Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A letter has been received from Senator Roberts:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

The need for a permanent ban on foreign ownership of residential housing and farmland.

Is 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.

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

I seek leave, firstly, to have this matter of public importance considered as a matter of urgency.

Leave not granted.

Australians are rightly stunned and confused. Why are foreigners, people from other countries, allowed to buy real estate while Australians are made homeless and sleep on the street? China dominates foreign purchases of Australian real estate, snapping up the most of any country in the world. China snaps up houses and farmland across our country, yet Australians are banned from buying a house in China. Add to that Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, the United States and the United Kingdom. The list of countries that grab Australian real estate goes on and on.

Australians are suffering through a housing crisis, a catastrophe. The average mortgage size has never been higher, with expensive repayments crushing household budgets. A house in Brisbane used to cost three times the average income. Now it's 10 times. This combination of high house prices and high interest rates means the average Australian is paying more of their wage on mortgage repayments than a homeowner would in 1990, when the Reserve Bank of Australia's cash rate was at 17 per cent. I'll say that again. As a proportion of income, mortgages are more expensive today than when the RBA had rates at 17 per cent.

The rental market in Australia is broken. Vacancy rates, a good measure of whether it's even possible for people to find a rental, have been at crisis levels for years. The average rent for a house in Brisbane has gone from $467 a week in 2020 to $740. For a unit in Brisbane, rent has gone up from $381 to $587 in the same period, since 2020. What's the government's response to the hurt Australians are feeling trying to get into a house? Labor will keep letting foreigners buy residential real estate.

While the Liberals signal they might do something about it, their proposal doesn't go far enough. Peter Dutton doesn't want to stop foreign ownership of real estate. He wants foreigners to be back here buying up the farm in two years. The Liberals' temporary pause is not good enough. Australia needs a complete ban on foreigners owning houses in this country. The Liberals won't do anything about the houses that are foreign owned right now—they can keep them. In 2017, ANZ estimated that foreigners owned up to 400,000 Australian homes. That's enough for a million Australians to live in, and that number of homes can only have increased since then.

One Nation would implement a true ban on foreign ownership. Under our plan, anyone that owns residential property yet isn't an Australian citizen or permanent resident will be given two years to sell their property back to an Australian. The two-year grace period will ensure there isn't a flood of properties onto the housing market. Let's get Australians into affordable houses while keeping the market sound. When the Liberals would be opening back up purchases for foreigners, One Nation would be completing the greatest transfer of houses out of foreign hands and into Australian hands in history. In this debate, we will hear Labor senators get up and claim that foreign ownership is less than one per cent. We'll hear them claim it's foreign investment. That's a lie. It's ownership. And their numbers aren't true.

In that 2017 report I mentioned, ANZ said, based on Foreign Investment Review Board data, foreigners had purchased an estimated 25 to 35 per cent of new Queensland homes. Later in 2017, the government introduced a new annual vacancy fee for foreign owners of residential properties. You won't believe this next coincidence. After the government started charging a fee on foreign owners, the number of foreign owners declaring themselves to the government dropped from between 25 and 35 per cent to one per cent. It was just like magic! When NAB asked real estate agents directly how many foreigners they were selling to, the percentages were in the double digits. That's more than 10 per cent. We know that. It's a fact. The New South Wales government has even recorded foreign purchases at more than double what the federal Labor government claims they are. It doesn't matter what the real number is anyway. One foreign purchase is one too many while Australian families are sleeping on the street.

Foreign ownership is one part of the housing puzzle. One Nation has comprehensive solutions to all of the levers we need to pull to get Australians into affordable houses. These including pausing immigration to reduce demand, abolishing GST on building materials, establishing five per cent fixed rate mortgages, enabling HECS debtors to get a loan and deporting 75,000 illegal residents now.

On foreign purchases and ownership, we are clear. Only One Nation will implement a real, permanent ban on foreign purchases. Only One Nation will force foreign owners to sell their houses to Australians. Only One Nation will extend the ban on foreign ownership to our valuable farmland, to protect our ability to feed Australians first. Only One Nation can be trusted to truly put Australians first.

Lisa Darmanin (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Roberts asserts that a permanent ban on foreign ownership of residential housing will fix the housing crisis, but the fact is you can't solve a housing crisis without building more homes. It's as simple as that—building more homes. Housing supply is the key to tackling Australia's housing crisis, and that is exactly our government's focus.

The One Nation party would have you believe that foreign investors are causing the housing crisis in Australia, and we've just heard that. However, the truth is that foreign purchases of existing homes make up only a tiny fraction of all home sales each year. There is not a flood of foreign investors buying up all the houses in Australia that are for sale. That's actually the reality—a tiny fraction.

Let me turn to the Albanese government's approach to foreign investment. This government has taken a range of actions to make sure that foreign investment is working in Australia's best interests. We have tripled foreign investment fees for the purchase of existing homes and doubled vacancy fees for foreign-owned dwellings. We've also strengthened compliance measures to ensure foreign-owned properties are being used as intended, either occupied or made available for rent. And, from May last year, foreign persons will only be able to purchase established build-to-rent projects if they remain designated as build-to-rent housing. These changes ensure that foreign investment supports, not hinders, our goal of boosting housing supply. Finally, I'll make this point. The value of foreign investments in residential real estate approvals has actually fallen from $7.9 billion in 2022-23 to $6.6 billion in 2023-24.

I would like to make a few comments now about housing supply. Our approach balances economic growth with housing accessibility. We're building Australia's future and ensuring investments for more housing developments, because, at the end of the day, that is what our Homes for Australia Plan is all about: getting more homes built faster. We know this is a challenge, but it's a challenge that we must meet and are meeting. We're working to build 1.2 million homes over the next five years. Under our ambitious Homes for Australia Plan, we are training tradies, funding more apprenticeships, growing the workforce and making the biggest investment in social and affordable housing in over a decade. We're making sure Australia has the workforce, the resources and the investment needed to build more homes. Building homes doesn't just put a roof over peoples' heads; it creates jobs, stimulates local economies, strengthens communities and creates a home for people who need it. Every home we build supports workers and apprentices who rely on the industry to make a living. If there's more action required on foreign investors, we will consider it.

But let's be clear: those opposite have consistently taken positions in this parliament that would mean fewer homes, not more. The facts speak for themselves. One Nation, along with the coalition, voted to delay the government's Help to Buy housing scheme bill, stalling a key initiative to support housing affordability. They talk tough on housing, but, when given the chance to support real solutions, they vote against them. They complain about housing affordability while blocking the very measures that would deliver more housing supply to Australians. And, when given the chance to support real solutions, they vote against them. The bottom line: action on supply is critical, and more supply means better affordability. That's what we're delivering, and an Albanese Labor government is building Australia's future. That is what we will keep fighting for—more homes more quickly in more parts of the country.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on this matter of public importance. Let me first say that the opposition welcomes foreign investment in this country. We have been strong backers of foreign investment in this country, but we do need appropriate safeguards, particularly when it comes to critical resources, things related to the defence of our nation, obviously, and residential land. The fact is that, when you're talking about this area, particularly in relation to residential housing, it's Labor's failures on our borders and in our migration system which have driven up housing prices in this cost-of-living crisis. Once again, it is the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, who has led the way and shown the path forward and is driving discussion on public policy in this country, with the Prime Minister following along behind.

The coalition has been very clear that we need to ban foreign investment into existing residential properties for two years until our population growth catches up with housing supply growth. However, as a trading nation, foreign investment is important in our broader economy, with many of our close allies being significant investors, and I will go to one particular example in my home state of WA. It relates to agriculture, which is also the content of this motion.

The Esperance sand plain was opened up by money from what was then called the Chase Syndicate. The Chase Syndicate was a group of US investors based largely, if perhaps ironically these days, out of Hollywood. These were celebrity investors who were rounded up into the Chase Syndicate, and the syndicate came down to open up land in the Esperance sand plain. That first effort failed, largely because they didn't have the expertise of utilising that country in an effective way. So the first Chase syndicate failed. Now, there was a second syndicate that had better luck. Why? That was because they listened to the Australian farmers on the ground about how that land could be effectively utilised. So, with the use of that American capital, that land was opened up.

As Senator O'Sullivan, who's here in the chamber today, knows, that Esperance sand plain is now perhaps one of the most productive parts of the Western Australian wheat belt, and guess what? The original investors, the original Chase Syndicate members, are long gone. Who owns that land and produces for the Australian economy and for the Western Australian economy from that land today? It's Australian farmers, of course, and I know many of them, and I know that Senator O'Sullivan knows many of them. They're Australian farmers who, through the effective use of capital from elsewhere, allowed that land, now in Australian ownership, to be opened up and developed. We see time and time again through Australia's history the importance of foreign capital to the beginning of industries, to the opening up of industries and to the giving of economic opportunities to Australians, and we need to welcome that. We need to welcome that into the future, as we do have extraordinary opportunities in this country that we can seize upon.

Going back to the other part of this motion, which is to do with residential housing, I will say once again that it was Peter Dutton who pointed out that the severe problems caused by Labor's failure to control our borders brought around a million people into this country in just over 12 months, which threw our housing system completely out of whack and made getting into homeownership increasingly difficult, particularly for younger Australians. That is why we have proposed this ban for two years on foreign purchases of residential housing. This is not something that we take lightly. It is a significant step; however, it is reflective of the situation we currently find ourselves in, where the failures of this Labor government are failures repeated over and over again. Whether it comes to the standards of living faced by Australians, the inflation rate in this country, the 12 successive interest rate rises or the smashing of the small business sector, this is a Labor government that has failed.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support this motion because history proves that this motion is correct. We only have to go back to 1850, the time of my forefathers in Ireland, when there was what's known as the great potato famine. In actual fact, it was potato blight. Of course, many millions of Irish people starved while the English landlords were exporting wheat to the UK and on to the world. This is why we must always control our agricultural land. It is always very important that Australia can feed its own population first.

I should qualify that by saying that Ireland had a population that was, off the top of my head, the same as it is today, but their population basically halved within a couple of decades, both through the diaspora and, of course, through massive starvation. It's something we forget about today when we often talk about immigration and all of these issues and foreign ownership, but we shouldn't because a large percentage of Australians came from that Irish diaspora in the 1850s. We also need tighter controls over housing. Currently, foreigners are allowed to buy new home buildings and new units. I have to ask why that is the case when we have so many tens of thousands of Australians that are homeless. It only drives up demand. Last week, though, I read in the Australian Financial Review that what appeared to be an immigrant was allowed to buy housing here, so we need much tighter controls over our real estate agents.

I have raised this issue in estimates before: when you do your tax return today, your PAYG income will be automatically uploaded into your tax return, your interest from your bank account will automatically be uploaded into your tax return and your dividends will be automatically uploaded into your tax return. But what isn't uploaded is the rental income you receive. This is a problem because foreigners are buying rental properties and the real estate agent can collect and then repatriate that money directly overseas. That money never gets declared to the tax office, and that has become a money-laundering issue. Another issue I raised was that money was being laundered through agricultural property. Foreigners were buying land here in Australia. Then they could launder the money out through both asset sales and rental income because real estate agents don't have to get a tax file number or withhold money, as that rental money is paid offshore.

We need to look at the reason why one of the largest growths in immigration is as a result of foreign students coming to this country. That is a direct result of what happened in 1985 when Paul Keating lifted capital controls. He effectively overturned the advice given to the Australian people in the 1937 banking royal commission by none other than Ben Chifley, where he said the central bank must always control a volume of credit in the system. Because Paul Keating lifted these capital controls, foreign debt held by the four big retail banks went from $8 billion to $800 billion in 23 years, from 1985 to 2008. That meant house prices went from four times average earnings to 12 times average earnings, which meant the two parents had to go to work. When we had the GFC in 2008, there was the risk of a housing collapse because a lot of older people lost a lot of money. So, in order to prop up housing, Kevin Rudd, in the Christmas of 2008—December 2008, I remember it well—allowed the parents of foreign students to come here and buy houses in Australia. That then fed the banking industry—which of course, as we well know, is a massive sector of our economy. It was also the start of the rise of the university sector and of foreign students, here—basically to prop up the Ponzi scheme that housing is in this country.

The other thing we need to do if we want to sort out foreign investment in this country is to lift the rate of withholding tax on profits sent offshore. There's a lot of hoo-ha about Donald Trump at the moment introducing tariffs, yet we have had reverse tariffs in this country for decades because the tax on profits sent offshore is much lower than the tax on profits here in Australia. That encourages foreign investors. They get a natural arbitrage opportunity to come into this country and undercut—or 'outbid' is probably a better way of putting it—Australians when it comes to buying assets. Foreign investors can actually repatriate those profits offshore and pay no tax, because our tax treaties, in the name of attracting foreign capital, provide a lower tax rate to foreigners than they do to Australians who retain their profits here. So I fully support this motion. We must make Australia great again and put Australia first.

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

One Nation is the only political party that is fighting for Australians to actually own their own homes. The dream is to own your own home. This foreign investment, where it's at now, is just ridiculous. I'm pleased to see that the Dutton coalition is now picking up my policy, although foreign investment has only been put on hold for two years. As far as I'm concerned, there should be an unlimited hold on it and those foreign investors in Australia should have to sell up properties. After two to three years, it should be put on the market and sold. I'll tell you why.

Our dollar is down so much. It's basically nearly half—well, it is half—of what it is in the UK and about two-thirds of the euro, and you've got the United States as well. So our dollar is down, and it's not a level playing field for these people from overseas buying properties here in Australia. They're bringing in money that is a lot to us. In buying the properties here in Australia, they are actually increasing the price—supply and demand. If we're 650,000 short at the moment, why are we allowing foreign investors into the country? I'm talking about foreign ownership of our housing. Why is it called 'foreign investment'? It shouldn't be. All you are doing is driving up the price of housing. It's supply and demand. We see a lot of people who are foreigners bidding on this housing. Foreign students should not be allowed to buy housing when they're in Australia doing their university courses here. Why are they allowed to? Stop it.

The farming! Why are other countries—Canada, or even New Zealand and other countries—way ahead of us? They don't allow foreign ownership in their countries. Why are we allowing it here in Australia? I can't understand why, unless it means it's driving prices up so that people have to borrow more. Who makes profit out of that? There's the interest that the banks get, and there's another thing. Do you think state governments want to see their stamp duties go down? I don't think so. Follow the money. Who gets the money from all this? State governments and banks as well. Are we doing any favours for our own people? No, we're not. It was always the fact that people wanted their own home. Now they can't afford it. We see so many people living in poverty on our streets, under bridges, in tents, in cars—families and that type of thing.

The Labor Party say: 'We're giving you this wonderful opportunity. We're going to build 1.2 million homes over five years.' That was brought in two years ago. How many houses have been built? None! Not one! How much has it cost taxpayers so far? There's been up to $50 million in administrative costs and not one house built. Didn't you get a bargain out of that, people? A great bargain for you, isn't it? And they're still crowing like roosters about what they've done about for the Australian people, which is nothing whatsoever.

Then you talk about being able to build it. Between 2022 and 2023 you brought 737,000 migrants into the country. Only 51,605 of them had skills. You said, 'We're bringing them in for their skills.' Did you really? Only 51,605 had skills, and, of those, only 1,800 were from the construction industry. So how much of a lie was that? It's pie in the sky, a dream, that you're telling people out there. You mob couldn't lie straight in bed!

We have to change this. We can do it if you have the will. I don't know why you keep propping up foreign ownership of our housing and farmland. We had one farming property down in Tasmania that the Chinese bought for dairying: 18,000 hectares and about 90,000 head of cattle. They were actually milking it. I think they've gone bust now, but they were selling it up and getting $9 a litre for the milk. They have their minor companies, which write up the cost of everything. Then they don't make a profit, so they're not paying tax in this country either, and they have offshore accounts. You've been really smart, the both of you. How smart have you guys been over the years of your term in government?

You have no idea how people are struggling with the cost of living. All they want is to be able to put a roof over their head, and you are denying them the right of owning their own home. Stop foreign ownership of our housing and farmland.

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

The time for this discussion has expired.