Alison Penfold (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

For generations, Australians understood a simple truth: if you worked hard, saved diligently and made responsible choices, you could own a home. That promise—the great Australian dream—is now slipping out of reach, and what attempts do we get from the Albanese government to fix the issue? We get more intervention, more distortion and more pressure on interest rates, making the problem worse, not better.

Take the government's expanded five per cent deposit scheme, for example. On the surface, it might sound compassionate. It might sound like it's helping young Australians into the market, but in reality it does something far more dangerous. It pushes up demand without fixing supply. And when you artificially inflate demand in a constrained market, what happens? Prices go up. That's not theory; that's basic economics. Instead of helping first home buyers, this scheme risks locking them in to higher levels of debt at higher prices, with thinner equity buffers. This government is effectively encouraging people to stretch themselves to the limit, to take on bigger mortgages with less margin for error. That is not responsible policy. While the government is busy pumping demand, where is the serious plan to boost supply? Where is the investment in regional infrastructure to unlock new land? Where is the reform to planning systems that choke development? Where is the support for local builders dealing with rising costs and workforce shortages?

Australia doesn't need more Canberra designed demand schemes; it needs practical policies that increase supply, reduce costs and support local economies. The coalition took such a policy to the last election—a $5 billion housing infrastructure program to fund shovel-ready enabling infrastructure, such as water, sewerage, power and telecommunications headworks, to unlock 500,000 houses that had stalled on greenfield sites. This is the type of investment that the housing industry and my electorate are calling for.

They're also calling for relief from the high-taxing regime on housing. The taxes, fees and regulatory charges new homebuyers must pay, which constitute up to 50 per cent of the total price of a new house and land package, effectively mean that they are spending 15 years of their 30-year mortgage solely paying off government taxes. As the Housing Industry Association said last year:

It is incongruous that governments set home building targets, while at the same time tax new home building even more. The more government tax new homes, the fewer homes will be built.

Despite this, the government is flirting dangerously with changes to the capital gains tax discount. Weakening the CGT discount is not some harmless tweak; it is a direct attack on private investors, who play a critical role in providing rental homes, especially in regional towns, where government housing simply cannot meet demand. With rents already up 22 per cent under Labor, this risks making a bad situation even worse. If you reduce the incentive to invest, you will reduce supply, and when rental supply falls rents rise. Again, this is not complicated.

We're already seeing rental shortages across regional Australia. Families are struggling to find a place to live. Employers cannot attract workers, because there's nowhere for them to stay. And yet, at precisely the wrong time, the government is considering policies that will push investors out of the market. This shows the government's fundamental misunderstanding of how housing markets actually work. You cannot tax your way to more homes, you cannot regulate your way to lower prices, and you certainly cannot solve a supply crisis by discouraging the very people who build and provide housing.

What Australia needs is a government that backs aspiration and the private sector, not one that punishes those things. We need policies that reward saving, encourage investment and unlock supply. That means investing in regional infrastructure, with investment in headworks, to open up new housing developments, streamlining planning and approvals, supporting the construction workforce and restoring confidence for investors, because, when investors have confidence, homes get built. When homes get built, supply increases. And, when supply increases, affordability improves. It's that simple.

Homeownership isn't just an economic goal. It's about a promise that, if you have a go, you can get ahead. That is the promise this government is putting at risk. That is the promise we must restore.

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