Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Resources, Forestry and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

The first thing that strikes me as I rise to address this motion by the member for Mitchell is that, as usual, the Howard government wants to deal with this very important issue of housing affordability by yet again shifting blame to someone else: state and local governments. The problem was raised by the Productivity Commission back in 2004. When it correctly released a report on first home ownership, the government said exactly the same thing: ‘It’s someone else’s fault.’ It rejected pretty much all the recommendations that would have involved Commonwealth accountability, but called on the states to do everything the report recommended in their areas of responsibility. The issue is about the blame game; it is not a debate today about housing affordability, which is a national crisis from the Howard government’s point of view.

States and territories have unanimously supported the development of the Framework for National Action on Affordable Housing and are working cooperatively to actually try to implement it. By contrast—and this is what it is about—the Commonwealth had to be dragged to the altar to sign up to the framework and will have to be forced to commit to take any concrete action. It is true that states and territories hold some of the levers, but so does the Commonwealth. It is equally true that the state and territory governments are the ones who have actually taken steps to do something about housing affordability, such as introducing stamp duty concessions for first home buyers—

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