Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Hansard source

The point of this disallowance is very clear. We do not believe it is appropriate for the Commonwealth to exempt itself from its own credit laws when it is providing money to people so that they can acquire a property. I note again our objection to this scheme and put it on record for transparency, but I want to make it very clear that our objection in this regard is about competitive neutrality and the safety of public funds. Will there be any provision or any check that the Commonwealth will undertake to ensure that taxpayer funds are going to be returned in some form? Will there be any risk management plan at all? It looks like there will be none, because the government doesn't want to apply any protection or any oversight on the up to 40 per cent that will be provided to people for the Commonwealth's share in the Help to Buy scheme. That is the question before the Senate today. The question is: should the Commonwealth be able to exempt itself from its own rules, and should taxpayers have to accept the fact that the government doesn't give a rats about $6 billion of taxpayer funds? It's not going to do any checks. It's not going to bother to ask whether the money is ever going to come back. Ultimately, if the answer to the question is, 'The government of Australia doesn't care about whether the $6 billion will ever be returned,' then I think the government will be judged very harshly.

I urge the Senate to consider the disallowance very carefully and support it and force the government back to the drawing board. It should not exempt itself from the credit laws. It should, on this occasion, listen to the advice of its corporate regulator, which has said to it that you should not exempt the Crown from the credit laws. If the Crown is providing credit then like any organisation it should be subject to the same obligations, because, of course, the Crown's money is not the Crown's money; it actually belongs to the Australian taxpayers. So I urge the government to reconsider, and I urge the crossbench to vote for this disallowance today.