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

In addressing this urgency motion on housing, there are parts of it that we certainly would agree with, but in general—on a day that the RBA has had to increase interest rates because of government expenditure going to historic highs of almost 27 per cent, which is vastly higher than in the pre-COVID period, this is an embarrassment for a treasurer who said that there were going to be no more interest rate rises. The fact is that today's announcement by the Reserve Bank was a unanimous judgement by that board. What that means is that his own department secretary agrees with the rest of the RBA's directors that rates should go up. So it's a vote of no confidence in the Treasurer from his own department head today, and it's a vote of no confidence in the Australian economy, frankly. I feel for the many Australians that now have to pay much higher mortgages because of Canberra's mismanagement.

Looking at the motion before the chamber, housing inflation is a big problem. It's a serious problem. At 19 per cent, since Labor came to office, it is a big part of the housing problem that faces so many people. The government brag every day about how much money they're spending on housing. But guess what counts? What counts is what you get for the money. Most people would assume that, if you spend more money on something, you're going to get more stuff. This government spends 80 billion bucks on housing and gets fewer houses—$80 billion for fewer houses.

What you've also seen is a government presiding over a dearth in productivity growth, a collapse in productivity growth, in the housing sector. They have not sought to examine the issue of the CFMEU and other corrupt entities that are permeating and killing the sector. The CFMEU was apparently put out of business by the Prime Minister. But then we find, only weeks later, that they're expanding their operations into apartment building in New South Wales.

You've got Canberra building a massive housing bureaucracy, where Labor brags about spending billions and billions of dollars on housing, but we're getting fewer houses. We've gone from getting over 200,000 houses a year on average to now only 170,000 houses a year on average over the period of the Albanese government.

We see a huge inflation problem in the housing sector, a lack of productivity and a lack of will to address the corrupt Mafia elements that have permeated the housing system in Australia. Now all Australians have to pay the price of malfeasance, waste and mismanagement.

Many of the members of the Senate and the House like to talk about political issues because, of course, they are politicians. The Labor Party are very good at politics. They're very good at spin. They're probably the world's best politicians, okay? But they are the world's worst managers. The scoreboard doesn't lie. When you spend a lot of taxpayer funds, but you're getting less of something, that is a bad result for the Australian people. And the Australian people are feeling it. It's offensive to see the Minister for Housing and the Prime Minister walk around saying, 'We're giving people five per cent deposits. Fantastic. We've solved the housing crisis.' It is jarring, because what that scheme is doing, in an uncapped manner, is putting up house prices for younger people. House prices are too high in this country, particularly for younger people. It is impossible for a person on an average wage to buy a house in many of our capital cities now.

One of the reasons is these demand-side gimmicks brought to you by the Labor Party and the spin machine. The Labor Party would have workshopped, with their working groups and their polling shops, what their policies would be before they even knew what they were going to be, because they're more interested in the spin. The Prime Minister himself says he's more interested in having political fights than doing anything.

People take their opportunities and liberties to opine about the state of the opposition, as they are welcome to do, but this government is doing nothing. In fact, they're doing worse than nothing. They're actually taking the country backwards when it comes to housing. The Australian people feel it. They feel it because they know that younger people are seeing the Australian dream fall out of their reach.