Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We can tell it is the last day of school in the Senate, can't we! In question time, Senator Brandis really could not defend the Prime Minister's response to Jon Faine's questioning and the Prime Minister's quite unthoughtful—let alone un-thought out—answer that Jon Faine should shell out for his own kids' homes. I noticed that there was a lot of yelling and a lot of unseemly behaviour in question time today. I think those on the other side thought that, the louder they yelled, the more people would believe them. There are a couple screechers over there, but there are also a couple of very loud males who were getting fairly hot under the collar today, going quite red and sort of losing it. I have to say that it was a pretty disastrous attempt all round by those on the other side today—bearing in mind that this could be the last question time of this parliament.

Senator Paterson made a contribution to today's speech. He was talking about how he and his wife are saving to buy a home, and I thought that was absolutely legitimate. But then he said, 'Because of the privileged position I am in, I'll be able to buy a home.' He is absolutely right—we are all in privilege positions. Him saying, 'Because of the privileged position I am in,' and implying—and he can come back and tell me I am wrong—that, because he earns the money he earns, and we all earn, in this place, he can afford a house means that people who are not earning high incomes cannot afford a house. If you do not work in a privileged position and you do not have parents that have enough money to be able to shell out for you, what do you do? We know this government have absolutely no plan around housing affordability. They have completely ignored the whole issue for about three years. The Treasurer keeps describing things as a 'national economic plan', but what sort of national economic plan does nothing to address the major cost facing every vulnerable household—that is, housing?

The government had the opportunity to make housing more affordable for low- and moderate-income families by introducing changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax. We have thoroughly researched and costed the plan to address this problem. We would be absolutely delighted for the government to adopt this plan as their own, as they have with a number of other things, not only in the budget but throughout the last three years—opening roads that we gave funding for and doing all sorts of things where we supplied the funding and they took all the credit. We would be absolutely delighted if they were to pick up our housing policy or to even come up with a housing affordability strategy themselves—because we have seen nothing. We certainly did not see anything in the budget, as the previous speakers on this side have said.

What can you say about a budget with no policy, no strategy, no ideas and no new financing option for affordable housing?

There is no increased Commonwealth rent assistance to assist renters, no increase to public housing funding to provide more public housing and no new money for rental affordability incentives to leverage private investment to provide more stock for renters.

I know that in Tasmania, my home state, houses are comparatively cheap compared to the rest of the country, but people still cannot afford to buy houses. My daughter—29 years old; married for a couple of years—is saving, saving, saving; she is trying to get into the housing market. It will take her a lot longer than it ever took us. And if you think back to the time when most of us were buying our first homes, we could do it at a fraction of the cost of our average income compared with what people are paying today for mortgages. And I would ask those on the other side to think that through.

Senator Williams's answer was for everyone to move to rural areas. I remind Senator Williams that it was his previous Treasurer who commented, 'Poor people don't drive cars'. In Tasmania there is no public transport—and I am pretty sure it is probably the same problem for a lot of the rest of regional and rural Australia. There is no public transport and there is no work, so there is not much point in just saying that we can solve this problem by everybody moving to rural and regional areas, because that is absolute rubbish! If there is no public transport— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.