Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Both major parties have contributed to the absolute disaster that is our housing crisis here in Australia. It's decades of underfunding of public and social housing. In the postwar period, we were building up to 25 per cent of our housing stock as public and social housing. Now, public housing waitlists skyrocket while those in the greatest need are forced into the private rental market. It's the tax concessions for property investors. The capital gains tax discount introduced by the Howard government has absolutely skyrocketed inequality. Sixty per cent of the benefit flows to the top one per cent. That's $12.7 billion a year.

But Labor's latest policy innovation has sent prices skyrocketing even further: bigger mortgages for first home buyers. If you're a renter, saving a deposit is an even more distant goal. If you saved up for a house deposit last year, no, you didn't. That's what last week's data shows. Over the last year, the amount of time it takes to save up for a deposit increased by almost a year. Let me say that again. If you spent last year saving for a deposit, it is very likely that you are no closer to that deposit, because house prices have increased by so much. It's like the property industry has attached a long stick and a string to your head, whacked a house shaped carrot at the end and told you to start running.

Someone from the government might interject at this point—maybe they will—and say that they've allowed people to buy a house with a five per cent deposit. Great—some people get the carrot by paying 50 per cent of their income to service a truly diabolical debt. Meanwhile, the stick just got longer for everyone else, because this policy has pushed up house prices. That's a fact. If that were my policy, I'd certainly be embarrassed about it.

If there has ever been an example of how our political establishment has failed this country, you have to look no further than the housing market. Labor and the Liberals—and, on this question, they're the same—since the 1980s have both decided that housing is a commodity, not a place to live, not a right. They've deregulated the banks. They've introduced massive tax incentives for property investors. They've decimated public housing, which at least offered a competitive pressure on private housing. That is the Australia that they have built, a system designed to benefit the big banks and wealthy asset owners—not ordinary people, who are spending more and more of their income just trying to put a roof over their heads.

At this point, they're not even trying to hide it. The architect of Labor's housing policy that's driving up house prices and creating enormous profits for the big banks now works for one of those very big banks. The housing minister's top policy adviser, who played a central role in creating the five per cent deposit scheme—which has saddled first home buyers with enormous debt and sent house prices skyrocketing—has now accepted a role as executive manager, group strategy, at the Commonwealth Bank.

In Brisbane, house prices are set to increase by another 20 per cent over the next two years. In some areas, like Moggill in my electorate, prices have doubled in the last five years, and I don't need to tell you this is far outpacing wage growth. It's an absolute disaster. It's a generational disaster.

The policies of both major parties have caused this—underinvestment in public and social housing and the tax breaks for property investors. But it's Labor's five per cent deposit scheme that's kept that gravy train—house prices increasing even more—going. The scheme is literally designed as a gift to the banks. They get to lend more to people and collect more interest payments, but they're not taking any of the risk of that extra lending. No, that's on us; that's on the taxpayers. We're going to have to bail out the banks if any of this goes sideways.

How many meetings did he have with Commonwealth Bank lobbyists while he was in his role? Was he lining up this new job while crafting the devastating pro-bank policy? I think the people of Australia really deserve to know.

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