Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This motion is as much of a joke as the modern Liberal Party, to be honest, because the modern Liberal Party is completely spooked. They are spooked by the fact that they had a 31 per cent primary vote reduction at the hands of One Nation. The National Party proudly declared that they were back, though they got a less than 10 per cent primary vote in that same by-election. All of the pivoting from the Liberal Party has been towards being in this position where they are unable to process what that means. Instead of taking some accountability and responsibility and listening to the Australian people about what might actually be happening here, the Liberal Party is just lurching further and further to the right—further and further towards the One Nation party that is taking up all of their votes and all of their supporters.

The Liberal Party has a lot of smart people in it—a lot of people who I genuinely respect, who are really smart people who care about this country. But, if you are going into an election and you're only talking about One Nation and preference deals with One Nation, and you're going into an election only spouting policies so that you can compete with One Nation, and your whole focus in everything you talk about is just One Nation, One Nation, One Nation—well, why on earth would the voters of Farrer do anything other than pick the real version, not the Diet Coke version? And that's exactly what has happened. The people of Farrer have said to the Liberal Party: 'If you're going to try and pretend to be someone else, we're not going to bother with you. We'll just go to the other person.'

The Liberal Party's demise right now is also evident in the fact that, when you actually look at the issues that are affecting Australians and the issues that people are raising that are leading them into the parties like One Nation, who have no practical solutions and are just seeking to divide our country on the basis of grievances, then you have to ask yourself: are they really listening to the needs of Australians?

And the truth is that Australians are hurting. They are hurting right now, because the cost-of-living pressures are real. When you add up all of the pressures to pay for your rent, pay for your mortgage, pay for the kids, pay for the groceries, pay for all of the things that add up, like fuel, things are really tough. And when inflation goes up, the people who get hurt the most are low- and middle-income Australians.

Then you come into this place and you ask: 'Alright, what are the things and what are the levers at our disposal to take the pressure off all of these hardworking Australians who really rely on the things that we can do in this place?' Then, when you look at each and every measure that we have put forward, the Liberal Party have come up with an excuse. Despite people like the shadow treasurer previously saying that they support it, and putting it in writing, and coming into the House of Representatives and saying they support these measures, they have turned around and said that this is somehow just a pox on Labor. I mean, the Australian people aren't listening to that sort of rubbish.

So let's go through housing as one example. The decoupling between housing prices and wage increases has happened over decades. Right now, young Australians are looking at houses and saying, 'It is just absolutely inconceivable that I could get into this market,' mainly because the amount of time it would take to save up a deposit is just too long when you've got all of these other expenses. Then, by the time they could get a mortgage, young Australians are also looking at the price of housing and saying, 'Well, that would just push me too far.'

What is the solution? The solution is that we need to build more homes. And we've set targets to work with the states and territories, who do have a lot of the levers. But, of course, at every opportunity, instead of saying, 'Well, at least the federal government is trying to push the states and territories to set housing targets,' they've criticised the fact that we've got them in the first place. When you look at the fact that we have put in so many different measures, like Help to Buy, to at least try and remove some of those barriers that I just described—the Liberal Party have said that that five per cent deposit scheme is support for billionaires. Over 2,000 people in my electorate and over 200,000 people across the country have used that five per cent deposit scheme, and they are not billionaires. When you look at the Help to Buy scheme—which is a shared equity scheme which allows the government to purchase a portion of the home so that someone can at least get into the housing market if they are an essential worker, a low-income or middle-income worker or a single parent—it's only 10,000 places, but, for every single one of those homeowners, it means that they are going to have stability and safety at home.

Then you have the fact that, right now, we're putting forward changes to negative gearing and capital gains. I understand that there is a whole range of commentary around it, and it's absolutely fair game around the actual policy discussion, if you want that. But there haven't been any discussions around the actual policy; it's only been around the politics. The policy is simple. The decoupling between house prices and wages has occurred over decades because we incentivised investors. While there are those who want to make sure that they are continuing to support investors, we want to support those hardworking Australians who want to buy their first home.

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