Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Bragg for bringing this motion before the Senate, which deals with a policy area in urgent need of reform. The Minister for Housing has said:

We're not trying to bring down house prices.

And she's doing a great job in that regard.

In the last 50 years, the price of housing relative to the average income has nearly quadrupled. Both sides of politics have failed to address the systemic issues driving our housing crisis. Instead of addressing the rorts that have turned housing from a place to live into an investment—for example, capital gains tax discounts and negative gearing—the government is adding fuel to the fire. As this motion mentions, the Home Guarantee Scheme encourages Australians to take out as large a mortgage as possible. This demand-side measure only pushes prices higher by increasing competition for a limited number of homes without boosting supply. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

Yesterday the Senate agreed to my motion ordering the government to table modelling on how this scheme will impact house prices. That data will show just how much this policy inflates house prices. While people are fighting over the few houses that are up for sale, supply continues to falter. This morning it was reported that, in my home state of Western Australia, housing approvals dropped 2.5 per cent in the three months to September. Senator Carol Brown just said that approvals have increased; nationally they've risen by 7.9 per cent, but the drop in WA shows that the government's policies are just not working for Western Australians.

The only path to housing affordability is bold structural reform, and if the government are serious they'll do that.