Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have taken the words out of your mouth! Housing there is certainly more affordable. But the opportunities are around jobs. Those are the things that we need to focus on. What do those opposite want to do? They want to destroy the housing market. Their proposal for negative gearing will destroy the housing market. I am advised by the Property Council of Australia that there are currently 5,576 investment properties in my electorate of Hinkler. Do you know who owns those investment properties? They are the mums and dads of my electorate. They are hardworking people on wages. They are the ones who take a risk. They are the ones who go to work and take an extra job so that they can get ahead. It is them that the Labor Party want to destroy. It is very straightforward. It does not matter whether you are selling houses or selling bananas. It comes down to supply and demand. If you take 30 per cent of the buyers out of the market, then clearly prices will fall. Eventually, you will have an oversupply and the prices will fall even further. What happens then? Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I know you know what happens. Looking at farming properties in particular, when the value of properties fall, the banks do a review and the immediate action by the banks is to put up interest rates, which makes things far more difficult. If you are trying to meet repayments in difficult conditions and interest rates go up, it makes it harder again. What happens after that? Clearly they then look at serviceability—can you actually pay for the loan that you have? Then, if the price continues to fall, they start to look at foreclosing and they take your house away, which will then flood the market.

The proposal from the Labor Party is very straightforward. They want Australians who are out there right now who own these properties to go broke. They want them to lose their properties so that they can drive down the housing price market, particularly for Sydney. Out there in regional Australia, things are actually fairly bloody tough. Things are tough right now. I can tell you there are areas in regional Australia—I can look at somewhere in Flynn, for example, and, in particular, a couple of the smaller centres—where housing is incredibly cheap, under $200,000. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars will get you a nice little two-bedroom place. But the issue of course is jobs. That is what we need to be focused on. We need to be focused on that right now.

The proposal from those opposite is absolutely diabolical. The idea that we would destroy the housing market in this country I find absolutely incredible. It simply cannot go on. So, to the voters who are listening to this broadcast: do not vote for the Labor Party. They want to take your house away. They do not want you to have anything of value. They want to ensure that it goes down in value. It should not happen.

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