Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very happy to make a contribution to today's MPI, as moved by Senator Bragg. This actually manifests yet another one of the Labor Party's broken promises from the 2022 election, when we were promised cheaper housing. And, of course, what have we seen since then? Anything but cheaper housing. Only the Labor Party could spend billions of taxpayers' dollars—and billions of borrowed dollars—and build fewer houses, which is the effect of what's going to occur over the next five years. Treasury belled the cat in relation to that in their incoming brief to the government, when they said they wouldn't get anywhere near 1.2 million homes.

And, in fact, despite all the rhetoric from the other side and from the bottom corner of the chamber down there, this government will build fewer houses in the next five years than our government built in its last five years. So they can throw all the rhetoric they like across the chamber, but the reality is that the actions of this government—particularly with their new industrial relations legislation in the last parliament—have actually facilitated and enabled the CFMEU. Their legislation enabled the CFMEU to do the things they are now doing in moving into the housing market. And we know, because the statistics tell us, that, once the CFMEU is involved in a construction project, it can cost up to 30 per cent more.

Let's go back to the beginning of the contribution that I'm making: the Labor Party promised the Australian people cheaper housing, yet involving and engaging the CFMEU in the housing market can increase the cost of a housing project by 30 per cent. How does that line up with the promise for cheaper housing? It doesn't. It's like the promise from the Labor Party to reduce energy prices by $275—disappearing into the wind.

So it's the actions of this government, who enabled the CFMEU and who did nothing while the CFMEU started infiltrating the housing market, that are actually now driving up costs. All of those billions of dollars that the Labor Party—this government—is injecting into housing are going to get us less bang for our buck because they're going into the union system. And, on top of that, we're going to build fewer houses. As I said, only the Labor Party could spend billions and billions of taxpayers' dollars and end up building fewer houses. You'd wonder how they might be so successful in doing that, but that's exactly what's going to happen.

The unions, particularly the CFMEU, are quite brazen about what they say. Michael Crosby, the New South Wales CFMEU boss, says, 'We are looking at large multiple complex residential construction' and that 'may push up costs'. They're not concerned about that. They're not concerned about the promise that this government made to the Australian people to provide them with cheaper housing. They're quite content that their activities will provide more expensive housing. That's not what any of us want. I don't know why the government members would even tolerate that sort of activity. But that's what's going to happen.

We know that the Greens voted against every move to bring the CFMEU to heel in the chamber when the government legislated to put them into administration, and you wonder what that was about. I suspect there's a strong flow of donations that have diverted from the Labor Party to the green movement off the back of that. But it just shows how murky all of this is. You just can't trust the Labor Party when they make a promise to you. They promised cheaper housing and, through their inactivity, are going to provide— (Time expired)