Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

If housing were a game of hide-and-seek, Labor would be world champions, because no-one can seem to find the houses that they promised would be built. We were told Labor had a plan, a so-called ambitious target of 1.2 million homes over five years. But ambition without ability is, quite simply, fantasy. According to the Property Council of Australia and as now validated by Treasury, Labor is on track to miss this target by a staggering 400,000 homes. That's not a small error; that's the equivalent of forgetting to house the entire city of Canberra twice over.

Let's be clear: the core of this crisis is not the weather or the war in Ukraine or some mysterious supply chain ghost; the core of this crisis is Labor's catastrophic mismanagement of the policy levers that drive housing supply. They talk a big game about the Housing Australia Future Fund. The $10 billion allocation was proudly announced with much fanfare. But, two years on, that fund has delivered a grand total of 17 homes. That's right—17 homes. To put it in context, that's one home for every 43 days since the fund was announced.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister continues to ramble on about solutions, but he has quietly relocated his once-beloved Minister for Housing and Homelessness. She used to sit around about there, just behind the Prime Minister, but now she's been shuffled so far down the front bench she might as well be out in the cark park. She's now further from the Prime Minister than the member for Sydney. In Labor terms, that is really saying something. And yet, she remains the public face of a housing policy that's so hollow not even termites will move in.

Make no mistake: this is policy failure and economic failure. Labor has utterly failed to provide the conditions for housing construction across all sectors. The private market, the not-for-profit sector and even state governments are hamstrung by policy paralysis here in Canberra. Builders are crying out for certainty, local governments are asking for coordination, and families are desperate for a roof over their heads. And what they're getting from this is delay, dysfunction and dishonesty.

And it gets worse. Labor's immigration settings are running at full tilt. Net overseas migration topped 500,000 last year, but housing completions are dropping. There's now a yawning mismatch between migration and housing supply. Labor is bringing in more people than we are building homes. It's a basic economic imbalance that puts upward pressure on prices, inflates rents and prices Australians out of the market. Where's the plan to align migration, infrastructure and housing?

Now, let's talk renters. Labor said they would act on rents. They said they would take pressure of families. But, under their watch, rents have skyrocketed up to 30 per cent in some parts of this country. Their only solution? More red tape, more talking points and more false hope. Even social housing, their so-called priority, has stagnated. Labor's approach seems to be to announce the money, pocket the headline and then walk away from responsibility.

This is a government that can't get the foundations right, literally. They cannot and will not construct housing. The real failure is not providing the settings for others to do so. Their policies are confused, their coordination is non-existent, and they're credibility is going, going, gone. I wonder if the minister will now concede that it's time to stop using the word 'ambitious' and replace it with 'unachievable', 'delusional' or 'misguided'. The Australian people deserve better than spin in place of shelter. They deserve a government that can match population growth with infrastructure, that can enable builders not bury them and that can enable the private sector to get on with doing what they do—building houses, roads, shopping centres and playgrounds. Labor has had three years to show leadership on housing, and all they can show is failure. They can't build homes. They can't manage supply. They can't fix the crisis. But what they have built is an almighty housing mess.

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