Tyron Whitten (WA, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to respond to this motion, which yet again speaks to the stunning economic illiteracy of the Australian Greens. Almost three million Australian households are rented, and 80 per cent or more of those are privately rented. Without private property investment, all of these people have nowhere to live. There are about two million private property investors in Australia. The Greens and Labor have routinely scapegoated these investors as greedy real estate tycoons in a failed attempt to hide their own complicity in our national housing crisis. However, the fact is 75 cent of these investors only own one investment property. Another 19 per cent of them only own two.

Among these investors are Greens who sit in this parliament, including Senator McKim himself. I'm confident Senator McKim doesn't consider himself a greedy property tycoon. Such is the case with almost every Australian property investor. These are everyday Australians who have sacrificed and saved to make an investment for a more secure future. In doing so they are providing homes for Australians who would otherwise not have somewhere to live. They are providing the accommodation that governments can't and shouldn't. In Senator McKim's home state of Tasmania, there are barely 5,000 public dwellings for an estimated 50,000 renters. Across the country, there are about 452,000 public dwellings, well short of the almost three million needed to meet current demand. It's these same investors who are accommodating everyone else. We should not only acknowledge and be grateful for these Australian investors; we should be giving them incentives rather than winding them back as Senator McKim would have us do.

Not every Australian wants to own their own home. Many are perfectly happy to rent for the flexibility and mobility it can provide, even in Labor's housing crisis. Australian investors meet this need. What these investors need are governments which understand that, with every intervention they make in this market, they only create more problems and bump up the price of housing. Of the sectors of the economy in which the government makes interventions, the three most prominent are labour, housing and energy, and never have these three things been more expensive in Australia than they are today.

Investment incentives like capital gains tax discounts and negative gearing are a concession to this reality. That's why One Nation supports them in principle. One Nation has better solutions to get Australians into homes than scapegoating the investors who provide homes. First and foremost, we'll do what most Australians have said they want, while every other party in this place ignores them: we'll end mass migration. We'll bring the numbers down to about 130,000 a year to give Australia a much-needed breather so we can catch up with housing supply.

Even better for housing availability, we'll ban foreign ownership of residential property. We'll give all foreign investors sufficient time to put their properties on the market so it does not unduly impact prices. It's easy to implement: just require any vendor or agent to see proof of Australian citizenship before allowing a sale. This will free up thousands of homes for Australians to buy as investments or as residences. There are other countries which have done this in recent years to address their own housing crises, including Canada and New Zealand. It's time for Australia to take the same steps.