Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Australia has become a country where your birth year and your parent's wealth matter more than your pay slip when it comes to owning a home. That is not a housing system; that is a generational lottery, a lottery where the winners are those who bought decades ago and the losers are locked into a lifetime of renting, insecurity and debt.

Homeownership was once achievable on a teacher's wage, a nurse's wage or a tradie's wage. Homes used to cost two or three times your annual income, not 10 or 12 times. But young people today are staring down the barrel of lifelong renting, precarious leases and a housing market rigged against them. They are told 'to just work harder' and 'to stop eating smashed avo', while being asked to pay $600,000 for a fibro shack or $700 a week to rent a mouldy flat. Australia has a huge problem with intergenerational housing inequity and it's growing wider every single day. What is Labor's response to this crisis? Will they bring forward a bold plan to attack the root causes and to confront the tax concessions that let investors outbid first home buyers at auctions every Saturday all around this country? Will they launch a nation-building public housing program to rival the postwar build that was so important to housing in previous decades? No. Instead, we get a mirage, not real action.

Expanding the government's five per cent deposit scheme will only drive up house prices further when they're already out of reach for so many. Guess who benefits: banks and property investors. It's a lay-down misere out there in the land of economists. It is clear that this plan will drive up prices and not assist those first home buyers. It's tinkering; it's not transformation. It's making the problem worse in the longer run. Call it what it is. This is not a housing plan; it's a PR stunt. Labor wants the headlines without the hard decisions, but young Australians can't live in a headline. They can't raise families and retire with dignity in a housing system built on speculation and tax breaks for the very wealthy.

Meanwhile, the very policies that could fix this are sitting right in front of us. End the obscene tax concessions that push house prices out of reach for first home buyers. Redirect billions in public money towards building the homes we actually need—public homes, affordable homes and secure homes in the places where we need them. Up until the mid-1970s, government took a hands-on approach to housing—constructing homes for people to buy or rent at low cost. Investors weren't prioritised over the rights of people who needed shelter and governments helped people buy with cheap loans. It was these settings that generalised the homeowning dream to over 70 per cent of Australian households by the late 1960s. We did it then, and we can do it now. But, first, we need to turn off the neoliberal Kool Aid at the Labor drinking trough.

This government needs to ask itself who it's here to represent. Is it the Property Council, housing developers or the banks, which are all keeping housing out of reach? Or is it first home buyers, owner-occupiers, families, young people, children, older women and future generations? The Labor Party's plan for housing is a betrayal. It's a betrayal of every renter living one rent rise away from eviction and of every young family locked out of the housing market. It's a betrayal of the idea that in this country, if you work hard, you can build a life with security and dignity.

The Greens will keep fighting for major change, for bold reform, for public housing and for a future where your age and your parents' wealth won't determine whether you have a roof over your head. Housing should not be an intergenerational tug of war. It is the foundation of a fair society. Unless we confront the crisis with honesty and courage, we are not just failing one generation; we are failing them all.