Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We can walk and chew gum. Here's the oil: we can actually make this society and economy fairer, we can help fix the housing affordability crisis and we can take some of the pressures out of the financial system by doing a few simple things. We could actually do it this week if the government had the guts to bring forward some decent legislation.

We talk about socialism, capitalism and everything in between. At the end of the day, it's ironic that what's causing the housing affordability crisis in this country—and inequality—is the market system itself, and the perversion of that market system by governments, successive Labor and Liberal governments, who have put in place investor subsidies and perverse incentives that allow investors to go into the market and get taxpayer deductions for buying real estate and building their wealth.

We know that investors are the problem in our housing market, especially in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. They get tax deductions on their capital gains when they sell a property, which of course makes it more profitable for them. They get to claim, through negative gearing, expenses—especially interest expenses—against their rental income. We all know this. Both these policies were put in place a long time ago to help stimulate the real estate market, and of course the real estate industry loved that. Mostly older Australians who have built their nest eggs have been able to invest in property and do well out of it, thank you very much.

The HILDA Survey recently showed how stark the picture is in this country, where younger Australians and lower-income Australians are facing a housing affordability crisis. In some categories, their homeownership levels have fallen by over 30 per cent since the last five-year survey was done. That's how bad it's got in this country. But it's also about financial risks in the system.

I had to recently get in my bathtub at home and have a bubble bath, with a beer, and do a video to promote this particular issue. Yes, after we had a very good—