Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Reducing Pressure on Housing Affordability Measures No. 1) Bill 2017 and the First Home Super Saver Tax Bill 2017. Housing affordability matters in communities all across Australia and in my community surrounding Parramatta. It's raised with me by parents and by young people, perhaps more than any other subject, when I'm out in shopping centres and out doorknocking. Housing affordability matters. This government, in its fifth year now, has finally been dragged kicking and screaming to the table to do something—anything—on housing affordability. We've heard them in recent years say 'get your parents to help out', as if buying a $1.2 million median-priced property in Parramatta would be in the range of most parents in Parramatta, let alone their children.

I've heard in this debate in the last few days members opposite talking about the problem for young people getting into housing being getting a deposit. How out of touch is that? Really, homeownership is at a 60-year low. Homeownership by 25- to 34-year-olds has collapsed from 60 per cent to less than 40 per cent in 30 years. Prices have accelerated far more than wages, and that acceleration in prices has been driven largely by tax concessions that are paid for by the rest of the community. This response to what is a crisis—late as it is, in the government's fifth year—is rather pathetic.

There are two measures here on the table. The first, the First Home Super Saver Scheme, allows individuals who are saving for their first home to take advantage of the concessional taxation arrangements that apply to the superannuation system. Under the First Home Super Saver Scheme, first home savers who make voluntary contributions to their superannuation account can withdraw those contributions up to certain limits and under certain conditions.

We on this side of the House have been staunch allies of compulsory super since it was first introduced by a Labor government decades ago. We have defended it—

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