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

I rise to take note of the explanation by the Minister representing the Treasurer. We've just had a question time where we've seen repetitive questions about the housing crisis. We saw repetitive questions throughout last week as well. Australians are worried about a housing crisis that is on fire. It is driving up prices, and we need information to have a proper, informed debate in this parliament. Senator Bragg requested that these documents be produced on 28 July 2025, but he's been fobbed off.

The minister has asked for additional time. Three months have passed without an update until today, and we need a full release of these documents. We are in a housing crisis where demand is out of control, and we need the analysis so that we can look at what Treasury is saying about the impact of the government's policies on prices. We are denied that and we need that information to have a sensible debate and to really understand what is going on that's driving a crisis out there affecting so many Australians.

Why is the government taking so long to release this information? This is a government obsessed with ducking accountability and transparency, particularly in relation to housing. The OPD compliance rate in this parliament is dismal, and I'm still waiting on an answer for my OPD from August about direct spending on public and community housing. Why is this government allergic to telling us what the data and analysis are on housing?

Australians deserve to see Treasury's modelling of the five per cent deposit scheme. Treasury advice says that scheme would raise prices by 'only' 0.5 per cent nationally over six years. Let's assume that prices will rise by 'only' 0.5 per cent as a result of these changes. The ABS data out of the Parliamentary Library tells us that this will add $55 billion to property prices over the next six years. Tell a first home buyer that that's what's happening as a consequence of these policies. At the most optimistic analysis, this amounts to $9 billion a year. This scheme is turbocharging housing prices. It is causing despair and a really deep concern out there in the community, locking out first home buyers, plunging them deeper into debt. We need to see a change in policy and analysis that underpins what we are facing in policy from this government.

Many experts and stakeholders warn that Treasury's 0.5 per cent is actually incredibly conservative. Lateral Economics's Nick Gruen found that the expanded scheme 'could drive national property prices by up by 3.5 to 6.6 per cent in 2026 and for several years afterwards. A home valued today at $800,000 must cost a first home buyer an additional $28,000 to $52,000. Lots of first home buyers find this incredibly hard to hear. They hate opening the paper every day, because the bad news is bad news day after day. The Reserve Bank also said that the five per cent deposit changes may mean 'a little more upward pressure on house prices in the short term'. In the midst of a national housing crisis, this scheme will add billions to property prices. Taking out a 95 per cent mortgage when property prices are eight times the average household income doesn't create stability; it sets first home buyers up for financial hardship while banks make superprofits—and this is widening intergenerational inequality at a rapid rate.

This motion also goes to Labor's policy to invest $10 billion to deliver 100,000 homes for first home buyers. This isn't a horrible policy; it's an admission from the government that they can directly fund housing construction for first home buyers, not just for US defence personnel in relation to AUKUS in Perth but also for Australian citizens. We can build directly. We can fund directly. We can do solutions that are effective, efficient, cost-effective and timely. Everybody's Home said that, while building 100,000 homes is a good step, they aren't guaranteed to be affordable. There's a missing piece of that spend. Don't build 'anything'; build something that people can actually afford.

There are a lot of unanswered questions about this policy and its implementation, and Australians deserve the detail. It's contemptuous not to provide to this parliament the detail that we expect to have to understand and to ask questions out of, and it is our job as a Senate to pay attention to what this analysis says. We are denied that capability by this reluctance to share information, and it is a critical question for so many Australians.