Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I speak to the electors of Wright, they ask me: 'How do I get ahead? How do I build a house? How do I get my foot onto the home ownership ladder?' I say to them, 'The task that is in front of you is being made so much more difficult today under the government settings than what they have been in the past.' It's a really easy narrative to outline for them. They are quite surprised when I share with them why it is harder. I say to them: 'When we were last in government, we have 415,000 apprentices and trainees in the system. Today, under Labor, there's just over 100,000 fewer apprentices.' That is 100,000 fewer electricians, chippies, plumbers, sparkies, tilers, plasterers—every trade we need to build that house that they are aspiring to get into. So it is little wonder that, when you start to have a look at the housing completions, you see that they're tanking as well.

When we left government, we were doing 200,000 houses a year. That's not a number that I bring to the house lightly. That's a number espoused by Simon Croft from the Housing Industry Association. Today, under Labor's watch, did that number in the last reporting period get to 200,000? No, they could not have, because they're not building the skills we need with the apprentices. They've dropped the ball on that. They actually delivered much fewer than 200,000. They delivered 170,000 houses last year.

The reason we opposed the housing and the budgetary money to go to Labor was that those schemes are not working. They are not driving. In fact, they're having the opposite effect in some regard to the five per cent scheme, particularly, where they're actually pushing up housing prices. There's ample evidence out there to support that. When you look at the aspirant housing targets that Labor have set, you will see that, in order to meet them, they need to get to an average of 255,000 houses a year. Never in Australia's history has that average number been achieved. In the best year, housing completion rates were 225,000. These guys think they're going to get it to 255,000 without investing in the apprentices that we need for tomorrow.