Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

Australia is in the middle of the worst housing shortage in our nation's modern history. Rents are soaring, vacancy rates have collapsed and home ownership, once a realistic goal for young Australians, is now falling further and further out of reach. Today's inflation has grown to 3.8 per cent for the year to the end of October, a further affordability blow for families.

These outcomes are the product of deliberate government decisions. Since 2022, Labor has presided over record population growth while housing construction has gone backwards. New dwelling starts are now lower than they were in the late 2010s. And the Albanese government's National Housing Accord sets an ambitious target—Labor loves a bold target, especially one it has no hope of meeting—so far into the distance that people will actually forget it before they fail to meet it.

Mr Albanese pledged 1.2 million new homes between 2024 and 2029. To get there, this means you have to build roughly 240,000 homes every year just to stay on track. To deliver those 1.2 million homes, construction needs to reach around 57,000 homes every quarter. The latest ABS figures are telling us we only got up to a little over 41,000 dwellings. We're going backwards.

Bringing forward the government's five per cent deposit scheme with no income caps has lit a fire under the investor housing market. Instead of making it easier to purchase a home, it's making it harder. That's why we have tent cities popping up right across capital cities and rural capitals. It's tragic when it's in a country as wealthy as Australia. The consequences of high migration and low housing starts are now reaching far beyond the rental market, and a generation of young Australians has been locked out. (Time expired)