Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

Let me break it down for those opposite who, having mentioned my colleague Senator Bragg's name several times, clearly appear to be threatened by the fact that he continues to hold his government to account and to call them out on their failed policies. Labor promised to fix Australia's housing crisis. They promised 1.2 million new homes. They promised help for first home buyers. They promised transparency, accountability and results.

But what have Australians got instead? Well, Labor's National Housing Accord is dead, buried and cremated. Their $60 billion housing plan is nothing more than a bureaucratic mirage, a tangle of failed programs, false promises and fiscal waste. The Housing Australia Future Fund, the so-called HAFF, has become pink batts 2.0, a putrid waste of public funds and maladministration. It's a monster that eats money and doesn't build houses. The numbers tell the story, of course. Under the former coalition government, Australia was building around 190,000 new homes a year. Under Labor, that number has slumped to barely 177,000, and it's falling. That's tens of thousands of families missing out on the Australian dream. Builders are short more than 83,000 tradies, according to the HIA. Costs are rising, confidence is collapsing and still Labor can't explain whether money is going. The Auditor-General found that only $13 million was spent by the HAFF in 2024-25, yet somehow $137 million vanished—puff!—in just one quarter this year.

Where is the accountability? Where are the results? Labor's housing boondoggles are costing taxpayers billions, yet they are delivering fewer homes than ever before. They're building bureaucracy, not communities, and the human cost is real. Young Australians are locked out of the property market. Couples are delaying having children or giving up on the dream of a family home altogether. The family unit itself is being weakened. The coalition is and always has been the party of homeownership. We believe every Australian, especially younger Australians, deserve the chance to realise the great dream of owning a home, not to be shut out by bad policy and rising costs.

In the Northern Territory, my constituency, it is even worse. Labor's so-called help for first home buyers is locking Territorians out, not lifting them up. Labor's distortion of the home guarantee scheme won't make housing more affordable; it will do the opposite. Their reckless design will dump a $60 billion liability onto taxpayers and push house prices up by as much as 10 per cent, pricing even more Australians out of the market. Under Labor's First Home Guarantee scheme, Darwin is lumped in with regional Tasmania and Norfolk Island, with a $600,000 price cap. Yet the median house price in Darwin is now over $660,000, with the highest growth rate of any capital city. The NT treasurer, the Property Council and the building industry have all called for that cap to be lifted to at least $850,000, but Prime Minister Albanese isn't listening.

This is what happens when a one-size-fits-all policy comes from a government that doesn't understand the Territory. Territorians who've worked hard, saved up and done the right thing are being told they don't qualify for the help they were promised. That's not fairness; that's failure. It is failure on a national scale. We need homes Australians can actually afford. We need policies that empower families, not bureaucracies. We need to build townhouses, not tower blocks. We need Australians to own a little piece of this country and not rent forever. Labor promised solutions; they've delivered a shambles. It's time to end the housing chaos. It's time this government lived up to its own standards. It's time to put Australians first and the Australian dream of home ownership first.