate to be tight. Rents are rising on the back of a record low national rate of one per cent. As in all real markets, there are two things, and two things only, that affect house prices: supply and demand. Successive governments have destroyed both sides of the equation.

This is how One Nation would deliver cheaper houses and cheaper rent. In the short term, we would stop pouring fuel on the fire. Excluding tourists and short-stay visitors, there are 2.3 million visaholders in the country likely to need housing. In addition, there are roughly 400,000 tourists and other visaholders in the country. In the middle of our rental shortage, this high demand is motivating owners to convert housing to full-time Airbnbs. Two point seven million visaholders, more than 10 per cent of Australia's population, are in the country right now fighting Australians for a roof over their head. The country cannot sustain this level of overseas arrivals. That number must be cut to help housing availability and affordability.

The biggest winners from high house prices are the banks. As the Reserve Bank raises interest rates, the big banks pass that on at up to seven per cent. Yet the banks borrowed long-term funds from the RBA, the Reserve Bank of Australia, at just 0.1 per cent. They're pocketing the huge differences, leading to record-breaking profits. One Nation would never repeat the mistakes of the COVID period, where the Reserve Bank was allowed to create $500 billion out of thin air.

That led to the inflation that the Reserve Bank is now trying to fight, and the tool it uses is to send mortgage holders broke.

Finally, on the demand side, we need to ban foreign ownership of Australian assets. A single real estate agent in Sydney sold $135 million dollars in property to Chinese buyers in just six months. Australians can't own a house in China, so why should we let foreign citizens buy property here? And on the supply side, the government needs to get out of the way with its restrictive building codes, so called green land restrictions and a spider web of employment law.

A home is a castle. Decades of indifferent governments from both sides of politics have ruined the Australian housing dream for many Australians. Only One Nation has the guts to make that dream a reality for all Australians. Affordable houses and rents and a flourishing economy are all possible under One Nation. We just need to start looking after Australians first.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is in a rental and housing crisis. The Senate's inquiry into the worsening rental crisis revealed that there are 640,000 households under severe rental stress and a 750,000 shortfall of homes for low-income earners. Low-income renters have been pushed into the private rental market, which has led to skyrocketing rents, insecurity and stress. Yet the government's plans to tackle this crisis are woefully inadequate. They are patting themselves on the back about programs that are a drop in the ocean compared with what's needed.

The Greens propose four ways forward. Firstly, we need to invest billions every year into public and community housing, instead of lining the pockets of property developers with capital gains tax discounts and negative gearing. Secondly, unlimited rent increases should be illegal. We need immediate rent freezes and rent caps. Thirdly, we must strengthen renters' rights. Fourthly, we must increase income support above the poverty line so that everyone has a roof over their heads. (Time expired)

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator David Pocock be agreed to.