Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian people are wondering why housing has gone so badly off track under this government. I believe that, when people come looking for answers, it's important that we are able to give authoritative information as to why the Labor Party has run the housing system into the ground and the Australian dream is further away than ever before.

The first key datapoint here is the rate of construction. Under the former coalition government, we saw an average of 192,000 houses being constructed each year. Under this government's reign, we've seen just 174,000 houses being constructed on average. If you want to try to solve the housing crisis, you need to build more houses, not fewer houses. Labor has constructed bureaucracies, not houses. It has built organisations, like the Housing Australia Future Fund, which don't build houses. That is the first area where the government has gone wrong here. It has gone for a bureaucratic, government-centric approach which has resulted in fewer houses being constructed compared to under the last government.

The second area is in the scope of the difficulty facing people trying to get a deposit. Under this government, it is now taking a younger Australian 14 more months than it would have under the past government to get a deposit together for a first home. In Sydney, the largest city in my home state, it is now taking a young person 13 years on average to bring together a deposit for a first home, so people are relying more and more on the bank of mum and dad, if they are lucky enough to have that.

The third key datapoint here is in relation to what I call a cruel hoax by Labor: the Help to Buy scheme. The majority of freestanding houses in Australia's capital cities are not eligible for the Help to Buy scheme. Just 14 per cent of the houses in Sydney are eligible for Help to Buy. In Adelaide it's six per cent, and in Perth it's seven per cent. Think about that number. Six per cent of the houses in Adelaide are eligible for the government's only solution for people in a housing crisis. And then, if you look at the social media of the housing minister, Ms O'Neil, you see pictures of freestanding houses and text saying, 'This is what Help to Buy can get you.' It is a cruel hoax, but it is a very good snapshot of the terrible position we are in. We have fewer houses, longer times to get deposits and callous schemes in which Australians wanting to buy houses cannot achieve access.

That is why at this juncture it is so important that we learn the lessons from this bad government's mistakes. I'm not sure it was a deliberate effort, but it will ultimately result in them destroying the Australian dream. The lesson is that bureaucracies don't build houses. You need to find a practical solution to support the development of last-mile infrastructure—water, sewerage and roads. Then you need to find practical ways to tilt the scales in favour of first home buyers, which we are doing through our superannuation deposit policy, and, furthermore, be realistic that reducing foreign demand for Australian housing is a very good idea.

Why should Australians have to compete with foreign residents and temporary foreign residents when they want to buy their first home? It is wrong, and that is why banning foreign residents and temporary residents from purchasing existing Australian houses is a very important part of the overall policy solution, alongside allowing people to use their own superannuation money. Supporting the supply of new houses through last-mile infrastructure is going to be the only way to get housing back on track, because Labor has virtually killed the Australian dream in their last three years.