Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the consideration of the Help to Buy Bill 2023 and a related bill.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is leave granted? Leave is granted, Senator Wong.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move the motion as circulated:

That:

(a) the questions on all remaining stages of the Help to Buy Bill 2023 and the Help to Buy (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023 be put immediately;

(b) paragraph (a) operate as a limitation of debate under standing order 142; and

(c) divisions may take place after 6.30 pm for the purposes of the bills only.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion as moved by the minister be agreed to.

A division having been called and the bells being rung—

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

I opposed the leave sought by the minister.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson, I asked if leave was granted. I waited a few seconds. There was no—

Honourable senators interjecting—

Order! I waited a few seconds, and then as I put the motion you responded, so I think you were too late. Senator Scarr, are you on a point of order?

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's the same point of order. With due respect, President, I was in close proximity to Senator Hanson. She did deny leave at the first opportunity.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With the concurrence of the Senate—but I will reiterate, Senator Hanson, that the minister sought leave.

Order! Senator Davey, leave the chamber if you wish to be objectionable. I sought an answer. There was no answer forthcoming. I started to put the motion, and then I heard you say no. So, if you want to not grant leave, you need to respond in the timeframe that I've allowed. However, Senator Hanson, with the concurrence of the Senate, I am willing to withdraw the need for a division.

Honourable senators interjecting—

Yes, thank you. The division is cancelled. I'm going to put the question again. Minister Wong?

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First, can I be clear that I didn't hear it either, which might have been because people were yelling.

No, Senator. We've just given you the courtesy of recommitting this and starting the procedure again, so it would be nice if some courtesy could be extended as well.

And I am saying to you that I did not hear you deny leave. So I will do it again. I seek leave to move a motion relating to consideration of the Help to Buy Bill 2023 and a related bill.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to allow a motion concerning the consideration of the Help to Buy Bill 2023 and a related bill to be moved and determined immediately.

And I move:

That the question be now put.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the question be now put on the motion to suspend standing orders.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let's be very clear about what we just saw happen. What we saw happen was the Greens political party, who say they care about young people, who say they care about housing—look at them scurrying away from what they've just done, voting not just with Peter Dutton and the coalition but with Senator Pauline Hanson and One Nation.

Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Point of order, I'd ask that the minister not reflect on any senator leaving the chamber please.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister is not reflecting on any senator by name, Senator Henderson. I also, while I've got the attention of the Senate, call for order. Minister, please continue.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can understand why all sorts of people in the chamber are very embarrassed right now, because what we saw was an unbelievable alliance: not just the 'no-alition' of the Liberals and the Greens but throw in Senator Hanson and One Nation. We throw in Senator Babet and his great mate Clive Palmer. We have the extreme right of Australian politics and the extreme left of Australian politics pair up—and for what purpose? It's to stop young people being able to buy a home. That's what we just saw here. Labor are trying to deliver on our election promise to assist young renters with buying a home, and what we see is the Liberals, the Nationals, the Greens, One Nation and, of course, Clive Palmer's mate Senator Babet up the back there voting together to stop young people getting to buy a home. It was our election commitment that we took to the election. It was voted for. It was in the Greens' platform, and now they're running away from it, refusing to vote for it. I've heard all the Greens say over the last couple of days, 'Oh, we don't like this, because it only assists a very small percentage of the population with buying a home.' That is the Greens summed up in one sentence: letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. 'Just because we can't help 100 per cent of renters buy a home, we shouldn't allow some people to buy their own home.'

The reality is that we've seen yet again the Greens team up with the coalition and a few other people as well to stop more homes being built and to stop more young people getting a chance to buy a home, and then they have the hide to run around the inner city of all our capital cities, pretending to be the people saying they want housing and they want young people getting their own homes. The only problem with that is that, if you look at what they do when they go back to their home districts, you see it's completely the opposite. Right now, not only are the Greens party here in Canberra voting against Labor legislation and not even letting it to be put to a vote, because they are so embarrassed about the fact that they are stopping new housing, they also, when they go back home, continue to campaign against new housing in their own electorates. We have, for example, the member for Griffith, now known as 'Young Setka', out in the suburb of Woolloongabba in his electorate in the inner city of Brisbane, saying on the one hand to everyone, 'We need more homes,' but he's out there campaigning right now with the Greens party in Queensland against almost 3,000 new social and affordable homes in the suburb of Woolloongabba.

But it's also happening in the Greens-held seat of Brisbane, where the Greens member for Brisbane is opposing an apartment building in his inner-city electorate because its height 'would have a substantive impact on the views of existing nearby residents.' The Greens member for Brisbane says that views from existing apartment blocks are more important than new homes. Then he goes on. The Greens member for Brisbane is opposing a development that would turn an empty sand and gravel factory into 381 residential apartments, because there would be too many car parks. He's also concerned that the height of the buildings 'would impact the unique character of this heritage neighbourhood'. So more homes are great except when Labor wants to build them.

The Greens member for Brisbane is opposing a build-to-rent project in his electorate that would create 349 new apartments. This site is currently an empty lot. It is 200 metres from a major train station and walking distance to the Brisbane CBD. In his letter opposing the development, the member claimed, 'Brisbane residents are fed up with developers claiming they are addressing the housing crisis by increasing supply,' because, God forbid, you wouldn't want to increase housing supply, would you? That would be terrible thing if you were a Greens member for Brisbane, a Liberal, a National, a One Nation member or a Clive Palmer puppet. All of those people are getting together to block more homes, led by people like the member for Brisbane.

Probably my favourite one, though, is the Greens member for Ryan, who is campaigning against a plan to subdivide a chicken farm in the suburb of Mitchelton, a suburb I know well, to build 91 new homes. In December last year, the member wrote to the Brisbane City Council, complaining the project—this is a chicken farm—would 'diminish the natural character of the site,' because it's much more important to have a disused chicken farm than it is to have 91 new homes, which, on the other hand, the Greens say that they want to have.

This is an absolutely disgraceful attack on young people and on people who want to buy their own home, and the guilty parties are right there before us. It's the Liberals and the Nationals, it's One Nation and, most of all, it is the Greens party.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In terms of the vote just taken and the votes underway, we've seen that the Albanese government cannot even execute a strategy to have one of its own bills defeated. It certainly can't manage to get its bill passed, but it's now not even managing to find a strategy or a means to have its bill defeated either. It certainly can't manage to get its bill passed, but it's now not even managing to find a strategy or a means to have its bill defeated either. The Labor government has so lost control of the way in which its legislative agenda operates that it managed to convince just one non-Labor senator to vote with them. Senator Watt just tried to impugn the votes and the motives of the crossbench. He was a bit selective in which ones he chose to name. But the reality, Senator Watt, is that you only managed to convince one crossbencher to vote with you in that last division because you are failing to convince people of the merits of this policy. And, yes, you're failing in different directions in terms of the approaches, but none are convinced that the Albanese government's policies will make a jot of difference. If, of course, hot air and rhetoric were homes, the housing crisis in Australia would be solved thanks to Minister Watt, Minister Wong and the Albanese government, but hot air doesn't count, rhetoric doesn't count and Labor's plans don't count.

After three Albanese government budgets, not a single extra home has been built. After lots of plans, lots of promises and billions of dollars committed, not a single home has been built. Life is certainly not better. The government comes in and brags about the extent to which they have increased Commonwealth rent assistance. They don't acknowledge the fact that they've had to do so because inflation has been so high under the Labor government and has been higher for longer under this government's plans. After these three Albanese Labor budgets, Australia's inflation rate remains far higher than that of comparable economies around the rest of the world.

This very week, markets around the world are preparing for an expected rate cut in the United States, one of many economies where inflation is lower than in Australia and where interest rates are going down—but not under the Albanese Labor government. Inflation is staying higher, and interest rates are staying higher for longer as a result. That means that homeowners are feeling the pressure. They talk about the plans for a certain number of homes that might be built if everything goes according to plan, but what's happening today, right now, is that tens of thousands of Australian homeowners are falling behind in their mortgage payments and feeling the mortgage stress mounting up because of the failed economic policies of those opposite.

We have been clear all along, from the moment the Labor Party announced this policy, that we thought it was a bad policy. The Commonwealth government shouldn't be in the business of co-owning people's homes. The Liberal and National parties, who stand for homeownership and have it as a core value and a core tenant of our beliefs, believe that Australians should own their own homes themselves and not have the Commonwealth government as co-owners in their homes. That's the core and fundamental difference for us. We want to make sure that housing and infrastructure plans match up with population plans and not have, as this government has seen, record population pressures come in, exacerbating the housing crisis and pressures that are there. We want to make sure that the construction industry is as competitive and efficient as possible and not pile on new layers of industrial relations laws, red tape, green tape, taxes and other things that are driving up the cost of housing. How do you think you are going to fix a housing crisis when it costs more to build a house and when it takes longer to build a house? This is the effect of Labor's policies.

We believe you should get the fundamentals right and not say the solution is some pie-in-the-sky plan for the government to co-own your house with you and to spend billions of dollars on that approach. That is why we fundamentally oppose the games the government is playing. What we see here is that their tactics are failing to convince anybody, even from different perspectives, of the merits of their plans. After three Labor budgets, we're not seeing inflation fixed, we're not seeing interest rates going down and we're certainly not seeing more houses being built.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, here we are: another day; another political stunt from the Labor Party. The Labor Party knows—

You can laugh, but there are millions of people out there suffering because you won't act on the housing and rental crisis the way it needs to be acted on. You come in here and you don't have the numbers for anything because the Senate has decided that your bill will actually make things worse for 99.8 per cent of the 5½ million renters that live in this country. You come in here and try and bulldoze the will of the Senate.

As we said yesterday, the Prime Minister wants us all to get out of his way, but we are not getting out of his way to pass a bill that will make things much worse and will increase housing prices. You come in here and try and spread misinformation and mistruths about the Greens and our policies. Well, we're not going to let you get away that easily. Read our Greens policies. They are very different to what your bill says. We are here to negotiate with the government. We have told you this for more than a year. Our door is open.

But rather than trying to negotiate with the Greens to make things better for the millions of people who are suffering and struggling under the housing and rental crisis—the people for whom it's become impossible to put food on the table, to pay their bills, to go to the dentist and to visit a doctor; the young people who are one rent away from being evicted—rather than coming to the table with the Greens to negotiate something much better, which is capping rent and freezing rent increases, as well as phasing out the negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts which have turbocharged house prices for years and years now, and rather than talking to the Greens about a public developer, what you do is come in here and try and ram your bill through, throwing political stunts and tantrums. For what? To get this Mickey Mouse bill through, which might help 0.2 per cent of renters while making life harder for the 99.8 per cent of people renting in this country. We are not going to let you do that.

We have just circulated a motion which asks you to delay this bill for a couple of months and come and talk to the Greens. All that is going to do is make things better. Under your current bill, millions of people will lose out. That is going to be the outcome of the bill that you're trying to ram through. Come to the table with the Greens. Stop these political shenanigans. Be serious about this.

You have talked about the housing crisis as if it is a serious issue, and it is the most serious issue in this country. When we knock on doors every weekend, that is the first thing we hear about. People are so worried about their rents and about the unlimited increases in rents that landlords can now impose on them without any restrictions. Every single day, we are hearing about how people are struggling and suffering, but you are so stubborn that you somehow want to attack the Greens, whatever your reasons might be for that.

Stop being like children. Come to the table. Stop throwing these tantrums every day. Talk to us. We are willing and ready to negotiate with you—what more do you want?—but you have completely disregarded any of the Greens asks that we have put on the table. The vast majority of people are saying they want a freeze on rent increases. Communities are telling us this. We are listening to them. That's why we are fighting in here, like people are fighting out there, to do something and act on this housing crisis as if it were a serious thing.

The ball is in your court now. Come and talk to the Greens. We have two more months, if we get this motion through, but then—

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Faruqi. Senator Hanson.

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

When a vote goes down 19 to 41 and when you've got the whole crossbench and the coalition voting against this, it tells you something. It's an absolute dog of a bill, and this is why it's not going to work. This is, again, a pie-in-the-sky housing scheme. Listening to Senator Murray Watt, you'd think that it's about us denying the younger generation the opportunity to own a home. You have done that on your own with your economic policies that you've brought in here. You promised people a $275 cut in electricity bills, and it never happened. You made promises about the Voice, and that never happened. You've made so many promises in this country, including about climate change—and that is another dog of a bill.

Let me explain this Help to Buy legislation to people. You want to put up another $5.2 billion to build housing in Australia, rather than looking at your high immigration levels. That's the whole problem. You can build these houses, but you've had an opportunity for the last two years to build houses, and not one house has been built. You've put $35 million plus into administrative costs, yet not one house has been built. That proves that you're incapable of following through and producing for the people of Australia. Apart from this $5.2 billion, your housing policy is going to cost $32 billion overall. That's what the government is putting out to build 1.2 million houses.

But let me tell the people in the gallery and the people watching that, apart from high immigration, between 2022 and 2023, you brought in 737,000 people. The reason I mention this is that you haven't even got the people to build the houses. That's the joke about all this. Some 737,000 people were brought into this country between 2022 and 2023. Of those, off the top of my head, 51,605 had skills, and, of those, only 1,800 were construction workers. What has happened in this country—only because of my push for apprenticeship schemes; I put that to the parliament, and it was passed by the coalition government—is that 100,000 apprenticeships were taken up under my policy in Australia. We haven't followed that through. No-one has done anything about it since. You haven't pushed for more apprenticeships. You actually just want to bring in people from overseas, but we're not getting them.

Another thing that you haven't addressed is foreign investment. On the last census night, approximately one million homes were vacant. A lot of these are foreign investment homes. Foreign investors aren't really allowed to buy established housing in Australia—they can only buy new properties—but no-one follows through and investigates this because you let it go under the radar. That's because state governments want to have all these foreign investors coming in because it drives up the cost of housing in Australia, and then the state governments make so much money out of stamp duty. This is what happens all the time. The public are scammed.

The reason the cost of housing in Australia is so high is foreign investment. I have been opposing foreign investment in our housing stock in Australia, as well as in prime agricultural land—or any land, for that matter. I'm pleased to hear that, under Peter Dutton's leadership, the coalition is going to look at suspending it for two years. It should be for longer than that. It should be until we've addressed the housing market.

Remember that a lot of deals are done behind the scenes. It could be the UN, the World Economic Forum or different ones that we sign deals and treaties with behind closed doors. That's the government. We here in the parliament have no idea what we've signed away. But isn't it quite interesting—do you know of Klaus Schwab? Have you heard of him? He's from the World Economic Forum. How often has he said, 'You will own nothing, yet you will be happy'? Do the public really trust the government so far as to go into part ownership with them in housing? Honestly, the only person that you can trust in owning your own house is yourself. That's why One Nation brought out the policy of allowing Australians to use their own superannuation to buy their own homes—not investment properties but their own homes. That was One Nation's policy, and it was taken up by the coalition. To be a member of parliament, you need to have vision, and you guys haven't got it.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nothing new I've heard in the suspension debate will convince anyone other than the blockers working together to stop a vote on the Help to Buy Bill, none of you. Senator Hanson, with all due respect, shared-equity schemes have worked and do work across Australia and have for a long time. The idea is that you help people into homeownership and then, down the track, they are able to buy out the other partner. It works. What it means is people don't have to save as long and as hard for deposits and other money before they can actually get into owning a home.

Part of why we are having this debate is because we want the rest of the country to see the Greens political party, the National Party, the Liberal Party, One Nation and Clive Palmer all working together to make sure that we don't get a national shared-equity housing program up and running. These are the same people that delayed the Housing Australia Future Fund for almost a year and then have the nerve this week to come out and say, 'Well, it's taken too long to get these housing programs funded through the scheme that we actually delayed for more than a year in the chamber.' The hypocrisy is on show for everybody. We are pleased to be the ones arguing for more investment in housing, to get more people to own their own home but, at the same time, supporting renters; at the same time, pushing for more supply, working with state and territories.

The approach the Albanese government has taken is one which comes at this housing challenge from every direction. We don't seek to make it someone else's responsibility or accept that only one program will help. We don't accept that ransacking your super will do anything other than inflate housing prices, and most of the opposition, I think, accept that. They accept that if people ransack their super, housing prices will be inflated, and it won't build one extra house. We have to come at this from a variety of ways.

What we've seen today is this extraordinary procedural dance, the use of quorum to prevent a vote being taken and a filibuster that went for nine hours yesterday so that we didn't get to a vote, all because of the Greens political party and the opposition. They are uncomfortable that they are together, but they are still going to be together anyway because they want to wreck and stop a sensible housing program which the states and territories have agreed to. They have agreed through national cabinet that it is a proposal that they support. That's what's happening today. All this hand-wringing, sobbing and pain that everybody is feeling for everyone out there—excuse us for not taking it seriously. I mean, honestly, Senator Faruqi, your argument is that because it doesn't help enough people, we shouldn't do it.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was not!

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, you had your policy with the shared-equity housing scheme; we remember. Now you come in here and say, 'Talk to us. We really want to help you. But it doesn't help enough people, so we will say no. But give us an extra two months for us to go and complain about the government doing nothing on housing,' which is what you do when you go out there and pretend that you're at the negotiating table. I mean, what a load of rubbish. This has been sitting here for 290 days. You said you oppose it. You said it's going to make the problem worse, and then you say, 'Come and talk to us, and, in two months time, we will work out whether we think it's the right thing to do.' Please, honestly.

I mean, we are not suckers on this side; we get what's going on. Politics is being played. You're uncomfortable that you're helping Mr Dutton. You're very uncomfortable with that but you're making a habit of it. I mean, how many times this week have you voted with the opposition to frustrate Labor's housing program? Just how many times? We will add it up at the end of the week. We will add it up because that's what's going on here; you are enabling Mr Dutton and his team to frustrate a progressive housing agenda. That is what you are doing, and we will make you vote that way and show the rest of Australia that that's exactly what you're doing.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Instead of those opposite coming in here and spouting a whole heap of rhetoric, maybe we should actually have a look at what the problem before us is and why the coalition is not prepared to support this particular bill. And that is because it is a really bad bill. It does not do what those opposite profess it's going to do. I would draw to the attention of the minister who just made a contribution that, in relation to stoking demand, it probably would be worthwhile realising that the legislation that is currently before this place is a demand-side policy by your government, and, by the very nature of it being demand-side, your policy is likely to generate increased inflationary impact on the market as well. So you can't have it both ways.

On the delay that is being put forward at the moment, I think you should probably take note that everybody in this chamber, apart from yourselves and one other, has seen that this bill is seriously flawed. It's seriously flawed for a number of reasons. First of all, there is no detail in this bill that can give anybody in Australia any comfort as to understanding the kinds of questions that they should reasonably be asking about this particular proposal that is before them. They don't know who they're able to borrow from. They don't know the rules around what happens in the changes of the threshold. They don't know what the rules are in terms of when you change how much you earn. If you increase your salary, then what happens to your investment—the one that you own with Mr Albanese and Ms O'Neil?

As there are so many questions that are left unanswered by this bill, maybe you should use the time that you are being afforded now—if this motion that's been put forward by the party at the end of the chamber gets up—to answer some of these questions for Australians, because I think it is entirely reasonable that Australians expect to know what the details of legislation are when it's put in here. But, time and time and time again, you keep putting legislation in here, saying: 'Nothing to see here. Don't worry about it. We'll fix it later. Just trust us.' Well, guess what? We don't trust you.

The other thing that is worth mentioning is that this particular shared-equity scheme is available in most states around Australia, and, in many instances, it is not fully subscribed. But what you've failed to tell the people is that you actually need enabling legislation in the states and territories. Has any of it been passed? I'd be very surprised. The minister might like to tell us how many pieces of legislation have been put through the parliaments of the states and territories to enable this to happen.

The other thing is that we have got a situation where the thresholds that have been put in place are just not going to enable this to even work. We know what the average housing prices are in the capital cities around Australia. Then we've got a series of thresholds that have been built into this legislation that mean that, even if you wanted to access this particular scheme, you wouldn't be able to meet the thresholds, so you wouldn't be able to get access to it anyway.

So don't come in here and complain about the fact that your policy, your legislation, isn't getting through. Why don't you come in here and actually do something about fixing the concerns that have been expressed, not just in this chamber but by many people and many organisations? Even the New South Wales Premier, who is of the same persuasion as the government, has indicated that he does not see how on earth you're going to be able to meet your housing targets. So, instead of coming in here and providing a piece of legislation that is simply destined to fail, why don't you use your time and your resources of the massive great departments that sit behind you and actually fix the problems with this legislation? Everybody wants to see Australians being able to get access to homeownership, but not by a dog of a piece of legislation like what you are proposing here.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the debate has expired.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion to suspend standing orders as moved by Senator Wong be agreed to.