Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing. The Insurance Council of Australia have warned that Labor's reckless expansion of its Help to Buy Scheme will drive up house prices by 6.6 per cent next year, and for years afterwards. They have said:

… if one asks who is most likely to be priced out of the market … it is lower-income first home buyers …

That means a young couple buying a home worth $800,000 today could be forced to pay more than $52,000 extra. Why is it that when Labor fails Australians pay the price?

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fadden for his question. We have a housing crisis in our country that's been cooking for 40 years. If there's one thing that we can do that's important about this problem, we need to build more homes more quickly because more housing means more affordable housing for all Australians. That's why our government took a ruinous situation that was created by those opposite and, out of that, has built the boldest and most ambitious housing agenda in our country that a Commonwealth government has had since the postwar period.

At the centre of that $43 billion of investment is our plan to build more homes for Australians, and we're getting on with delivering that. We're building 55,000 social and affordable homes around our country—5,000 are finished; 25,000 are in planning or construction—and we've set a national ambition to try to build 1.2 million homes over the coming five years. The Prime Minister has stood up and taken some accountability—not like those opposite who said: 'Housing's got nothing to do us with us. We're not going to do anything about it. We're going to be so checked out of housing we're not even going to have a housing minister.' Our government has stood up and taken some accountability.

The member asked me about first home ownership. What he is really saying is that, in the context of extreme housing challenges that face young people in all of our electorates around this chamber, we should look people in the eye and say, 'We're not going to do anything to help you.' That is what you are arguing. We take a fundamentally different view. We actually talk to those young people and we say to them: 'We think it is manifestly unfair that you face different housing opportunities than your parents and grandparents. We are stepping up and we are doing something about it.'

At the centrepiece of our approach to homeownership is us expanding the five per cent deposit program to every single first home buyer in the country, and we are immensely proud to be doing it. For those who represent the City of Sydney, young couples in your electorates are having to save for 11 years to buy their first home. Because of our government's policies, we are bringing that timeline back to two or three years. One of the things that hasn't got sufficient publicity is that in that eight-year period a couple on a normal income is going to pay a quarter of a million dollars in rent. And now, instead of paying off someone else's mortgage, they're getting to pay off their own because of our government.

We will not shy away from the support that we are offering to young people around the country. The simple truth is that, after the complete bin fire that those opposite left us on housing, we are having to do all of the things all at the same time. That's why we've got a $43 billion agenda. We are building more homes, we are getting renters a better deal, and we are helping more Australians into homeownership. And we're going to continue to do it for the next 2½ years.