Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Member for Hasluck wants to talk about the opposition. It is not surprising, because their record on housing is so poor. This amendment is deeply flawed. Australia's housing crisis is a gaping wound for Australia, and the policy platform that Labor has cobbled together is barely a bandaid and not enough to stop the bleeding. Labor's so-called build-to-rent and community housing model is upside down. It subsidises corporate investors, their superfund mates and even offshore entities to own the homes of hardworking Australians. Not young Australians, not the young mums and dads in my electorate who are sweating hard for a first home deposit—Labor doesn't want these people to own a home. That's not housing policy; it's asset allocation for superfunds, and it leaves ordinary Australians in my electorate, hardworking Australians, scrapping together to try and pay for a deposit, paying the price and funding superfunds and corporate investors to build assets that everyday Australians will never own.

The Australian dream never was and never will be about being a permanent tenant. It never was about renting a unit or an apartment from some nameless multinational fund. It's about owning your own place, putting down roots, raising a family, building equity, building a future and building a stake in Australia. Under this government, more and more Australians will be tenants of superfunds, not homeowners in their own right. Labor wants to give homes to funds, leaving ordinary Australians to rent for life in the hope they'll vote for Labor. It's cynical, it's shortsighted, and it's selling out the Australian dream of homeownership. In my electorate of Cook, families tell me every single week they cannot break into the market. In Caringbah, Miranda and Sylvania, some of my more affordable suburbs, housing prices are still, on the median, up to $2 million. These are proud communities where people work hard, save hard and want the same chance their parents had. Yet first home buyers are being squeezed out by rising costs and a lack of supply. What's Labor's answer? It is not to help them buy, not to deliver ownership, but to hand taxpayer subsidies to institutional landlords to keep them renting. Young families can't keep up, and Labor's schemes won't help, because all they do is pit more buyers against each other for the same limited supply.

Labor is turbocharging demand. On this so-called Home Guarantee Scheme, we've had independent warnings. A report from Lateral Economics has made it very clear: expanding this scheme risks driving prices up by 3½ per cent to 6.6 per cent—in some markets, almost 10 per cent. For first home buyers in Sydney and Cook, that may mean paying $100,000 to $200,000 more for a home. This is a government turbocharging demand, not just through this scheme but through migration.

In the middle of a housing crisis, it should shock Australians to know that migration and our population are growing faster than any time in the last 75 years. What does this mean locally? In nearby Kirrawee, in the Cook electorate, there's at least a 14-storey high-rise precinct being pushed, and there's no clarity about who these apartments are for or who will own them. Are they going to be owned by super funds? Are they going to be corporate rentals? What we do know is local residents are being left in the dark. We know we're not getting upgrades to infrastructure or to schools, and this government's reckless migration policy is just shoving the pressure onto state governments, which are then shoving the pressure onto local communities with no respite in sight.

That's the other side of the problem. If governments want to put more money in our suburbs, they also need to put money into infrastructure. You can't add thousands of units without adding schools for the children who'll live there. You can't pile on these high-rises without fixing the roads and the transport links that people rely on. Take this 14-storey development in Kirrawee—Flora Street and Oak Road are already gridlocked. I've had almost 200 signatures from people in my electorate asking for these roads to be upgraded and for the traffic signals to be upgraded, but, instead, what the government is now proposing is to put up a 14-storey apartment block. This is what happens when you get a federal Labor government teaming up with a state Labor government and a local Labor council. You get people destroying communities without the investment in infrastructure.

Councillor Meredith Laverty has done great work there, talking with local businesses in the Kirrawee area who are complaining. They don't know how they're going to manage congestion. They don't know where their customers will park. Local businesses such as Brick Pit Espresso, Smalls Cellar, Great White Tattoo, Kids Inspired, Peach's Pages Bookstore, Mix Pizza Bar, Mi Fizzio Physiotherapy and Kirrawee Barbers have all expressed concerns about where their customers will park and how people will get access to their businesses.

The coalition's position is clear. We believe in homeownership. We believe in policies that put Australians in the front yard of a home they own, not in line for a corporate lease. We believe in housing that rewards aspiration and that says, if you work hard and save hard, you can own a little piece of Australia to make your stand and raise your family. That means we support policies that increase supply for buyers, not just renters. We support first home buyers, apprentices and young people to get a home and a foothold into Australia and a foothold into their future. We support a housing system that rewards work and sacrifice, not speculation and subsidies for super funds. The choice before us is clear. Under Labor's model, homes are treated as just another financial instrument for big investors and their super fund mates. Under the coalition's model, Australians themselves can buy and own and secure their future.

We call on all levels of government—local, state and federal—to come together on housing supply and affordability. Communities like my community in Cook, Kirrawee, deserve transparency. Australians don't want to rent forever, which is exactly what Labor's scheme is proposing. We say make it 'build to own', not 'build to rent'. Stop giving subsidies to corporates and super funds. Start giving them to people. People want to own their own homes. If the plan is to pack in more high-rises than deliver the schools, and the roads and the transport links that communities desperately need, Labor's approach may deliver the profits to super funds, but it will never deliver the keys to a first home to the hardworking people in my electorate of Cook.

The coalition will always back hardworking Australians to get ahead and buy a home. Under Labor, many of these people will end up being tenants for life. We choose aspiration over dependency, ownership over renting and families over funds. That is our vision for housing, and that is why we'll oppose this flawed approach, fight for the great Australian dream and fight for hardworking young people and hardworking families. The hardworking everyday Australians in the seat of Cook know that I will fight for them. I will fight for better policies so they can own their own home and not be Labor renters for life.

See this speech in context