Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by the coalition today.

I asked a very good question about housing and the fact that, in this country, we have major issues with housing affordability and housing availability. No matter where you go in this country, you will find that there are shortages. It's not just in our cities; it's not just in our regional towns. It's also in our more remote areas. No matter where we go across this country, we find that there are shortages.

The government, when in opposition, committed to many things in the last election. They said they were going to fix these sorts of problems, including the problems around housing, but we're seeing, with the data that's coming out across the country, that very little progress has been made. In fact, really none at all has been made.

I asked the Minister representing the Minister for Housing about housing affordability and, indeed, the construction levels. We've seen that we're at the lowest level of construction since 1989 and that housing affordability has fallen to its lowest point since 1996. I asked a very direct question about that, and all we got was deflection in the answer that was given. In fact, the deflection went to the point of actually blaming us for the problems that exist in this country.

The logic that they present in this place is absurd. The logic that was presented in this instance is, because we didn't support their housing bill or because we're not supporting their other Help to Buy bill, that somehow that's our problem. But the bill in relation to housing actually passed the parliament. It actually passed. It's now law. So how is it our fault that a bill they enacted, that they saw pass with the support of the Greens and the others in this place, is not working when it passed the parliament? The logic is absurd. It's because their policies are failing. Their policies are poorly constructed and are failing the Australian people. As I said, it doesn't matter where you go across this country, it is failing.

All Western Australians know the housing crisis in my home state of Western Australia is very real for people of all economic statuses. In Greater Perth, the new residential property listings were 14.3 per cent lower in the year to 23 September compared to the previous year. And have a listen to this. If this doesn't send shock waves through the people listening and if it doesn't completely bell the cat on how poorly constructed this government's policies are, then this is one thing that will get you. The average wait time for social housing in Western Australia is 150 weeks. That means people are literally sleeping on the streets. That means people are literally going from couch to couch in other people's homes. That means people are literally sleeping in cars. We have instances of people sleeping in tents and caravan parks, and out in the bush and out in the national parks. This is absurd. We have families sleeping rough. We have mothers with children sleeping rough. You have to wait longer than you ought to wait, and it is because of the poorly constructed policies of this government. Don't come in here and blame us. Yes, we didn't support your policy because it's a dud policy—and the evidence of that is that we're not seeing any houses built.

I asked whether or not there were any houses being built. Not one single house has been built, as we revealed in Senate estimates a fortnight ago. Not one house has been built. They haven't even built a doll house. They haven't even built a cubby house. There's nothing. There's no house that anyone can put over their head. There's no roof that they can point to that's over the head of any Australian who is struggling to deal with this issue.

The Property Council of Australia predicts that in Western Australia we will face a 25,000 home-deficit increase by the end of 2027. Some serious action is needed. Australians need real solutions, and only the coalition government, under Peter Dutton, can see the results that we need in this country. We need houses to be built. We need to unlock the equity that people have so they are able to build their own homes, and not just have the largess of taxpayers and government to provide the solutions. Let's see Australians deliver it and let's get behind all Australians.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sometimes it's nice to have a little bit of positivity, and the positivity is that the Albanese government has an ambitious $32 billion Homes for Australia plan to make housing more affordable for all Australians, whether you're building, renting or buying. We've said many times that Australians are doing it tough, and we understand that housing is a big part of that problem. But the problem is a generation in the making. It is not something that has happened overnight. It's a failure of the housing market but also a failure of governments, many governments, over a period of time. And so the buck-passing stops with us. It stops with the Albanese Labor government through our ambitious $32 billion Homes for Australia plan.

We have an ambitious housing agenda, with $32 billion of commitments to help Australians to build, to rent and to buy. Again, we have that ambitious goal of building 1.2 million homes by the end of the decade. And, through the fee-free TAFE and other processes and policies that we've put in place, we're training more tradies than we've seen trained for a very long period of time. We're building more infrastructure and social homes and cutting red tape to make this happen. Personally, I've been involved in many openings of social homes that we have assisted state governments and social housing operators to actually build.

Building more homes is a long-term fix. We know that. But we know that Australians are doing it tough right now. That's why we're helping renters by strengthening renters' rights and boosting rent assistance, and we're helping more than one-third of first home buyers get into the market with lower deposits. These are things that incrementally can help while we're building these other houses.

You can't trust the coalition to fix the problem. They were in office for two of the last three decades when this problem got worse, and now they want to make it worse by cutting $19 billion from housing. And the Greens just want to play politics. They block more houses in their local community, and they block more houses in Parliament House.

I want to go through a bit of a record and our solution. Since we've been in government, we've taken action and we're working to deliver more homes for Australians and to tackle the challenges left behind after a decade of little action in housing and homelessness by the former Liberal-National government. The opposition claim to care about housing, but their record shows otherwise. We're investing in 55,000 social and affordable homes, the largest Commonwealth investment in decades. The coalition have said that they will scrap Labor's $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund. This will halt construction on thousands of social homes across Australia. So, while they stand up here and say they want to help people, they actually want to cut the fund that is going to help thousands of people get into social housing right across Australia.

We're strengthening renters' rights through our better deal for renters, and we've increased Commonwealth rent assistance by more than 40 per cent. The opposition have been silent on renters' rights and did nothing in 10 years to address this issue. This government's ministers for housing and homelessness—both Minister Collins previously and now Minister O'Neil—have chaired nine meetings with state and territory housing ministers to ensure all levels of government are working together to improve housing outcomes for Australians. Unlike our government, which is bringing states and territories together, the opposition didn't even have a meeting of housing ministers for almost five years. We've already done that, but they couldn't bring them together for five years.

The government is proposing cutting taxes to build more affordable rental homes through our build-to-rent legislation. The opposition raised taxes on investment in build-to-rent housing, making it harder to build rental homes. Labor has introduced legislation to establish our Help to Buy Scheme, a shared-equity scheme to help 40,000 Australians get into homeownership. The opposition, as we know and as I've said previously, teamed up with the Greens to block the bill in the Senate, yet they come in here and ask: what are we doing for housing? We have got a long record of what we're doing. They have a record of saying no. They've got a record of blocking. The coalition operators up there in the back corner have joined with the Greens to block all the assistance for people to get into homes in a much quicker way.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government continue to play politics with our energy system, and all Australians are paying the price for the government's failure to deliver the cheap electricity they promised at the last election. At the last election, the Prime Minister infamously said almost 100 times that he would lower people's power prices by $275 a year. Of course, the opposite has happened, as everybody knows when their power bill turns up. The average power bill has gone up by more than $500 a year since this government took over.

Today, though, we've got a new perspective on how the government have corrupted our whole energy policymaking process to suit their political needs, not the desperate cost-of-living needs of average Australians. Right now, there's another climate change conference going on in Baku in Azerbaijan. Over there, Australia has been invited by the UK and America to join a new agreement to develop advanced nuclear technologies that could deliver energy needs for the world in a low-emissions format. We have traditionally cooperated on nuclear energy initiatives around the world. It's true that nuclear energy is not a technology allowed under existing Australian law, but we do have a world-class nuclear reactor facility in the middle of Sydney, 30 kilometres from the CBD at a place called Lucas Heights. We lead the world in the production of nuclear medicines, and we have some of the best nuclear scientist in the world thanks to that facility. For example, we have been involved, predating this agreement, in the Generation IV forum that is trying to develop new nuclear technologies—so-called gen 4 technologies. We've been an active participant in that process thanks to the world-class nuclear scientists we have in this country.

The government now, by refusing this overture—from our friends and allies in the UK and the US, mind you—is putting at risk that whole reputation of nuclear science we've built up over more than 60 years of operations at Lucas Heights. It is threatening our national security. It's not just an energy security issue now, although energy security is always a national security question. But it directly affects our national security if we distance ourselves from our friends and allies just to serve the domestic political needs of this desperate government trying to hang onto power. There is no justification for Australia not to join this forum. Joining this forum does not in any way necessitate that Australia change its law. It doesn't necessitate us building nuclear power plants. It would continue exactly the same arrangements we've had, such as the Generation IV International Forum we've been involved in for many years. The only rationale you can take from the government's decisions—from Chris Bowen's pigheaded decision to refuse entry to this agreement—is that they don't want to do this because it would be embarrassing for their political purposes here in Australia. Minister Bowen has been quoted as saying that he can't join the agreement because nuclear energy is outlawed in Australia. He may be right about that, but the fact is that, by Mr Bowen putting himself outside this agreement, he has left Australia isolated from our international partners and friends in a way that is completely and utterly unnecessary.

I think even a government against building nuclear energy in this country should join this agreement, because it's right for our national interests to do so. It also demonstrates the bankruptcy of the government's energy policy. They won't even bother looking at nuclear. They refuse to consider nuclear energy in the most juvenile and amateur way, posting pictures of three-eyed fish and all this rubbish. It's just an insult to the intelligence of Australians. I think Australians are a lot more savvy than the government gives them credit for about these ridiculous scare tactics. The minister last year posted on X—or Twitter, at the time—AI-generated footage of radioactive waste barrels. They were rusty, yellow barrels. It was the most puerile thing you could see. It's an embarrassment to our country to be acting like that when nuclear energy is used by so many of our friends and allies. But the government has got its blinkers on here. It's got its blindfold on. It is blind to the pain it has caused to Australians by not lowering their power bills, and it's blind to thinking about any alternative way to change tack and think: 'Okay, we might not have got this right. Let's do something different.' Instead, they are cratering us into an economic disaster by keeping energy prices high.

Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Canavan for the opportunity to talk some facts about nuclear and the fact that nuclear is not the right plan for our country right here in Australia. Of course, what Mr Dutton and his coalition have when they talk about nuclear is a $600 billion nuclear wasteland of a plan for our country's energy needs. This is a $600 billion nuclear nightmare that they want to unleash on Australians—a $600 billion nuclear black hole that will not even meet the energy needs that Australians have. This is an idea—a plan, if you can call it that—which would only account for 3.7 per cent of Australia's energy needs. There have been no feasibility studies. We know there have been no geological studies. What the coalition have done is just think up an idea of some nuclear power stations, get a map and plonk them around the country, and call that an energy plan.

This is an idea that, even if it were feasible for Australia, would be decades away, and we know that our coal-fired power stations, which still generate energy here for Australians, are closing. They are due to close in the next decade, and this is not a plan to meet the needs that Australia will have as our coal-fired power stations are set to close. It is a decade away. It is not a solution for our energy needs, and it won't create a single job for a person who works in a coal-fired power station to be able to go to.

The real solution is renewable energy. That is the solution for Australia, and under our government we have got 25 per cent more renewable energy in our grid. We are on track for our plan for 82 per cent renewable energy. We are approving more renewable energy projects than ever before. We are getting cheap, clean, green energy into the grid. This is critical for our future, and this is critical for creating jobs in our regions as well, and it is, of course, critical to meeting the cost-of-living challenges that Australians face right now.

What Australians want to see from us right now, today, in meeting the cost of living challenges that they face is their wages growing and support with cost of living from their government. That is exactly what they are getting from the Albanese Labor government. Under Labor, wages are growing. Wages are growing now at over four per cent. Real wages are growing in our country. We are investing in the wages of our care economy workers. We are closing the gender pay gap in this country. Again, under Labor, wages are moving in this country. We know that those opposite love low wages. We know that low wages were a deliberate design feature of the economy that they presided over. But, under Labor, real wages are growing. Wage growth is running at over four per cent, and the inflation figure now has a 2 in front of it. When we took over, it had a 6 in front of it. We are putting downward pressure on inflation, we are getting wages moving, and Australians are starting to get their heads above water again.

That is also because we are providing cost-of-living relief for Australians: a tax cut for all Australians; historic investment in Medicare, meaning people can see doctors for free; historic investment in cheaper medicines; historic investment in fee-free TAFE; and historic investment in lowering Australians' HECS debt. We are providing energy bill relief. Of course, what Australians are also seeing is that every single one of these measures was opposed by those opposite. Mr Dutton doesn't want to see Australians get cost-of-living relief. If he did, he would have voted for it. Instead, he voted against every single measure of cost-of-living relief that we have provided. Australians don't have to look very far to see what their lives would have been like under the coalition. They just have to see him opposing every single cost-of-living relief measure we have put in place.

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

In rising to take note of answers provided in question time today, I will be taking some time to reflect on many of Labor's broken promises over their last 2½ years in government, but I want to particularly reflect on something that I don't even think can be described as Labor's broken promise; it's Labor's delusion where, every time they come into this chamber, they say, as Senator Urquhart said in her contribution earlier, that the buck stops with them. Sure, they're well within their rights to say that the buck stops with them. They're the federal government, so you'd certainly hope that the buck does stop with them.

But, in the very next breath, rather than taking responsibility for the issues that are facing this country and rather than taking responsibility for the concerns of everyday Australians, they pivot very quickly to blaming anything but themselves for these issues. Their No. 1 suspect in blaming something for their problems is always the opposition, the coalition, and everything that apparently happened while we were in government. We know they like blaming the RBA for the economic situation that they find themselves in. We know that they like blaming the war in Ukraine for the rising cost of living.

I think it is frankly remarkable that time and time again this government comes into this place—and I know they're out there in the community doing exactly the same thing—talking about the fact that they're the grown-ups and they want to take responsibility for all these problems but that they then start the blame game so quickly. I know that Australians, particularly Tasmanians, are sick of that blame game. They are sick of this government not seriously considering the issues that are facing Australians and coming up with solutions for them.

My colleague Senator O'Sullivan today asked some fantastic questions of the government about how they have failed to address the housing crisis in this country. We know that Labor has failed to deliver on its core housing election commitments. We know that its target for 1.2 million new homes under the National Housing Accord is set to fall short by at least 260,000 homes, according to the Housing Supply and Affordability Council. We know that the opportunity to co-own a home, through the government's Help to Buy scheme, has been so unpopular because it has failed to pass this parliament.

Particularly, in this place today, we heard about the failure of the Housing Australia Future Fund to actually make a single disbursement or build a single home. It's something that this government doesn't want to address. They do not want to come in here and front up to the fact that their housing policy has failed. They made a big song and dance about this at the last election, but the reality is that their policies in this area have done nothing to move the dial when it comes to improving housing supply in this country.

I think, as a youngish Australian, that that's really sad. I know many people my age and younger that want to get into the housing market, and it is just so difficult for them to be able to afford to do so. This government has apparently listened to those concerns and done nothing to fix them. In the coalition we understand that homeownership is essential to the Australian dream and that owning your own home provides economic stability and economic security. Again, when I speak to young Australians and young Tasmanians, they want to be able to afford a house. The sad reality is that, because of this government's failures, they can't. Labor doesn't understand the essential value of that Australian dream and how owning your own home plays into that. The government's policy agenda has prioritised corporate homeownership and will see Australians rent in perpetuity.

We are committed to backing the aspirations of Australians through our housing policy. I think that the policies that we've released in recent weeks to reduce the cost of headworks to be able to commence housing developments has been received incredibly positively throughout the electorate. But, frankly, this government's economic mismanagement is killing the Australian dream. They are failing Australians time and time again.

I didn't get much time to touch on the government's other broken election commitments, but, certainly, many other times in this chamber I've mentioned their hesitancy to talk about taking $275 off everyone's power bill. This is a government that is letting Australians down time and time again.

Question agreed to.