Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Hansard source

Congratulations, Deputy President Brockman, on your election. I congratulate all returning senators who have been re-elected by their constituents. It is good that we can acknowledge the skills and talents of other senators. Senator Ananda-Rajah has just given us a very good example of someone who brings great expertise into the Senate and is able to speak in detail on matters of great importance to the Australian people. I know that the senator will give great service to the people of Victoria, as I'm sure we all endeavour to in our roles here in this parliament.

It is a great tradition that the Governor-General is able to give an explanation of what the government is seeking to achieve over the next three years. It is an opportunity for us now to consider what exactly has been alleged or committed or promised, and that of course is an important part of our democracy.

It is no great surprise that the Liberal-National coalition had a very disappointing and regrettable election result, so this has been a period of perhaps humiliation and embarrassment, and ultimately reflection. It has certainly been character building! I guess what I would say at the outset is it's clear to me that we have to do a better job of being constructive. We have to be constructive, and we need to work with other members and senators to give the Australian people better value—better value for the taxpayers. But it's also critical that we understand our constitutional role as the opposition. We must hold the government to account, not because we want to be mean or nasty but because that is our duty in this Westminster system that we have inherited from Britain. The opposition does perform a critical role working with other Independents and minor parties, particularly here in this Senate, to ensure that the government's promises are held up to the light, that there is scrutiny on the vast expenditure of public funds, that programs are administered competently and professionally and that the Australian people can look at us and say, 'Yes, the parliament is functioning, because the government is doing its job and the opposition is being constructive where it can while ensuring that, where there are failings in public administration, those are properly investigated and examined.' That is our job. So that is what we propose to do over these next three years.

In the Governor-General's address, there was an introductory mention of the economic settings, which, according to the government, are very good. I would say to you, Deputy President, that the economy isn't so flash, and, in fact, you can dress it up in any address you want, but the fundamentals are not good. We have very anaemic growth. We've had stubbornly high inflation. The private economy is shrinking, perhaps dying. Productivity is in the toilet. Now, after having put the country through three years of its economic management, which I would say is more about serving the vested interests that are close to the government rather than about serving the Australian people, the government says to us, 'Well, we need to raise taxes on superannuation and on personal income in order to pay for our decade of deficits that are now projected.' The Treasurer wants to talk about his tax reform record. After the election, the Treasurer gave an address to the Press Club where he talked about the government's fantastic tax reform efforts so far. They've done a great job! They would be the only government in living memory to have reintroduced a tax bracket and brought bracket creep back into the Australian tax system.

The Australian people pay the price of bracket creep. That is their money being stolen by the government because of inflation, and that is providing a huge base for this Treasurer's budget. He reintroduced a tax bracket which was abolished in the 46th Parliament. That's his tax reform record. What's his tax reform agenda for this parliament? Well, it is a tax on unrealised gains. It is unprecedented in Australian history that there would be a tax like this. If you have a paper gain, you pay the tax, even though you haven't sold the stock or realised that investment. The next year you might lose, but you won't get a refund. This is a crazy idea that will, in the long run, destroy one of the government's favourite things, which is compulsory superannuation. So far the tax reform record, I would say, is a big negative.

The question is: what will the government actually do on this productivity front? We are open for business. We are open to suggestions. But it's very important that we remind the Australian people that the record so far, from their first term, was 5,000 new regulations—5,000 new pieces of red tape; 400 bills through this parliament. Now they say they are zealots for cutting red tape. They want to see productivity. Well, we've seen negative productivity growth over the last year. One of the reasons for that is because the private economy is dying. The market in this country is being subsumed by the government.

We see today that half of the Australian population is now relying on the government for its dominant source of income. We are becoming an unrecognisable country, where you see the non-market sector, which is subsidised by the government, eat the market. That's where we are. It might be very popular in the short term, but in the long term the chickens will come home to roost because, ultimately, this will all be paid for through higher taxes. We're looking at 10 years of massive deficits and we're looking at productivity in the toilet. We're looking at, potentially, higher and higher wage claims, which are not linked to output. So this all ends in tears.

If the government is serious about productivity, it will be prepared to be honest with the Australian people and say that there are certain things that are being undertaken by the government today which cannot be afforded. We have to be honest about the limitations of governments because the government has no money of its own. All the money that is expended by governments is taxpayers' funds. The reason that Mr Chalmers is lodging a new tax on unrealised gains, on money which doesn't even exist—there has never been a tax in Australian history on money which doesn't exist. The reason we're having this ridiculous debate is that the government has run out of taxpayer funds. That's why it needs to pursue new revenue streams. It may be true that most Australians have nowhere near $3 million in their super account. That is true. Over the long run many will, but that is not the point. The point is that once you insert a crazy precedent like taxing money which isn't real, then that will be applied to other parts of the economy. We're getting towards a position in which Australia is becoming unrecognisable.

One of the major components of the Governor-General's speech dealt with housing. Housing is, of course, one of the key issues, particularly for younger Australians who feel that the deck is stacked against them. In the last parliament the government built, on average, 170,000 houses a year, which was down from almost 200,000 houses, on average, under the last coalition government. The government have a target to build 1.2 million new houses. That has failed alongside its failure to build more houses. What has it built? The government has built bureaucracies and not houses. They have built bureaucracies in Canberra with billions of dollars invested in them, which doesn't build houses. The Housing Australia Future Fund has $10 billion. It's acquired 300 houses and it has built 17 houses. It's a great return, I would say in a sarcastic fashion. For $10 billion, 17 houses and buying 300 is pretty bad. I mean, who could imagine that the government would be competing with Australians to buy houses, thereby making the supply problem worse? This will be a central issue for the next three years.

In her address, the Governor-General mentioned the Help to Buy scheme put in place by the government in the last parliament. This is a scheme in which the government gives up on the idea of individual ownership of houses and owns 40 per cent of your house. You'll be sitting around at Christmas dinner with mum and dad and the kids, and Mr Albanese and Dr Chalmers. It's not the Australian dream.

Their other scheme, build to rent, gives a tax cut to foreign fund managers, so they can own houses for 15 years—houses that Australians will never own. The government is prioritising socialisation of housing alongside institutional ownership of housing. Foreign fund managers, foreign governments and their sovereign wealth funds, and superannuation funds—these are the people and the institutions that the government thinks should own Australian houses. It's a pretty sick perversion of the Australian dream.

Perhaps the key charge against the government is on competence. During the election campaign Mr Albanese announced two more housing policies. There's a policy to build 100,000 houses. A government that couldn't build more than 17 houses in three years with $10 billion now wants to build 100,000 houses. It also wants to insure all mortgages with lenders mortgage insurance issued by the Canberra insurance company—'Acme insurance' maybe! And this insurance company is not going to be subject to any means testing; Clive Palmer's children could use the Labor Party's mortgage insurance scheme.

This is the kind of country we're becoming, where the government is now so large and doing so many things it doesn't need to do and charging taxpayers for them. These are not points that I enjoy making, other than to highlight that their record on housing has been an embarrassment. The Housing Australia Future Fund would probably be the greatest failure of public policy in my lifetime. Who could imagine that you could have a $10 billion fund that would build 17 houses in the ACT and acquire 300 houses, thereby making the housing problem worse? These are issues that will be of great public interest over the next three years.

I look forward to engaging in a constructive way which holds the government to account, even if it makes them squirm from time to time. That is a key role of this Senate. I look forward to working with the crossbench. They have an even more important role to play as we undertake our constitutional obligations. I would say to my own party and to the coalition that we need to do a better job to ensure that we look after all Australians. Australia is a diverse and wonderful country, and, I think, too often we have not done as well as we could in protecting minority interests. That is something that I look forward to working on with all of the senators over these next three years, as sensitive issues arise from time to time. Thank you very much.