Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is the great dream of every Australian to own their own home, and this is so crucially important. Having a roof over your head and owning it yourself has to be the aspiration of Australians, particularly those who are working, paying taxes and having aspirations, but it's becoming more and more difficult.

It was really interesting to read in the Australian yesterday the piece by the highly respected Robert Gottliebsen, headed 'Government charges pushing new home costs above market value'. He gave the government some credit in the introductory sentence:

The Albanese government's first-home buyers scheme will help a lot of younger Australian gain a dwelling, and it's a good first step, but it does not address the fundamental problem.

He is so right. He continued:

In many areas of the dwelling market the cost of building, fuelled by government taxes plus construction costs, has risen to a point where, on a bricks-and-mortar comparison, it is cheaper to buy an existing dwelling than to build a new one.

And I appreciate that. But there's also the fact that so many construction companies are going to the wall—pardon the pun. They truly are. They can't build a wall because they're going bankrupt. Indeed, it is becoming more and more difficult. The demolition—again, pardon the pun—of the Australian Building and Construction Commission in the first term of this government took away the regular cop on the beat as far as construction working sites go. Then, as Robert Gottliebsen said in his article, we've got, particularly in apartments, 'a militant union movement' adding 'cost uncertainty, particularly in Brisbane.' He talked about the 'gap between market values and building costs' making banks 'nervous about lending.'

Then consider the Daily Telegraph report, back on 31 July:

Construction firms are falling like dominoes with insolvencies almost tripling—

tripling!—

in a decade, casting considerable doubt over NSW's—

my home state's—

plan to build hundreds of thousands of new homes.

In fact, the figure is 377,000 new homes—that's the plan—by 2029 under the National Housing Accord. Then consider the number of construction companies that are failing, the number of construction companies going into liquidation. In the 2024-25 financial year, this increased to a historic high of 1,567, up from 611 in 2014-15. That data comes from the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. Industry leaders are very worried. It's all well and good for Labor to come in here and talk about the Housing Australia investment mandate amendment. It's all well and good for them to crow about the fact that Labor's building 1.2 million homes. That's the plan. Well, I've said it many times, good luck with that. And I do genuinely mean good luck with that, because with construction companies failing by the numbers that I mentioned it is going to be so difficult.

What Labor needs to do is reduce compliance on business. It is crucial that the government does this. We've already seen nearly 30,000 small businesses go into bankruptcy under this government. Many of them are in the construction space. It is so hard. I know Labor are talking up the importance of tertiary education—and, yes, it's fine to have a university education—and then they go on about free TAFE—and that's a misnomer too—but what about the relief, help for tradies, sparkies, chippies and brickies? It's just not there.

If Labor wants to do something in the housing space, it needs to address, much better, the cost-of-living pressures on so many Australians and so many Australian families, those Australians who once had the idea, the dream, the aspiration of owning their own home, which is off into the never, never. It's almost becoming an impossible dream. We've got buyers agent Diane Klem-Goode describing the current housing market as 'limited' and 'madness'—and it is. It truly is, and Labor is doing very little about it. This is just a folly.

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