Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are those who say that the Australian dream is dead and that rent-seeking parasites killed it, slowly and then permanently. We say that the Australian dream of owning your own home is not dead. We say it shall never die while there is just one of us who is willing to stand up for it, because young Australians deserve to own their own home. How is it that a nation inhabiting the least populated economy in the world and with some of the highest wages in the world cannot house all its people or create an affordable stock of housing? The answer is simple: Australian state and local governments have spent the last 70 years systematically and deliberately ensuring that housing in Australia is some of the most expensive in the world. This has resulted in homelessness, poverty, entrenched disadvantage and wealth inequality. In fact, this is one of the greatest pieces of intergenerational theft in our history. All the while, self-righteous and self-serving interest groups, always taxpayer funded, vehemently argue that the answer to these problems is more of the same: more regulation, more tax and higher super contributions. Their unexamined urgings have led governments to develop policies with insane outcomes.

At a federal level, compulsory superannuation costs Australians over $30 billion a year—three times what they spend on electricity bills—and taxpayers a net $61 billion. The cost to ordinary Australians is decreasing home ownership. Since the introduction of compulsory superannuation two things have happened: Labor's biggest donors have become rich beyond their wildest dreams, and each generation has had lower and lower levels of home ownership, embedding inequality. The Left is aiding and abetting inequality in Australia in the 21st century.

At a state level, planning laws and taxes have done their intended damage. In the 1990s, first home buyers spent a year saving for stamp duty. Today it takes 2½ years. The ACT government, the self-proclaimed most progressive government in Australia, was going to remove stamp duty in favour of land tax. Now the citizens of the ACT get to pay both! According to St Vincent de Paul, there is a backlog of 500,000 affordable houses. I think they're being conservative.

As for local government, ask the next person you walk past in the street what they think of their local council. They will happily tell you that it is bloated, costly and inefficient and that it spends money on saving the world while neglecting parking, parks, rubbish and footpaths. There is often a stench of corruption, whether it be brown paper bags or just simple incompetence. Mayors drive $270,000 Teslas while their ratepayers see charges increase by 297 per cent. No-one critically examines what goes on because the local media's biggest advertiser is the council.

In a little-noted analysis—but much criticised by self-serving interest groups who already own their own properties—the Reserve Bank of Australia worked out that the average apartment price in Sydney is now $873,000 but that over $355,000 of that is due to state government zoning rules and local government charges. When it comes to greedy property developers, no-one beats out local and state governments. Given all this, is it any wonder that we have some of the most expensive land in the world? This problem is not the result of too few planning laws and approval processes; it is the result of too many planning laws, credit restrictions, government charges and prolonged approval processes.

In the mid-90s, the Japanese government started the world's largest public housing program to stimulate their economy. It did not work and it did not materially reduce homelessness. Five years later, as reported in The Economist, the Tokyo government undertook planning reform. From 2002 to 2012, homelessness in Tokyo was reduced by 80 per cent. The lessons are clear. Our clear preference should be for governments to increase home ownership, not to force people to rely on governments for shelter.

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