Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I partly agree with the member for Bruce. We do have an issue with housing affordability and housing stress in this country. But the fundamental problem is an imbalance of demand and supply. We simply do not have enough supply in the market, and the reason is simply that we have Labor and Greens state governments and local councils putting undue restrictions on the supply. That is what causes the stress. It is simple. You cannot defy those laws of supply and demand.

In fact, the ANZ Bank estimates that we currently have a shortage of 255,000 dwellings in this nation. That is the shortage that has crept up almost every year since the turn of the century, and it has all come about because of the green and red tape put on by Labor and the Greens. This is the whole cause of the problem.

And what is their solution? Their solution is to attack investors in the housing market through a misguided plan to try and distort the taxation system by getting rid of negative gearing. What will happen? All that will do is pull more supply out of the market, because those investors are actually investing in providing more housing. You have never seen a more confused policy from the Labor Party. This is what we see time and time again from the Labor Party. They see a problem and they introduce a solution that they think fixes it but actually causes more problems than they are trying to fix. That is exactly what we will see in the issue of housing.

The only way that we can solve this problem is by allowing the laws of supply and demand to work—allowing people to put more housing on the market. That also should be in our regional areas. That is the way to tackle it—not through a misguided distortion of the taxation system.

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