Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak not just about housing policy but about the very foundation of the Australian story—the dream of homeownership. For generations it has been the great leveller—the proof that through effort, sacrifice and determination, any Australian, no matter their start, can own a small part in this country and call it home. That dream's now slipping away. Under Labor it's not just delayed; it's being dismantled.

When the coalition created the Home Guarantee Scheme, it was targeted, it was careful and it was compassionate. It was designed for those hardworking Australians who could service a mortgage but who struggled to save the deposit. It was a helping hand, not a handout. Labor's taken the policy that once empowered Australians and turned it into something totally different. What was once a hand up has now become a handbrake. This new version does nothing to increase supply. Even Treasury admits that Labor's changes will drive up prices. Former RBA economist Martin Eftimoski warned that this policy is like 'pouring gasoline on a fire'.

Young Australians already struggling will now be forced to chase homes that sprint further out of reach. And who carries the risk? It is not the government but the taxpayer. A $60 billion liability sits on the shoulders of ordinary Australians and future generations. This is not policy for those who need it; it's politics dressed up as compassion—bigger loans, greater defaults and taxpayers footing the bill. And what about the broader picture? Labor has spent more on housing than any government before it—$43 billion—and yet Australians are worse off. Under the coalition, close to 200,000 homes a year were being built. Under Labor, that's dropped to barely 170,000. At the very same time, they've presided over the largest population boom since the 1950s. More people, fewer homes—that is Labor's legacy.

Homelessness is now at its worst in living memory. Services report surging demand, especially among women and girls. Very recently I had the opportunity in my electorate to visit a place in Burleigh and meet with Rosies, who do fantastic work in our community providing food and speaking to people who are homeless and who are struggling—those people who are seeing the brunt of this housing crisis. Labor's much heralded promise of 1.2 million new homes by 2029—what happened to that? Their own Treasury officials say it will not be met.

Labor claims to cut red tape, but the truth is they multiply it—5,000 new regulations, 400 new laws and nearly 3,000 pages of construction codes. They smother builders and developers in paperwork, and then we all wonder why fewer homes are being built. Australia's become addicted to bureaucracy. We now have 35 per cent more laws than Canada, a country nearly twice our size. What's being suggested is not reform; it's regulatory quicksand. It kills ambition before it even begins.

Labor's flagship, the Housing Australia Future Fund, is one of the greatest public policy failures of our time. It has $10 billion taxpayer dollars tied up in a fund, yet no-one can tell us how many homes it has actually built. At one moment, the minister says 2,000 homes. At another, the Minister for Finance admits zero. At Senate estimates, we discover that Labor are not even building homes; they're buying them. They're competing with Australians at auctions, driving up prices. It's a policy so absurd you could not script it.

Perhaps most concerning is where Labor's housing dream truly lies. It's not with families; it's with big super funds—often those that are tied up with or owned by the CFMEU. Labor wants Australians to rent homes owned by unions, not own homes themselves. They've gone to extraordinary lengths to hide correspondence showing super funds lobbying to weaken transparency rules. When questioned, the Treasurer blocked the Senate from seeing the truth. What will happen if big super dominates the housing market? What will happen? Rents will rise, choice will fall and ordinary Australians will find themselves tenants in a country where they once could have been owners.

And that takes us to the CFMEU, a union dripping in corruption, now expanding into residential housing. Independent estimates say their involvement inflates construction costs by 30 per cent. That is a tax on every new apartment, every new build and every young Australian's dream. The coalition's put forward a bill to keep taxpayer money out of the CFMEU's hands, but Labor won't support it. Why? It is because, to them, ideology trumps integrity.

This is where the coalition is different. We don't just oppose Labor's values; we offer a vision. In my maiden speech in this place, I spoke about the great nation-building task of starting to think about creating new cities. Australia has always grown by thinking big, but in recent decades we have stopped dreaming. We have stopped building. Instead, we cram more people into the same few cities, driving prices up, infrastructure down and the quality of life lower. We must think differently. We must build anew with new cities planned from the ground up, with housing, transport, industry and services integrated from day one. They would be cities that relieve pressure on Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane while creating new centres of opportunity. This is the same vision that built the Gold Coast, that built Canberra and that transformed Western Sydney. I refer to a fantastic article by Simon Kuestenmacher that was in the Australian on 21 August: 'One Gold Coast is not enough, Australia needs more new cities just like it'. I quote from this article:

The only problem that I see with the Gold Coast is that we only built one. We should look at the Gold Coast as a model for the future of Australia. I want to see six or seven more Gold Coasts by the end of the century.

At the end of World War II Australia was home to seven million people. A decade later Australia added two million residents on the back of the baby boom and Mediterranean migrants. Where did Australians live? Mostly in the same five big cities we live in today: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

Since WWII we have grown the country by 20 million residents and the Gold Coast remains the only new sizable city we added to the mix. The rest of the growth was squeezed into the same cities we occupied in 1945.

If we want to keep the dream of homeownership alive, we cannot simply tinker at the edges. We must be bold enough to imagine and to build, because the answer to a housing shortage is not simply going to be solved by increasing demand. It's by addressing supply.

Housing is not just an economic issue. It's a cultural one. It's about aspiration, independence and belief in one's own effort. We believe in supply, not spin; in cutting red tape, not adding to it; in supporting the vulnerable, older Australians, women fleeing domestic violence, indigenous Australians and our youth not through empty promises but through policies that can actually deliver real outcomes and, in this case, make housing more affordable. Above all, we believe in keeping the Australian dream—the dream of homeownership—alive.

Labor's failures on housing are not just statistics. They are shattered aspirations. They are young Australians who are priced out of their first home. They are families unable to find a rental. They are the homeless sleeping rough in a country that should do better. The people of McPherson have not sent me here to accept this decline but to stand against it. The coalition will fight for a future where effort is rewarded, where supply meets demand and where Australians—not unions, not super funds and not the government—own their homes. Housing is more than shelter. It's the foundation of family, the foundation of community and the foundation of independence, and it must never be surrendered.

See this speech in context