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

I encourage the government to get better at understanding what builders, tradies and developers actually need to build the houses Australians want to live in. I have to say that Canberra based bureaucracies like the Housing Australia Future Fund that have been going for two years and that have spent $10 billion to build 17 houses haven't been very successful. So I take the interjection. I thank Senator Ayres for his many interjections.

I make the point here that I asked the super fund association, when they were giving evidence on this particular bill:

Do you think the Australian people want to rent their house from a super fund?

And the official said:

I think that they would be very happy with institutionally owned residential property …

I think that they're wrong. I think that is culturally jarring and that most Australians actually want to own their own house. Most Australians want to own their own house; they don't want to live in a house that is owned by a super fund. It shows you the institutional impact of the labour movement today. It is so obsessed with helping the super funds and the unions clip the ticket and become perpetual landlords that it now prioritises a policy of build to rent over the interests of Australian workers. That is effectively the basis for this disallowance. This is a warped priority. It will cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

Of course, the cost that the labour movement doesn't want to talk about is the 30 per cent taxes the CFMEU impose onto all the new apartment builds in Australia. In fact, we saw that one of the first acts of this government, when it won the election in 2022, was to abolish the Building and Construction Commission. I think it's telling.

I've often said this is a government for vested interests, Senator Ayres. Senator Ayres, you are the king of vested interests and shovelling money and policy to your mates. The reality is that the first order of business for this government was to abolish the Building and Construction Commission. No-one thinks that was a good idea other than the Labor Party and its mates. It has imposed a 30 per cent tax on all new apartment builds for younger Australians. So, for many younger Australians, their first house is likely to be a small apartment. Imposing that cost on younger people seems very unfair to me, but, again, Labor really only care about their vested interests because they are, at heart, a government for vested interests.

The general point here is that we believe this is an important disallowance, because this is a warped priority that only a government for vested interests could conjure up. This is not in the interests of the Australian people. Because we want to have a country where individual Australians can own their own houses, we don't think that it's a good idea for big super funds and foreign owned asset managers to own Australian houses.

Honourable senators interjecting—

No, we don't. I take all the interjections. It must be a very sore point, but we don't believe that foreign asset managers and big super funds should be the perpetual owners of Australian housing. I'm sorry that the government is embarrassed, but we don't think this is the right priority. So we're moving this disallowance because we want to see Australians back in the vanguard of housing policy. We accept the election result, and we understand that the government have another couple of years to try and get it right on housing. We want to help the government be the best that they can be. The way that will be measured will be on the supply numbers. If you can build more houses that Australians can live in, then that's a good thing, but you've got to get the priorities right.

We encourage the Senate to consider carefully whether it's a good idea for the Australian taxpayer to be giving away money to foreign asset managers so they can own houses in perpetuity that Australians will never, ever own. Think very carefully about where we are heading in this country. There is a massive conspiracy between Mr Chalmers, the unions and the big super funds to become perpetual landlords, and it's not a good idea. The caterwauling and the crying from the Labor Party on the government benches really is a testament to their great embarrassment that this is finally going to be exposed.

We encourage the Senate to vote for this disallowance. More broadly, we want to see the government get serious on the supply side. Their measures so far been disasters. They've had three years; they've gone backwards. They've got another 2½ years or so, and we want to see the government get to the 250,000 houses that are required for Australia to hit its targets. While they're doing that, we want to see them be serious about the demand side.

Is it really a good idea for the government to be delivering a program which is now open to the wealthiest Australians to get access to government insurance scheme? We would say it's best to means test things. Taxpayer dollars should be treated very carefully, and giving away money to the wealthiest Australians when they don't need that money is really not appropriate. I encourage the Senate to consider this motion carefully once we get through the formalities of this next speech.

Debate interrupted.