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

I take the interjection. What we have seen is a failure of this government, and then we see a moronic repetition of slogans, as if all these things that they've announced are going to solve the nation's housing crisis. In fact, you can have your own slogans in politics. One of the reasons that people don't think very highly of politicians is they utter too many slogans and they're often prone to offering empty words. If you watched the debate this afternoon, you'd probably find politicians in this chamber actually reading their speeches because they're not really sure what they're supposed to be saying—but I look forward to seeing that.

The main point is that the government has failed on housing. That is not in question, and whilst you can have your own slogans you can't have your own facts. The facts are that we have never had a bigger population than we have right now in Australia. We've had a massive surge in population, the biggest surge since the 1950s, and we've had a massive collapse in completions. The biggest population we've ever had simultaneously comes with the biggest collapse in housing construction in decades.

The government says it's done a great job on housing, but the scoreboard shows that under the last coalition government we saw on average 200,000 houses a year built across Australia. Under this government, we're down to 170,000 houses a year on average. We've gone from on average 200,000 houses a year to on average 170,000 houses a year. Despite all the bluster about housing, Labor's bureaucracies have resulted in fewer houses being built than were built under the former government. The housing minister is fond of saying that the government has spent $43 billion. Well, big deal! They've spent $43 billion to build fewer houses than were built under the last coalition government. That is the position that Australia finds itself in. That is why the housing squeeze is so severe, because when you have a bigger population you need to find more houses, and when you've had a housing construction collapse you've got a big problem.

All you need to do is look at the government's own program, the Housing Australia Future Fund, which would be one of the greatest failures of public administration in my lifetime. It has had two years of operation now. It has $10 billion in its budget, and it has built, we think, zero or 17 or 2,000 houses. We don't know the actual answer because, according to the Centre for Public Integrity, this is the most secretive government since the Keating government. This government has gone out of its way to block access to information. We actually have no idea how many houses have been built by this Housing Australia Future Fund because the government has covered it all up. This is the most secretive government since the Keating government, according to the Centre for Public Integrity. What a disgraceful record for a government that campaigned on transparency and integrity; hypocrisy is thy name! The government's flagship program has built either zero, 17 or 2,000 houses in two years.

Then you have the broader failure to encourage the builders, tradespeople and developers to get the housing sector moving. We see there the failure of the Housing Accord. They're supposed to build 1.2 million houses, but they'll be lucky to get to a million. The starting point is a massive failure of supply, and that is why people are battling. If you build fewer houses, you create problems all the way down the chain. That is why Homelessness Australia says that homelessness has never been worse than it is right now under this government. Homelessness is a disaster right now under this government, despite all the bluster.

You've got to think to yourself: 'If I look at all their social media and all the speeches that the housing minister gives and all the press releases, you'd think that the housing problem has been solved. She keeps on talking about the $43 billion.' Yeah, that's right—43 billion bucks for fewer houses and more homelessness. What a shocking record! What a shocking record for a government that says it's committed to housing. That's the supply side.

Then we get to the demand side. We saw this week that the government proposed to expand the Home Guarantee Scheme, which it will be able to do without any parliamentary oversight. Again, this is the most secretive government since the Keating government. They'll make this change to the Home Guarantee Scheme. There's likely to be a $62 billion contingent liability in the budget, but, when you're already running 10 years of deficits, who cares! It's all just Monopoly money to Mr Chalmers.

The expansion of the Home Guarantee Scheme takes it from a scheme which was designed to be about lower-income people getting access to their first home when they have no or a low deposit—that's the idea. The Home Guarantee Scheme was not about paying or servicing a mortgage; it was about helping people who had no deposit or a low deposit. It has gone from a lower-income targeted scheme to a scheme that any Australian can use, including the wealthiest Australians. As I say, when you're running ten years of deficits maybe you don't give a rats about a few bucks here and there, but I would have thought that a $62 billion contingent liability would be material. The consequence of that is that the average worker potentially has to subsidise the children of billionaires accessing a government program.