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

Everywhere I go in Western Australia now, sadly, I hear from locals that Australia is heading in the very wrong direction under the Albanese Labor government. In fact, I have not heard one person say they think the nation and our state of Western Australia is heading in the right direction. When talking to locals and small-business owners in Perth's northern suburbs with Liberal for Pearce Jan Norberger, the feedback is always—and sadly—the same. After 12 interest rate rises under Labor—not just under Labor but caused by Labor's inflationary policies, including pump priming the economy and interest rates with an additional $315 billion into the economy—household budgets have been impacted and significantly diminished. Whether it's the weekly grocery shop, the monthly bills or the cost of doing business for small business, the cost of living is biting into all Australian households. The sad reality is, no matter which way you look at it, Western Australians are worse off under Anthony Albanese.

While interest rates are falling in New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the United States, there is no sign of relief yet for Australian families. Labor is letting down residents in Perth's northern suburbs, including suburbs such as Yanchep and Two Rocks. Not only are they increasing the cost of living for residents of in Perth's northern coastal suburbs but they are also failing them by not providing adequate health care. For example, there will be 200,000 new residents over the next 20 years in the northern corridor, and it is one of the fastest-growing regions in Australia. Yet federal and state Labor are failing completely to make any provision for new hospitals or new health campuses to support the people in those northern suburbs.

Serious pressures continue to mount on the Joondalup Health Campus, which is a 60-kilometre round-trip risking patients not receiving care within that golden hour. Sometimes that round-trip can take more than two hours, and given the pressure on Joondalup Hospital, guess what they find? In the last month alone at Joondalup Hospital there were 800 hours of ramping, highlighting the urgent need to take the pressure off Joondalup health. But 800 hours of ramping in one month means that patients who were critically ill were sitting or lying outside of the hospital in an ambulance for up to 800 hours under Labor, and that is shameful. That's one of the many reasons I'm supporting Jan Norberger, who is fighting for a new hospital in Yanchep to ensure that people who choose to make the north coastal area of Perth their home can get the same health support as everybody else.

I'm also dismayed to hear from local residents in Ellenbrook in Perth how much they are struggling with their daily household bills and the Albanese government's cost-of-living crisis. It is a fact that Australia has suffered the single biggest fall in household disposable income across all developed countries—not just some but all developed countries—over the last two years, or 2½ years now, under Labor. This strain on Australian households—Western Australian households, in the case of the people I represent—combined with the rising, spiralling, costs of buying a house or renting a house, means that the Australian dream of homeownership, or even just of having your own home to live in, has never been further out of reach for hardworking families, particularly in suburbs like Ellenbrook in Perth.

I've been working with David Goode, our Liberal candidate for Hasluck, and we have both heard from so many locals across Ellenbrook that younger Australians in particular are not only struggling to find a rental but finding it almost impossible to get a mortgage, and, even when they do have one, to find a house that they can afford. As a finance broker, David Goode has decades of experience helping people achieve homeownership, and he understands just how critical it is for families and for younger Australians to have the opportunity to buy their own home and have their stake in, their own piece of, Australia. But, sadly, after just 2½ years of the Albanese Labor government, it feels, for so many Western Australians, like that dream is slipping away.

Labor's failure to address the housing crisis has made it hard for families to get ahead. Let's have a look at how Labor has caused this to happen so quickly—in less than 2½ years. We've seen, in Western Australia in particular, but nationwide, record high construction costs, which have been driven by a building industry that has been held completely to ransom by your supporters—by the union that those opposite are so proud to be members of: the CFMEU. They are pricing Western Australians out of the market. I think the latest was that they've put at least a 20 per cent premium on the cost of producing houses now in Western Australia. Those opposite were again, yesterday in question time, talking about all of the new programs that they've announced and implemented and all of these new homes they're going to build. Guess how many they have actually built, with all of those programs and all of that money over the last 2½ years?

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

None!

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

Exactly right, Senator Lambie. They have not built a single home in that time. Yet they keep coming into this place and saying, 'We've got XYZ millions and billions of dollars for housing, and we've got this great policy here.' But it sounds like Sir Humphrey Appleby's hospital! It's a great hospital—it's a great plan, in this case—but it doesn't have a single patient. Under their program, we've got these policies that have not delivered a single home.

Our plan, unlike that of those opposite, is incredibly practical, and it will work. Our policy is to unlock 500,000 homes, by funding essential infrastructure like water, power and sewerage, and to rebalance the migration system properly to ease pressure on housing demand.

Those opposite, when they came into government, said, 'Let's open the migration gates; let's open the floodgates.' We do need more migrants here in Australia, but we don't need the yoga instructors and things like that that those opposite have put on the critical list. We need electricians, we need builders, we need bricklayers, we need engineers, and we do need students. But, of course, those opposite—with hundreds of thousands of extra people coming into the country—forgot that, if you're going to bring hundreds of thousands of people into Australia, they'll need to live somewhere. Those geniuses didn't stop to think, 'If we let so many people come in so quickly, where are they going to live?' That has further contributed to the housing shortage and the spiralling costs of rentals and also of homes to build.

Unlike those opposite, we will restore the Australian dream of homeownership because as Liberals we not only understand the importance of homeownership and rentals to Australians but have always been able to deliver the policies to make that a reality. Those opposite, after 2½-plus years, haven't delivered a single home, and, through their inflationary policies, they've driven up 12 interest rate hikes in their term of government. They've put pressure on the cost of living for all Australians. Australians are struggling, and they are struggling to make the decision about whether they feed their family tonight or they turn the heater on. It is unforgiveable what those opposite have done to our nation in 2½ years.