Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of all answers given by the government, but I want to focus specifically on those answers around housing, which is an issue that is dear to my heart. Before I do, I want to correct the record here. Senator Ciccone, I know, feels very deeply about this issue of the sanctions that have been placed on Iran and the decisions the government has made just this week to expel the Iranian ambassador in response to the egregious behaviour of the IRGC in fanning the flames of antisemitism and social division in this country. The coalition supports those measures, and the government knows that. But where the government has failed is in acting on this earlier, because all the warning signs were there.

I know that Senator Ciccone says that his government has done more than any previous government, but can I remind Senator Ciccone that we are seeing this increased activity from the IRGC because of the despicable behaviour that was demonstrated in Iran after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini. That was in September 2022, so it was when this government was in place. We are responding to an issue that occurred while Labor was in power. When that occurred, Senator Chandler's committee looked at the appropriate responses to the uprising that occurred in Iran and the fear that was being felt by the Iranian diaspora here in Australia. They were saying they felt they had seen an increased level of foreign interference, surveillance, stalking and harassment. That's what Senator Chandler's committee was responding to. That's why the opposition, the coalition, said to the government, 'It's time to take strong action against the IRGC.'

That was ignored. In fact, what the government said at the time was: 'We can't. We haven't got the legislative power to do so. We can't list them as a terrorist organisation because they are'—I think this was the official phrase—'an organ of the state of Iran.' So we said: 'We'll help you do something about it. We'll help you legislate.' But they did nothing. They sat on their hands. Now, two years later, they've said, 'Look, we're doing more than anyone else has done before,' but what could you have prevented if you had acted earlier? That is the question that Labor has failed to answer, and that is why we will keep asking the question.

Let me talk about housing, because this is something I take very seriously. We have asked question after question on the Housing Australia Future Fund. For those playing along at home, the Housing Australia Future Fund is $10 billion that has been borrowed in your name to invest in housing to solve the housing crisis in Australia. We have asked how many houses the Housing Australia Future Fund has built, and we are not getting straight answers from the government. We even heard Senator Wong obfuscating today. She's wriggling around. She will not answer the question. How many has it built?

Last year, when we asked Senator Gallagher this question at Senate estimates, she admitted that in fact the Housing Australia Future Fund hadn't built any houses; it had only purchased houses. That's not solving a housing crisis, is it? It's not building a single new house. It was $10 billion to purchase a couple of hundred houses? Still we see that the government will not come clean.

How many houses has the Housing Australia Future Fund built, because it's a hell of a lot of money to borrow in the name of the Australian taxpayer to not build houses.

The government has promised 1.2 million new houses in five years. It needs to build 250,000 houses a year. It is building nothing like that amount; in fact, it's building fewer houses per year than were built every single year under a coalition government—fewer under Labor. Not only that; it has increased the amount of regulation and red tape in the industry portfolio, the infrastructure portfolio and the Treasury portfolio. That means it's harder to build houses now than it was just a few years ago. No wonder there is a housing crisis, but it's a housing crisis of Labor's making, and they are yet to find a solution and they are hiding their failures in response. This is a housing crisis of Labor's making, but it is Australians, particularly young Australians, trying to buy their first home that are paying the price for Labor's failures.