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

I rise to take note of the minister's explanation. As I've said time and again, as have many of my colleagues in this chamber, I'm deeply concerned by the lack of compliance with Senate motions by this government. This isn't a new trend. The Centre for Public Integrity raised the alarm on declining compliance rates in 2023. Compelling the production of documents is one of the most significant powers this chamber has to hold government to account. In the area of housing policy we're seeing a particular lack of transparency and accountability from this government at a moment of deep crisis around the housing issues in our country. I'm still waiting for my overdue OPD on public and community housing spending, which was due back two months ago.

Housing is a crucial issue. There's nothing more important right now than having a safe roof over your head, and so many people are struggling, especially renters—seven million Australians in three million households, and all those first home buyers and homeowners who shrink when they read the headlines every day in our newspapers and listen to the radio. It's getting worse for those people who want to enter homeownership, and especially for our young people. We see so many people living in crippling housing stress and with huge mortgage repayments. Homelessness is also a growing problem—10 per cent growth on Labor's watch, since Labor came to power. Everywhere you look, the news is only getting worse and worse.

Just today, Cotality's new housing affordability report shows that Australia's housing affordability has 'hit new lows' compared to the past five years. The median house is now 8.9 times the median income, up from 6.6 just five years ago. National dwelling values have grown 6.3 per cent in this year to date, and Westpac forecasts they're going to grow by an enormous nine per cent next year. In reality, this means that saving for a 20 per cent deposit for a house now will take more than 12 years—12 years!

Cotality's report points to the growing divide between those who own property and those who do not, saying that capital gains themselves potentially widen the gap. We have in our tax policy right now a new engine firing historic levels of intergenerational inequality, driven by tax benefits for wealthy property investors. Cotality also says that those who already own a home and have made strong capital gains can use that windfall profit towards their next property purchase, and we know that is happening, hand over fist, across our financial and housing system. This creates a larger gap of access to housing for those who do not own property and have little possibility in the near future of doing so.

So when will the government listen? When will they finally tackle the unfair capital gains discount and negative gearing tax breaks? The Labor Party used to want to address these unfair, unsustainable and distorting tax breaks for wealthy property investors. Treasurer Jim Chalmers once said that reforming negative gearing and capital gains tax discount was the 'most meaningful lever' that government could pull on housing affordability. In 2017 Senator Brown said:

Any housing affordability package that does not deal with negative gearing and capital gains tax discount is a sham.

And in 2017 Senator McAllister said:

There is something very, very wrong about a tax system that privileges the investor over the young person, the young couple, perhaps a young family, seeking to buy a home to live in.

Spot on, Senator McAllister! She said that our unfair tax system would have 'very significant social consequences as fewer and fewer Australians are able to enter the housing market'—a housing market that has only got worse on Senator McAllister's watch. And these are Labor's own words. What happened to this party, which was willing to take on the big end of town and wanted to put people in places where they had a roof over their head?

Reforming the unfair capital gains discount and negative gearing would reduce inequality and rebalance the housing market. PBO analysis commissioned by the Greens shows that 50 per cent of the benefits of capital gains tax discount go to the richest one per cent—that's 50 per cent of the benefit going to the top one per cent. Instead, we could redirect those billions of dollars into building new public and community housing. Jim Chalmers admits that he got Treasury to model the impact of changes to that tax. He knows what we need to do. Let's get on with it.

Question agreed to.