Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I'm going to change the start of my speech because I won't be lectured in this chamber by a party that has facilitated the worst housing crisis our country has ever seen. You lecture us on what we should and could do, when you have stood by and allowed this to occur. For the best part of 20 years, I assisted young people and everyday Australians to purchase their own homes. Not once did anybody walk up to me or sit down with me and desperately say, 'I want to be a forever renter.' They came to me and said, 'Can you please help me buy a home? Can you please help me find a way to have a roof over the head of my family that belongs to us?' The problem with the build-to-rent scheme is that it focuses too much on build-to-rent. This government focuses far too much on build-to-rent as a solution.

A number of times today in this chamber, in different speeches, I have heard people from the other side say that build to rent is a supply-side solution. Build to rent is not a supply-side solution for people who need to buy their own home. It is a solution for people who need to rent, but it is not a solution for people who wish to buy. It is in no way a supply-side solution to the five per cent deposit scheme. They are not connected.

The five per cent deposit scheme—as Senator Henderson correctly stated, a coalition policy and coalition measure in a previous government—is something that you require supply-side mechanisms for. On 1 October, this will be opened up to everybody, and guess what? We don't have the houses for the people to buy. Newsflash: that's not helping anybody. What it will do is artificially increase prices, because the supply-side mechanisms have not been put in place. That is the reality of what we're dealing with here.

This disallowance motion from Senator Bragg intends to stop the government handing out a tax cut to foreign investors—which promotes renting rather than homeownership. The coalition is not against foreign investors. The coalition is not against business making money. What we are against is the falsehood that build to rent is somehow a fair and reasonable alternative to people owning their own home. It is not. We want Australians to own their own homes; this government wants super funds to own those homes and for Australians to rent those homes. That is what we have a problem with.

Somebody actually made a comment to me today about masterplanned communities and how important they are in the construction sector. It made me realise that this is actually a masterplanned rental cycle from the government. The super funds will own the homes, the CFMEU will build the homes and Australians will rent the homes. We're here to tell you that we're not okay with that. We absolutely want to see fair and reasonable rentals available to Australians that want to rent or need to rent. But we must make sure that there is adequate housing stock, adequate supply and proper focus from this government to ensure that people that want to buy their own home can, not the unfair scenario of providing a five per cent deposit scheme with no additional supply of housing for young people to buy them. How disheartening is that? Thank you for that; what am I going to buy? Where is it? Where are the houses?

The HAFF, the Housing Australia Future Fund, has built 17 houses. That is extraordinary. Supercharging foreign institutional investment and ownership of Australia's housing stock in a perpetual rent-forever cycle is absolutely not acceptable. While build to rent absolutely can be part of the mix, it should not require a tax concession for foreign investors to own the homes that Australians live in. That is unacceptable. While we support foreign investment, as I said earlier, it must fit within the culture of fairness. That doesn't meet the pub test. That's just not on. This government has got their priorities completely confused. They should be focusing on people, on young Australians.

We've heard today a great deal about intergenerational fairness—that would be to facilitate young people to buy their own homes, not to give potential handouts to foreign investors to own those homes that young Australians will rent. That is not okay.

The construction code is another significant issue that feeds into the problem of housing in this country. It is a document that's almost some 2,000 pages long that is nothing but obstructive in terms of facilitating greater supply. We articulated that before the last election. We took that as a policy to the last election, and what did this government do? This government said that we were bad, that it was dangerous, that we wanted dodgy housing, that we wanted Australians to live in dodgy housing—more falsehoods that are completely untrue. What has happened now? Now they've adopted the same policy. They've changed it a little bit, tinkered around the edges, but it's pretty similar, and now the narrative is not that it's bad or promoting dodgy housing. Now, the narrative is, 'When we see good ideas, we'll acknowledge it.' Well, there you go. I'll leave you to think about that.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about this whole scenario is the suggestion that we on this side are blocking the supply of housing. We've done nothing but fight for fairness for young Australians and everyday Australians so they can own their own homes. We talk about that constantly. I've talked about it for a long time. Senator Bragg raises it very regularly as well; there's been some mirth about that from the other side. But we talk about this because we hear about this all the time. People talk to us about this every day. We are totally cognisant of the fact that there is a housing crisis in this country, but we need this government to do something that facilitates the supply of housing so that the people who wish to own their own homes can buy their own homes.

The thing that I'm going to finish with is something I've said many times, and I'm going to say it again. I have a massive problem with the fact that this government thinks it's okay for a super fund to own my own home, but I am not able to access my own super, my own money, to purchase that home. That is entirely unfair. That is entirely unreasonable. Today, there was a mention in one of the speeches around homelessness and the prevalence of homelessness. The largest growing cohort of homeless people in this country is women over the age of 55. A woman over 55 can access her super under special provisions as an emergency to pay rent to somebody, but she can't access it to buy her own home. You explain that to me and tell me that you are focused on Australians owning their own home.