Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

but he has gone the off the rails since then. I will withdraw that because he is not here to defend himself, but here is what he said in September 2008 when this bill was being debated:

Any government initiative designed to tackle the current decline in housing affordability is certainly most welcome.

This was in 2008, before the market went completely berserk. He also said:

There can be no doubt that many Australian families are dismayed over rising housing costs. One of the goals for every parent is to see their children being able to afford their own home.

I pause in the quote here, because the fact is I think we have seen a generation of people who will never be able to afford their own home—a generation of people who will probably rent for life.

We can have an argument about whether that is an ideal state of affairs or not, but the fact is that we need to be dealing with security of tenancy and tenure for those people and not assume that it is (a) that everyone's aspiration or (b) that everybody will eventually, one way or another, find their way into their own home. Senator Bernardi went on to say:

Families and young people really do need every help that the government can give them so they can continue to save and afford their own home. This was recognised by the former coalition government last year when it committed to a similar scheme.

He made a few criticisms then about the Rudd scheme but, nonetheless, the coalition voted for it; the Labor Party obviously brought it forward and today the axe is coming down on it with no real explanation.

So, Senator Cormann, before we commit these amendments to vote, I would like to know when the coalition—the ERC or whoever it was—decided to axe this incentive, was any discussion undertaken with people in the housing affordability sector or people trying to get into their own homes? Was there any discussion about advertising, for example, or going out and encouraging people to take up this concession? Or was the decision made rather more arbitrarily than that?