George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

My advice to that person is: don't vote Labor, because if the Labor Party were to be elected with the housing policy that it announced at the time of the 2016 election then housing prices would rise. The key to improving housing affordability, Senator Cameron, as many a study has shown, is increasing supply: more houses, more apartments and greater connectivity. Don't just take it from me; this is what the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, who again I have cause to quote, said to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics. This is what Dr Lowe said on 22 September last year:

The solution to that—and I am going to sound like a broken record here—is housing supply…

As he said in March of last year:

From a longer-term perspective, the challenge of providing an adequate supply of reasonably priced housing for an increasing population rests largely on the flexibility of land supply and, in particular, the supply of well-located land.

This is because high housing costs largely reflect high land prices…

Mr Fraser, the Secretary to the Treasury, made a similar observation. He said in October last year at Senate estimates:

I think housing affordability is a massive issue.

It is bound up with a wealth of other issues. They all seem to me to come back to other questions which are related to microeconomic reforms, issues of land supply, regulation, building costs and also infrastructure.

So, Senator Cameron, that is the solution, particularly in the Sydney basin, the most expensive housing market in Australia: greater supply and great release of land for housing development. (Time expired)