Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Housing) | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the:

(a) Government is reducing housing supply in the midst of a housing supply crisis;

(b) Government's higher taxes will lead to 35,000 fewer homes, higher rents, and less housing investment;

(c) Government's higher taxes add to the cost of housing, with existing taxes, fees and charges already adding up to 50 per cent to the cost of a new home; and

(d) Government is already more than 100,000 dwellings behind its own 1.2 million housing target and is projected to miss the target by well over 200,000 dwellings; and

(2) calls on the Government to axe these higher taxes immediately, that are a sledgehammer on the economy.

Labor talks a big game on housing, but they repeatedly fail to deliver. What this motion speaks to today is what was described as an 'ambitious'—but I would say 'delusional'—target by those opposite to deliver 1.2 million homes over five years. We're only a couple of years into that five-year period, and what have we seen? The Labor government is almost 100,000 dwellings behind their own housing target and projected to miss the target by about 200,000.

Sadly, you can't solve a housing crisis by making housing more expensive, which is exactly the process that this Labor government is undertaking. Sadly, the great Australian dream is turning into a nightmare under this Labor government. The recent budget that was handed down by the Treasurer some 48 days ago gives a bit of a pointer on where this government is constantly going wrong in relation to housing supply.

Treasury has provided some very helpful commentary in the budget papers. On page 158 it gives away the game here, which is that all of these new higher taxes that they're proposing on property will actually lead to 35,000 fewer homes. That's right. This Labor government could have done nothing on tax—left it as it was—and, in fact, that deficit of 35,000 homes would be immediately erased. These higher taxes add to the cost of housing, with existing taxes, fees and charges already adding up to 50 per cent of the cost of a new home. Every extra tax makes projects less viable. Less investment will mean we see fewer homes getting built. It shows up in the price of a new home. It shows up in the rent a family pays each week.

If your own Treasury says your policy means fewer homes, why on earth would you have gone ahead with it? Labor says, time and time again, that housing is a priority, but its policies are making matters worse. A big piece of the puzzle as to what's happened over the last four years of this Labor government is that we have seen them fail to address the two parts of housing that have led to this crisis: supply and demand. The Prime Minister has said repeatedly that they are throwing everything they can at supply. Newsflash—that's not working.

The second part of housing is in relation to demand. What we've seen is Labor overseeing record migration. Under Labor, Australia has already taken in about 1.4 million people—equivalent to the population of Adelaide—far more people than homes have been built for. We know that, on their current trajectory, that's scheduled to hit about two million. It's pretty simple mathematics that you should not bring in more people to this country than you can house. Australians deserve better than that.

We know that, if you look at the maths on this, the annual migration rate has stalled above 300,000 per year and the annual rate of housing completions is stuck at about 170,000 per year. You can see that this has created a housing supply shortage of around 400,000 people since Labor came to office. This is a problem that, sadly, this Labor government just simply won't address.

I want to touch on something that I noticed in the Gold Coast Bulletin last Friday. It was an article that was headed: 'Building collapses up by 10 per cent. Industry hit by rising costs.' The other part of this equation is that the economic conditions that have been created by this Labor government simply do not support a working property development sector. So the coalition has already announced three points in a very simple plan, and there'll be more to come. First, link housing to migration. Second, cut unnecessary red tape. We've seen the National Construction Code blow out to more than 2,300 pages. Finally, we've announced a $5 billion housing-enabling infrastructure fund. These are just three simple things that the coalition say would make a difference to housing and fixing this housing crisis that's been created under this Labor government.

Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder for this motion?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Kara Cook (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Housing is one of the defining challenges of our generation. Across Bonner, it's one of the biggest issues that people raise with me. For too long, too many Australians have felt that the housing system is stacked against them. A generation ago, an average family could work hard, save carefully and eventually buy their first home. It wasn't easy. It took time, discipline and sacrifice. Today I meet with young Australians who are working just as hard and doing everything right, yet they're still wondering whether they'll ever own a place to call home.

This housing challenge has been decades in the making. It wasn't created overnight, and no responsible government should pretend it can be solved overnight. But, under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Commonwealth is back at the table. The Albanese Labor government has a $47 billion Homes for Australia plan focused on three simple priorities: building more homes, making it easier to buy and making renting fairer. That's because the long-term answer to housing affordability is straightforward: we need to build more homes. More housing means more housing affordability.

That's why Labor has set an ambitious target of 1.2 million new, well-located homes over five years. We're cutting red tape, working with the states and territories to speed up planning, investing in housing-enabling infrastructure and training the skilled workforce needed to build more homes. We're making real progress. Since coming to government, more than 660,000 homes have been built across Australia. New home commencements are up 26 per cent compared with this time last year. Construction cost inflation, which reached 17 per cent under those opposite, has now fallen to 2.5 per cent, below general inflation.

Building houses isn't simply about approving developments. Homes don't build themselves. They need roads, water, sewerage and power. That's why Labor is investing another $2 billion through our Local Infrastructure Fund, providing the pipes, pavements and powerlines needed to unlock housing developments that otherwise simply wouldn't happen. Together with our existing investments, Labor is now investing $6.3 billion in housing-enabling infrastructure, more than 50 times what the coalition invested over almost a decade in government. This latest investment alone will help unlock an additional 65,000 homes for Australians. We're also investing in apprentices, TAFE and vocational education because we know we need more tradies to build the homes Australia needs.

We're not just building more homes; we're also making it easier for Australians to buy one. Labor expanded the five per cent deposit scheme to eligible first home buyers because we know the biggest hurdle for many Australians isn't the mortgage. It's saving the deposit. In Bonner, more than 500 first home buyers have already used this program. Nationally, more than 250,000 Australians have now achieved homeownership through Labor's five per cent scheme, and our Help to Buy program is helping another 40,000 low- and middle-income Australians realise the dream of homeownership.

I've heard those opposite dismiss these measures as gimmicks. Having a roof over your head is not a gimmick. Cutting years off the time to save a deposit is not a gimmick. Homeownership is not a gimmick to the hundreds of people in Bonner who now have a place to call home. It's life changing. We're also making renting fairer. We've introduced Build to Rent to encourage more long-term rental housing. We've delivered back-to-back increases to Commonwealth rent assistance, lifting the maximum rate by more than 50 per cent, and we're working with the states and territories to improve renters' rights, including banning no-fault evictions and introducing minimum rental standards. We've also passed important tax reforms to help level the playing field for first home buyers, because it shouldn't be easier to buy your 10th investment property than it is to buy your first home.

We're also investing in the homes Australians need most. More than 7,000 new social and affordable homes have already been completed with Commonwealth assistance, and another 23,000 are in planning or under construction. That stands in stark contrast to those opposite, who delivered just 373 social and affordable homes over a decade in office. Labor is committed to getting people into their own home. We are committed to ensuring that five per cent deposits are taken up in record numbers, and we're committed to ensuring Australians can get into a home of their own.

Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to this motion moved by the member for Fadden, and it is a brilliant motion because it calls out this government and calls out the fact that Labor is doing the one thing that you should never do in a housing crisis—make supply harder. The rule is simple: if you tax something, you get less of it. If you tax investment and if you tax housing investment, you get fewer home. If you tax builders, buyers and investors, you get higher rents and a smaller pipeline. Even Labor knows that supply is the problem, because we've seen the housing minister say that the crisis has 'one principal reason: we have not built enough homes'. If the government could do one thing, it would be to 'build more homes more quickly'. And I agree with that.

The question then becomes: what is this government doing? They're not clearing the road. They're not cutting the costs. They're not backing the builders. They've reached for the oldest Labor instinct in the book—tax, tax, tax. These higher taxes are not a housing plan. They're a housing handbrake. Their own policy, according to their own budget papers, means that 35,000 fewer homes will be built. It means higher rents and it means less private investment. We know that, if we want to rely on somebody to build new houses, we rely on the private sector over the government any day.

Taxes, fees and charges already add up to 50 per cent of the cost of a new home. Up to 50 per cent of the cost of the new homes are made up of taxes and charges and fees. Naturally, Labor looked at a house already drowning in tax and thought, 'Let's add another brick.' This isn't reform. It's vandalism with a spreadsheet. Labor claims that first home buyers will be better off. Well, please. We're not seeing that, and Australians are seeing through that incredibly outdated and unrealistic logic. If first home buyers were supposedly lining up to grab these homes, we would see clearance rates being very different to what they are now, because clearance rates, currently, are cratering, and auctions would not be going cold if that were the case.

Labor has not created confidence; they have spooked the market. And their own target of 1.2 million homes promised is already in the bin. We're seeing that it is more than 100,000 dwellings behind, and Labor is projected to miss their target by well over 200,000.

It's not just underperformance; it's a government that's failing at its own plan. Migration is making the pressure even worse, because population growth has grown by about 1.9 million since 2022 while fewer than 615,000 new homes have been completed. So Labor has brought in more people than the housing market could absorb while at the same time failing to bring in enough tradies to build the homes we need. You can't run a big migration program on a small housing pipeline.

Then there's red tape. Labor promised to cut it. Instead, builders are facing thousands of rules, a National Construction Code has blown out past 2,000 pages, and costs keep rising. And Labor is prioritising environmental activism over price, which Australians tell me day in day and day out that they do not want to see. They're focused on a government that needs to bring the cost of living down and the cost of homeownership down. We've seen a government whose net zero obsession has infected the National Construction Code, forcing all new home buyers to live in woke palaces at the expense of affordable housing. You can't regulate your way to more homes; you need builders onsite, not buried in paperwork.

The coalition's approach is common sense. You build more homes, lower taxes, have less red tape, tie migration to housing completions and have skilled migration that brings in the tradies we need. On the other side, Labor's plan is higher taxes, more regulation and more gimmicks. You can't tax your way out of a housing crisis, you can't regulate your way out of a housing crisis and you can't spin your way out of one. These taxes are an absolute sledgehammer on the Australian economy and on the Australian dream, and they should be axed.

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

It's quite farcical, isn't it, that this lazy Liberal Party can't even come into this chamber and second their own private member's motion. It's unbelievable that they don't have someone in this chamber capable of seconding this motion. But I digress.

Owning a home has always been part of the Australian dream. It represents security, stability and the opportunity to build a better future for yourself and your family. For generations, Australians have worked hard with the belief that, if they put in the effort, homeownership would be within reach. Today, for too many Australians, particularly young people and first home buyers, that dream has become increasingly difficult to achieve. That is why the Albanese Labor government has made housing one of our highest priorities. We are focused on making homeownership more accessible, increasing housing supply and ensuring that more Australians have the opportunity to own a home of their own.

Nowhere is that commitment clearer than in the North. More than 2,000 local residents have already purchased a home through the Home Guarantee Scheme, allowing those eligible to buy with as little as a five per cent deposit. Behind every one of those figures is a family that has been able to move from renting to owning and to invest in their future with confidence. We're also delivering one of the most significant housing investments that South Australia has seen in decades. Our landmark agreement with the South Australian government will unlock around 17,000 new homes across Adelaide's northern suburbs. Importantly, almost 7,000 of those homes will be reserved for first home buyers, giving thousands more Australians the opportunity to enter the housing market.

Delivering more homes requires more than simply identifying land. Communities need roads, water infrastructure, utilities and the essential services that allow new neighbourhoods to grow. That is why the Commonwealth is investing almost $668 million to remove the barriers that have delayed housing developments and constrained supply. A $300 million concessional loan will expand water infrastructure throughout Adelaide's northern suburbs, directly supporting the delivery of around 4,000 additional homes. A further $50 million concessional loan will establish a 'first home buyer only' precinct within the Playford Alive urban renewal project, creating another 400 homes reserved exclusively for Australians purchasing their first property.

Alongside that investment, the Commonwealth is providing $133.6 million in grant funding, matched by the South Australian government, to deliver a further 750 dwellings through the complementary First Home Buyers program. These investments are about far more than construction. They are about creating opportunities for families, supporting local jobs, strengthening communities and ensuring that housing supply keeps pace with South Australia's growing population.

This approach stands in stark contrast to what Australia experienced under the former coalition government. For much of their nine years in office they did not even appoint a dedicated housing minister. At a time when affordability pressures were increasing and supply was falling behind demand, there were no national leadership, no coordinated plan and no meaningful investment to address the challenge. The Albanese Labor government has fundamentally changed that approach. We have committed $47 billion towards the most ambitious national housing agenda in generations. The Homes for Australia plan will make it easier to buy, make it better to rent, and build more homes. We have taken the Commonwealth from being a passive observer of Australia's housing challenges under those opposite to being an active partner in increasing supply and improving affordability.

Housing affordability cannot be solved through slogans or political pointscoring. It requires governments that are prepared to invest and tackle the structural barriers that have held back new housing for too long. That is exactly what the Albanese Labor government is doing. Unfortunately, whenever these reforms have come before this parliament, those opposite have chosen obstruction over solutions. The three right-wing parties opposite—the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation—all voted against our plan to cut income taxes and make the housing market fairer. When presented with the opportunity to support practical measures that make life easier for Australians, they chose to vote no.

Australians deserve better than that. They deserve a government that is prepared to take responsibility, make the necessary investments and deliver the homes that our growing nation needs. Whether it's helping first home buyers purchase with a five per cent deposit, unlocking thousands of new homes across Adelaide's northern suburbs or investing in the infrastructure that allows communities to grow, the Albanese Labor government is getting on with the job.

Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is in the middle of a housing crisis. Rents are too high, mortgages are too high and construction costs are too high. Meanwhile, young Australians are being told, 'Work hard, save and be patient.' The dream of homeownership moves further and further away from them. At the very moment that Australia needs more housing, this government is pursuing policies that will result in fewer homes—and we know from this government's budget papers precisely how many fewer homes: Treasury has estimated 35,000 fewer homes. And while this government is building fewer homes, it's letting our population policy grow uncontrolled. We have had almost 1½ million new arrivals into Australia, at a time when we have an undersupply of homes. It's no surprise that, when you have an undersupply of homes and an oversupply of people who need to be housed in homes, prices and unaffordability go up.

We should be doing everything possible to get more homes built. We should be backing tradies, builders, investors, first home buyers and families. We should be removing barriers, not adding new ones. We should be encouraging supply, not punishing people who invest in it. But this government's been doing the opposite. We know they promised 1.2 million new homes. That was the target, that was the commitment. But this government is already well behind, with independent forecasts showing that Australia is going to miss that target by well over 200,000 houses. That's not a rounding error. That's hundreds of thousands of Australians for whom there should be homes that they can bid on, that they can live, but that do not exist.

Now, on top of this failure, the government wants to make the problem worse. At a time when Australians desperately need more housing supply, we're going to have 35,000 fewer homes. That means fewer opportunities for first home buyers, tighter rental markets, higher rents, more competition for every available property and more pressure on families already struggling to keep up. It also means another generation being asked to pay the price for bad government policy. I recently had an 18-year-old constituent write to me and say:

As one of four children, I worry about what the future will look like for my generation. We're growing up in a time when housing feels increasingly out of reach, the cost of living continues to rise, and financial security seems harder to achieve than it was for previous generations.

Our parents have worked hard, made sacrifices, and gone without many things so they could save, invest, and create opportunities for our future. It is disheartening to see the rules continually change after families have spent years making responsible decisions based on the policies that were in place.

We are often told that if we work hard, save our money, and plan for the future, we will be rewarded. However, when the taxes and regulations continue to change, it feels like the goalposts keep moving.

I couldn't have put it better myself. This is about goalposts being moved on Australians who did the right thing and trusted this government. It's about parents who worked hard, saved carefully and invested responsibly only to be told by this government that they are now the problem. It's about young Australians who are trying to build their own future and save for a deposit, but even the deposit for their house has gone up. The tax on that has gone up by up to 100 per cent. It's about young Australians who are trying to build their own future but keep watching the government make that future harder to reach. It's about aspiration, and aspiration isn't something we should punish; it's something we should encourage and reward. Labor looks at investment and sees a tax target. Labor looks at aspiration and sees something to regulate. Labor looks at a housing crisis and somehow decides the answer is higher taxes and less supply.

Housing is already weighed down by taxes, fees, charges, approvals, delays and regulation. One study found the cost of housing in Sydney is up to 50 per cent government and taxes. So why are we taxing it more? Why are we regulating it harder? Government is already taking too much, slowing down too much and making it harder and more expensive to build. Yet Labor's answer is more tax, more intervention, more uncertainty and less housing. This isn't housing policy; it's economic vandalism. A serious government would focus on supply, get immigration where it needs to be and put Australians first. Sadly, this government's not doing that.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.