Madonna Jarrett (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about housing and, in particular, the stark difference in approaches to housing between this Labor government and the LNP state government and the impact that's having in my Brisbane community and more broadly across Queensland. On this side of the House, we do not shy away from the housing challenges. That's why, in this year's budget, we made the decision to reform our tax system to make it easier for first home buyers to get into their first home. I heard from young people, their parents and their grandparents how the system is just not working. It's real. It's unfair. It's denying young people a chance at the Australian dream of homeownership.

The current system, as we know, gives big tax breaks to investors, helping them outbid first home buyers, locking young people out of the market. For decades, generous tax concessions have distorted wealth creation and investment. The current system allows investors to be taxed on only 50 per cent of a capital gain or, put simply, a profit, regardless of whether that profit or gain comes from economic growth or simply from rising asset prices due to inflation. Labor's reforms seek to restore the original principles: tax real gains, not inflationary gains. They're also about bringing the taxes we pay as a result of sitting on assets closer to the tax we pay as a result of working very hard. Under the proposed model, capital gains will be adjusted for inflation rather than receive a blanket discount. This is not radical. This is common sense.

In my first speech to this House, I did speak about one of the biggest challenges facing leaders right now being intergenerational inequality. To deliver fairness and the dream of owning their own home, every one of us in this chamber should be motivated to provide to the younger generations at least the same opportunities and aspirations that we had. We know that housing is a life-defining challenge for so many Australians. Many people are working hard and doing everything right, yet they still can't afford a place to call home. Young people are outbidding each other for rental properties, and families with kids—families that would have owned a home a generation ago—cannot get a foothold in the market now. We hear this from young people. We hear it from parents who cannot give their kids the stability they got as children. We hear it from renters whose rents are going up too high and too often. We also see it in the rising homeless population that is so evident in our suburbs and across our regions.

For too long the Commonwealth government had tapped out of the housing challenge. During the coalition's nine years in power, they neglected housing, to the point where they didn't even appoint a housing minister for most of their time in government. They built just 373 social and affordable homes over that entire period. The crisis wasn't created overnight, and it won't be fixed overnight. Since the Albanese Labor government was elected in 2022, real progress has been made right across the country. When it comes to housing, Labor has taken the Commonwealth from being the negligent bystander that it was under the former coalition government to being the boldest and most ambitious government since the Second World War. We're tackling the housing crisis from every angle and we're delivering.

This is in stark contrast to what's unfolding in Queensland under the LNP state government. They have scrapped the mandates under the State Facilitated Development program that require developers to include affordable housing in new builds. Under the LNP, up to 10,000 social and affordable homes across the state have now been cancelled. The SFD scheme was introduced by a Labor government in 2024 and included a mandate that at least 15 per cent of homes within those developments be affordable. The LNP claims it is cutting red tape, but let's call it what it is: it's delivering for its donor mates, the property developers. Peak body Q Shelter claimed that the policy shift risks delivering more market housing that remains out of reach for low- and moderate-income households.

Then, just last week, it was reported in the Brisbane Times that the LNP government had not managed the social housing register and that, at the end of last year, there were almost 30,000 applicants for social housing in Queensland. This comes on top of the introduction of the three-strikes-and-you're-out policy. It's a cruel policy. I say to the people of Brisbane and Queensland that you should demand better out of the LNP. They have abandoned you, and they have given up the fight for more affordable housing. The LNP is putting the interests of property owners and property developers over the interests of Queensland. In the middle of a housing crisis, they would rather help developers build high-end apartments while turning a blind eye to affordable solutions. I say to the Queensland LNP: stop putting developers before Queenslanders and do your bit.