Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Sovereign Capability) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasurer stood up last night and hit us with hard news—that housing prices have increased more than 400 per cent since 1999. For many Australians, the dream of homeownership is dead. Every week people line up at open homes only to have their dreams crushed. I hear these stories in my community of Mandurah all the time. What's Labor's plan to fix this? New taxes on housing—taxes they ruled out before the last election.

The Treasurer failed to mention immigration. He didn't mention that, under Labor, Australia's population has grown by 1.8 million people, and that growth has been driven by 1.4 million migrants—at a time when our fertility rate has hit a low of 1.4 births per woman. We're not having enough children to replace ourselves, and Labor is running the fastest immigration program in our history.

The Treasurer also failed to mention that we've only built around half a million homes under Labor. No wonder young Aussies are locked out of the housing market. Now we learn that Labor will welcome another 750,000 migrants over the next three years. Labor is on target for two million migrants before the next election, yet we can't build fast enough to house these people.

Prime Minister, here's a tip. Why don't you tie immigration to housing builds? Look after Australians; get our people into a home, before you open our borders to everyone else.

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