Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion, which is very important—it covers some very important topics for my electorate of Monash. I follow some fine contributions by my colleagues on this side of the chamber, the members for McPherson and Goldstein, who, I know, feel very passionately about this issue—it's core to Liberal values—and that is: the right to build a life, raise a family and own your own home.

Homeownership is not just an economic decision. It's about belonging and it's about being part of a community. In my community, in my part of the world, the Monash electorate, this is particularly important in areas like the Bass Coast Shire Council and Wonthaggi, where we've got rapid population growth and the infrastructure is not keeping pace with that population growth. In Baw Baw shire, which the demographer Bernard Salt has written extensively about, Warragul and Drouin have been the fastest-growing towns in Australia over a 10-year period. So we need new infrastructure; we need new housing. At the recent election, I was really pleased to be able to secure some commitments, on behalf of the coalition, to help unlock infrastructure that would provide more homes—more affordable homes—in our region.

But this issue is also about Australians who invest in their own future more broadly—Australians who work hard, pay their bills and raise a family. It's about a future that people can believe in and a future where hard work pays off and dreams are within reach.

The coalition is and always has been the party of homeownership. I reflect on our founder, Robert Menzies: when he returned to the prime ministership in December 1949, he made homeownership a core part of his post-war vision for Australia. We, on this side of the House, understand what it means for young people to be able to take that first step into the property market. But that first step is becoming further and further away for so many young people these days.

I understand the frustration that so many Australians, particularly in my own electorate of Monash, feel when that dream is pushed out of reach—pushed out of reach by poor policy; pushed out of reach by a Labor government defined by waste and mismanagement. Today that dream of homeownership has never been more under threat. Under Labor, the great Australian dream of owning a home is fast becoming a nightmare.

Let me be clear. Australia is in the middle of a housing crisis. But this is not a crisis caused by some uncontrollable global force. It's a crisis caused directly by decisions of the Albanese Labor government. In just three short years, Labor has presided over the biggest population surge Australia has seen since the 1950s—three consecutive years of record immigration, with hundreds of thousands of new people added to our population every year, at a time when housing construction has plummeted. They've increased demand through record migration, while simultaneously stifling supply with bureaucracy, red tape and economic mismanagement. It's the worst possible combination: more people, fewer homes, higher prices, longer wait lists and growing despair.

Just ask one of the young tradies that I spoke to recently in Moe; he is now saving for his first home, but that feels further and further out of reach. Ask the young growing family in Leongatha I met with recently, who are trying to make that jump from renting to owning; that gap is getting further and further apart. Ask the young couple in Bass Coast who work day and night and shouldn't have to rely on the bank of mum and dad. I have spoken with many young Australians in my electorate of Monash who've explained to me how they've done all the right things. They've studied hard. They've saved hard. They've worked long hours. Many of them are actually working multiple jobs to make ends meet. And they're still left asking: will I ever get to own my own home?

This is the legacy of Labor's housing policies. They haven't just failed to fix the crisis; they've actually made it worse. Labor's housing policies are incoherent. In one breath they say they want to cut red tape, but in the next they want to become the nation's largest mortgage insurer. You're either for the private economy, fewer bureaucracies and getting government out of the way or you're not. Labor clearly isn't. In their first term alone, the Albanese Labor government introduced more than 5,000 new regulations, including over 1,500 in the Treasury and infrastructure portfolios.

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