Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

What the senator is referring to really is the fact that, despite all our good policies, or maybe partly as a consequence of the strong economic growth this country has had, there has been the interaction of demand and supply for housing which has forced housing prices up. It is a fact that the price of housing has increased. Why has the price of housing increased? Well, demand has obviously risen because we have low inflation and we have had relatively low interest rates under our period in office. We have had an extraordinarily strong economy and very high confidence at consumer and residential level which gives consumers the confidence to borrow funds to invest in their own housing. The problem with the housing market is that you do not have an adequate supply response to the obvious increase in demand. Why don’t we have a supply response? Because guess who controls the supply of land? State and local governments—we have six state Labor governments who control the supply of housing.