Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When the Greens say that housing is an urgent issue, I agree with them, but it is only this side of politics who wants to do something about it rather than just talk about it in this chamber. The Greens are the same party who have spent the last week chumming up with the coalition in this place. When we see the coalition and the Greens using the same talking points, you know it's just about politics, and the Australian people are going to get dudded time and time again. When we see the Greens huddle over at the coalition's adviser box trading tactics, as we have over the last week, we know that it's Australian renters and first home owners who will be the ones that lose out in this political game. To try and deny hardworking Australians the life-changing opportunity to own their own home with a five per cent deposit, as they have tried to do in this place over and over again, is disgusting. Quite frankly, I can't take this motion seriously. The hypocrisy is so obvious and so extreme that it is failing.

They're crying that five per cent deposits will make the banks richer, but what the coalition and Greens forget is that ordinary people need to go to see a bank or a mortgage broker to get a loan to buy a house. People like me, mums and dads from the burbs in Queensland, have to go to a bank to get a loan. That's been the way for many, many decades. In fact, I don't know anyone who could pay cash for their first home, so I don't know how you're going to buy a home without a loan. I don't know why people should be demonised for getting a loan, because that is the way people are buying homes, and it has been for a long time. So I'm sick of hearing this business about banks getting richer—demonising hardworking Australians who scrimp and save to try and get a loan together by saying that somehow saving towards a deposit is making a bank richer. It's ridiculous. I don't know anyone who could pay cash for a home, but I'd hazard a guess that the people opposite in the coalition know a few of them.

The coalition and the Greens want to slam the door in the face of the 190,000 Australians who have bought their first home with Labor's five per cent home deposits. That's 190,000 Australians who have bought their first home with a five per cent deposit. In my home state of Queensland, Labor's five per cent home deposits are making a real difference to Queensland families. I would suggest that the people arguing against it get out of this chamber and go and knock on some doors. Go and tell the Australian people and the people in Queensland—particularly those 190,000 people who have bought a home with our five per cent deposit—that you think they don't deserve to be in that home, that somehow a five per cent deposit is a bad thing. Go and do it. I dare you to. Because, in my part of the world, in the seat of Longman, in the booming growth corridor of Caboolture and its surrounds, 2,337 people have bought their first home. In the seat of Wright, 2,256 people are now in their own first home. In Groom, around the mighty city of Toowoomba, 1,217 people have used our five per cent deposit scheme to get their home. Finally, on the Sunshine Coast, in the seats of Fairfax and Fisher, 1,537 people have used this great Labor policy to buy a home. In those locations alone, Labor has helped more than 7,300 people to own their own home. That is 7,300 people the Greens and the coalition would prefer aren't in homes.

What an incredible turnaround we have seen in three short years, after a decade of neglect and denial by the Liberal Party, who have been aided in their political games by the Greens. They work together, they scheme together and they vote against five per cent deposits together. Do you guys go on holiday together too? Nothing would surprise me anymore. It's no wonder the Greens spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather and the coalition's housing spokesperson Michael Sukkar were both shown the door at the last election. That was not a coincidence. The Australian people are sick of the political games that the coalition and the Greens are playing on housing yet again.