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

As the hour is late and the speaking list has been long, I shall not detain the House that long. I see the next speaker, the member for Macnamara, is here. Can I say, that he, unlike me, is erudite and eloquent and will undoubtedly be able to shine forth upon this bill in a manner and form that my poor capacity will not allow. So I won't keep the House from what will certainly be Cicero-like rhetoric.

The first schedule of this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 3) Bill 2021, deals with the Medicare levy and the Medicare levy surcharge income thresholds.. It is designed essentially to reset where we need to be, given that incomes rise and our capacity to understand what is a low income changes from time to time. Schedule 2 deals with the Family Home Guarantee announced in the budget. It makes it very possible for people who are seeking to buy their own home to do so and ensures that some of the guarantees that we are providing are not caught inadvertently by the tax system. Payment to thalidomide survivors is clearly a technical issue that got caught by the tax system, because we do have the most voluminous tax system in the world. Therefore, we needed to introduce a bill to make sure that payments that no-one intended to be caught by the tax system were not. Recovery grants for floods and storms is clearly a very important issue for those people who have received funds, so they can get on with rebuilding their lives. It is clearly irrational for us to give money and then tax part of it, which means they would have less money to use to get on with their lives. Therefore, we are exempting it from the Income Tax Assessment Act. Finally, schedule 5 is a series of organisations to which we are now giving deductible gift recipient status. This means that if you give money to these organisations you will be able to claim it on your tax. There are many worthy organisations. There is the Alliance for Journalists' Freedom, which is Peter Greste inspired. It is a very important role that he has played in the freedom of journalists internationally to report, in his case on the uprisings in Egypt so that people have the opportunity to know what was really going on in that oppressed nation. There is the Andy Thomas Space Foundation. Of course, Andy Thomas was Australia's first astronaut. I have had the pleasure of meeting Andy Thomas on a couple of occasions. He did not lobby me for this change, and therefore I don't feel that I need to make any declaration. Youthsafe is about helping our young people stay safe. There are the Royal Agricultural Society Foundation Ltd, the Judith Nielson Institute for Journalism and Ideas, and the Great Synagogue Foundation trust, which is important if we are to maintain what is a historic building. That is being done largely out of the incomes of other people.

I want to go back to schedule 2 very quickly before I pass to my far more learned friend the member for Macnamara, I believe. Such honour has he brought to the seat that they felt they needed to rename it. Schedule 2 regards housing affordability and some programs we're trying to put in for housing affordability. I have great regard for the member for Kingsford Smith. Many of the points he made around housing affordability are absolutely right. Part of the guarantee that we made when we were establishing Australia as a federation and a nation was that every single person, regardless of where you were born and in the circumstances you were born into—indeed, even if you weren't born in this nation—had a chance to have a slice of the Australian dream. One of the cornerstones of that was being able to own the home in which you lived. The importance of that, we now know, is so extraordinary that we cannot possibly underestimate it. It seems silly that in the 21st century we need to reaffirm it. There are benefits for mental health, for stable democracy, for equality and for homelessness. It goes without saying that if you are to be homeless you need to have lived in a home.

The member for Kingsford Smith pointed out that, on average, homes in his electorate now are $2.5 million a pop. There are not many young Australians in Sydney, certainly in his electorate, certainly in my electorate, who can afford $2.5 million. Yet at this very moment, a very well-known builder in Sydney is seeking to do a massive development in Little Bay in the member's electorate. It is being opposed by the member. It would be selling dwellings—houses, that is—to people who want to own their own houses for less than half the price of the average house in his electorate and it is being opposed by the member. It is being opposed by the state Labor member. I say to those branches of the Liberal Party who have passed positions opposing it: shame on you for doing that because this builder will be putting in place dwellings and houses for literally thousands of people to be able to live and have their share of the Australian dream.

We know that massive public housing buildings, as proposed by those opposite, don't work. How do we know that? Because, Japan, after 1989 when they had their property crash, introduced a massive fiscal stimulus. It was designed to stimulate the economy. Part of that stimulus was the massive building of homes and public housing, ostensibly to house people who were on low incomes and who found themselves homeless. After 14 years of that building program, it did not shift the dial on homelessness in Japan. The Tokyo city government in 2002 undertook planning reform. It liberalised the planning system and allowed people, builders, to get on with the job of building more housing—that is, create more supply. In 11 years, they reduced the number of people who were homeless in Tokyo by 80 per cent.

We know the problem with affordability of housing in Australia is supply. We know that it does not start in this chamber. We know that it starts in the state parliaments and the local government chambers around this country. I don't say this to be partisan. I impeach those members who are listening to join whoever, all of us, to demand more supply, to demand better planning laws in Australia. Because it is not about us, it is not about votes, it is not about political division and it is not about all of the sort of stuff that we usually play in this; it is about young Australians being able to have a slice of the Australian dream.

The other big idea from the member for Bennelong, value sharing or value capture, is not a new idea; it has been implemented in large parts of the world. The member for Fraser would know about this because he has a doctorate in economics from Yale. I am self-taught, as most people can see. The point is that the US has introduced value capture. It incentivises local and state governments to ensure they are building transport infrastructure where housing is going—that is, it makes the lives of people better.

Recently the Victorian government announced that it would spend $9.5 billion to build 11,500 public housing units. The problem with that is, according to St Vincent De Paul, there is an undersupply of 380,000 affordable houses in Australia. That means, on that number, this country would need to spend $5 trillion to clear the backlog. For $9.5 billion, the Victorian government could have built the infrastructure required to allow people to personally build and fund over 100,000 homes in that state, massively alleviating the backlog, the downward supply and pressure on prices for housing.

This bill is important but, let's face facts, if we really want to do something about giving young Australians the opportunity that they need and they should have to have their share of the Australian dream then we need to do something about our failed planning laws in this country and the way they are administered by local governments.

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