Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

We are indeed in a housing affordability crisis. We've seen the ratio of house prices to incomes more than double over the past decade. Increasingly, homeownership is no longer a dream or an aspiration; it's something that's entirely out of reach for many ordinary Australians. This is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's homeownership that provides the best basis for security in retirement. Secondly, Australians who own their own homes tend to have the most financially secure environments, because homeownership is an important enabler for family formation and gives people the confidence and courage to have children, bring up a family and contribute to Australia in that way. Thirdly, it also leads to stronger communities because people who own a house in a neighbourhood are more likely to get involved in community groups and sporting clubs, to look out for their neighbours and to protect the asset.

For all these reasons—security in retirement, family formation and social stability—homeownership is not only an important aspirational goal for individual Australians but a collective goal for us as a nation. The fact that we are currently failing so many younger Australians by pushing this dream out of reach is really a breach of our social and intergenerational compact with the next generation of Australians. We are making their lives harder than previous generations have had it. It is also, at the margins, fuelling homelessness by pushing housing affordability out of reach for so many.

The unaffordability of housing is overwhelmingly a supply issue. We have not been building enough new homes in Australia to accommodate the increase in our population both from natural increase—births, family formation—and through immigration. Until we grapple with and address the supply-side elements of this crisis we are not going to be able to solve it or bring down housing prices.

Labor's big plan for housing affordability is to, firstly, build 1.2 million new homes by 2030. That's their housing target. That would require some 250,000 homes to be built each year. But, currently, only 170,000 new homes are being built each year. That compares to about 190,000 new homes that were built each year under the coalition. So the Labor government is currently 80,000 homes per year short of its target, which means it will fall about 400,000 homes short of its 1.2 million target.

This isn't just a political point. The incoming government brief prepared by Treasury and released at least partially under FOI makes quite clear in its advice to government that this housing target is not going to be met. Treasurer Jim Chalmers says he is relaxed about that advice. Well, I don't think it's a cause for relaxation. I think it's a cause for a high degree of concern.

The Labor government's signature policy to deal with this crisis is the Housing Australia Future Fund. That's a $10 billion fund, but to date its efforts to address the housing crisis to improve housing supply have fallen well short of the mark. Details released in Senate estimates and in response to questions and FOIs revealed that, out of that fund, only 17 new houses in Canberra have been built and some 340 homes have been acquired and converted. So, for a $10 billion fund, the government's signature policy to address the housing crisis, we have had 17 new homes built and 340 acquired from the existing market, the existing stock, not adding at all to our housing supply. That is a woeful failure, and I do hope that the Housing Australia Future Fund can improve its performance. What this bill is designed to do is to make sure that, at the very least, the Housing Australia Future Fund does not contribute to some of the problems and causes that have got us into this crisis.

There is clear evidence that the militant action, rampant corruption and criminality of the CFMEU, the main construction union, has inflated construction costs across the sector by about 30 per cent on major projects, which has fed right through the sector. You hear from anyone who is involved in the construction of housing how much costs have gone up and how much the involvement of the CFMEU has pushed up costs on key worksites. Just today, in fact, on the front page of the Australian Financial Review, there is another story about CFMEU corruption and criminality and its administrator Mark Irving demanding that the government shift their focus to crime and corruption across the industry. This is the administrator that was appointed reluctantly by the Labor government to take over the CFMEU when public allegations of corruption and criminality became too big to withstand. He is saying that the government needs to shift its focus to crime and corruption across the industry.

Remember that one of the very first acts of this government when it was elected three years ago was to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission. That was to abolish the independent cop on the beat that, as it was meant to, was doing a good job of clamping down on and targeting unlawful, corrupt and criminal behaviour by the CFMEU. The result of the abolition of the ABCC and a government that has provided tacit support to the CFMEU and has accepted sizeable political donations from the CFMEU has been that corruption, criminality and intimidation are being allowed to flourish in the construction sector. We are all paying for it, whether as taxpayers in contributing to state government infrastructure projects or as consumers of housing, as we all are, by the fact that construction costs have gone up right across the sector.

This bill would prohibit the Housing Australia Future Fund from investing into housing assets or entities that are financed by Cbus Super, and that's to ensure that taxpayer funds are left out of the criminal hands of the CFMEU. This is because Cbus Super and the CFMEU are effectively joined at the hip. They are two sides of the same coin. The CFMEU currently has three members sitting on the Cbus board. In the 2022-23 financial year, Cbus paid the CFMEU $1.25 million, including $233,000 paid to the CFMEU's Victorian branch—this is the most discredited branch of the CFMEU—for a sponsorship agreement. What we should be seeing from a government serious about the housing crisis, bringing down construction costs and improving housing supply is the Labor government pushing Cbus to cut ties with the CFMEU. This would mean kicking the three CFMEU directors off the board and stopping the endless flow of workers' money—because it is their money within Cbus—to the CFMEU. Given, though, that those close links continue and Labor has not taken those actions, allowing Cbus to participate in the Housing Australia Future Fund risks the integrity of that fund, and it risks rewarding the CFMEU for its criminality, its corruption and its contribution to inflating construction costs across our sector.

To date, Cbus is the only super fund to have publicly committed to funding the Housing Australia Future Fund. In fact, it was in November 2022, before the scheme was even legislated, that Wayne Swan, the Cbus chair, committed $500 million of Cbus members' money to the Housing Australia Future Fund. This commitment was made despite Cbus officials having voiced concerns to the Treasurer's office, later revealed under Freedom of Information requests, that the design of the scheme would mean no investor would provide capital upfront. It has always been clear, right from the very beginning, that Cbus has a vested interest in the Housing Australia Future Fund. As I said earlier, numerous sources, including the Real Estate Institute of Queensland have highlighted that the conditions of the CFMEU enterprise bargaining agreements are leading to a 30 per cent increase in construction costs across the sector, and the consequence is that the construction costs of homes that we need to fix the supply of housing are higher and that means construction happens more slowly.

Despite purporting and promising to take a hard line against criminality in the CFMEU, Labor has refused to consider deregistering the union. Labor has also refused to consider restarting or recommencing the Australian Building and Construction Commission. In fact, Labor and Cbus have refused to recognise any probity, integrity or ethical issue whatsoever with CFMEU representatives continuing to sit on the board of a $94 billion fund of workers' money. Cbus has refused to cut its ties with the CFMEU. Until such time as Cbus cuts its ties with the CFMEU—no longer channels it money and no longer allows CFMEU members to sit on its board—it's an inappropriate party through which to undertake government business, and it's an inappropriate entity for the Housing Australia Future Fund to be funding. That's why, if Labor is indeed serious about stamping out corruption in the construction sector and addressing the very grave allegations of criminality and corruption by the CFMEU, it should support this bill. Labor should agree with us that Cbus should not be receiving any funding through the Housing Australia Future Fund to ensure, at least, that further money does not fall into the corrupt and criminal hands of the CFMEU.

Until Labor takes these steps to deal with the serious issues in the construction sector, to put the CFMEU into administration, to compel to Cbus Super to remove CFMEU members from its board and to stop the continued funding of the CFMEU by Cbus then we cannot take its commitment to housing seriously. It is hard to, to begin with, because the Housing Australia Future Fund, a $10 billion fund, is well behind schedule. They are not disbursing the money that has been allocated to them. The latest update we had was that only 17 new homes had been built, for a $10 billion fund. The government is refusing to address the Treasury's publicly stated concerns that the housing targets will not be met.

The government does not have a plan to increase the housing supply in Australia. And if the government does not have a plan to increase the housing supply in Australia and is not prepared to grapple with some of the causes of the housing crisis in Australia, including the rampant and criminal activities of the CFMEU, then it's not fair dinkum about addressing the housing crisis. Just having a fund, saying you've got a $10 billion fund, having a piece of legislation and putting out press releases is not going to fix the housing crisis. Building 17 new homes in Canberra is not going to fix the housing crisis. Acquiring 340 existing homes and rebadging them, saying that these are now Housing Australia Future Fund homes, is not going to fix the housing affordability crisis.

So that is why I commend this bill to the Senate. I doubt very much that those opposite will support it, because they have been reluctant condemners of the CFMEU's activities. But, if they are fair dinkum about wanting to improve housing affordability, if they are fair dinkum about wanting to bring construction costs down and if they are fair dinkum about wanting to improve housing supply, then they will recognise that there are serious governance, integrity, probity and effectiveness issues in allowing the Housing Australia Future Fund to work with Cbus, because of its close links to the CFMEU. So I urge those opposite to put the interests of Australians first in this instance, to put first the interests of the great number of Australians who wish to own a home but cannot afford to own a home, rather than the interests of the CFMEU and Cbus Super.