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

Well, I'm happy to take them. The minister at the table tonight is the same minister who told the Senate estimates committee that they were in fact buying off the plan. So, they are buying properties that could be owned by Australians but, instead, the government of Australia is buying properties. They are buying, not building. They are using taxpayer funds to actually compete with Australians in the market, which is another reason this agency is in a lot of trouble.

Then you come to the spend quality. The average cost of a new build is about half a million dollars. But in some cases this government is spending $1.3 million to build a new property. The problem with that is that they are having to fund investors. They have to underwrite the investors' involvement, because of course they are a government for vested interests; they always want to protect the investors, and they want to, quite openly, partner with their good friends of the superannuation lobby who want to invest in housing. So, the taxpayer has to fund this. The taxpayer has to fund the availability payments which go to investors in these projects.

This is another issue that we cannot get to the bottom of. We cannot see a line-by-line breakdown of the availability payments, because apparently that is commercial-in-confidence. So the taxpayer can't find out how much they are underwriting the costs of the Commonwealth of Australia working with Cbus or Australian Super in order to purchase houses for the long term. So, spend quality is a problem.

Then we have the Home Guarantee Scheme, the insurance company that the Commonwealth is now running, and it is doing it with no means testing. So any Australian, whether of modest means or significant means, can now use the five per cent deposit product issued by Housing Australia. The problem with that is that, given that supply has been crashed by this government, they have pump-primed demand, and in the first month of the operation of Labor's scheme you see a 1.2 per cent increase in house prices at the entry level. What we're seeing is a big disparity in the price differential between properties inside the Home Guarantee Scheme and properties outside. House prices are too high for first home buyers in Australia, and one of the reasons they're too high is that, after having crunched and collapsed supply, they have now pumped prime demand at the entry level. They say they want to help first home buyers. They say they're very virtuous people and want to help first home owners or prospective first home owners. There's no doubt the Labor Party is very good at politics. They're very bad at management, but they're very good at slogans and stickers. This five per cent deposit scheme might sound good, but it is very bad for younger Australians because what you're seeing is that first home price getting higher and higher and that first home getting further and further away. So this is another problem. The Home Guarantee Scheme, administered by Housing Australia, also seems to have significant governance issues.

These are all the reasons why we must have more than just an audit by the Australian National Audit Office. We must look at the structure and operation of this agency which is expending billions of dollars directly but also now responsible for a very significant digit liability through the uncapping of these five per cent deposits where any Australian with any means can now call on the Commonwealth to ensure their mortgage. Even the richest Australians can now access welfare through this Labor Party. Then you wonder why you've got a 'spending in the budget' problem. The Reserve Bank is really pleading with the Treasurer to cut spending. Spending at 27 per cent of GDP, the highest in living memory outside of the pandemic, is forcing higher interest rates and more household pain for Australians. One of the reasons for that is simply the government's reckless spend. They are reckless with spending actual money in terms of the outlays and they are reckless with how they use things like guarantees. The guarantee scheme here is not free. It is not free money. This is a liability that must be met by all Australians.

When we have asked questions about Housing Australia at estimates and we have had Minister Ayres and other ministers in the chair, there's been a lot of obfuscation by the government and the agency. It's been hard to get to the bottom of things. When we've received documents like the intersection report, even the title of the document has been redacted. There are pages and pages of redactions here in this document, which I know I am out not allowed to use as a prop. But the point is that even the title of the document is redacted. When the Centre for Public Integrity says this is the most secretive government since the Keating government, this is one of the reasons—the documents that have been funded by taxpayers on the performance of this agency are not provided to the Senate. The Labor Party campaigned that they would be a government that would have integrity and would be transparent, but we haven't been able to get to the bottom of things.

We can't see the availability payments. We can't see the subsidies Labor are paying to their mates at the super funds. We can't see the government's report because it is all redacted. We can't get to the bottom of the staff turnover. We can't get to the bottom of the dysfunction of the hellhole that is Labor's Housing Australia. So we are very pleased that the Audit Office are independent of the government and can't be bullied by the government and that they will do their performance audit into the quality of the spend which has now reached $80 billion. It's $80 billion to get fewer houses. That's why we need this Senate inquiry. The Audit Office will do an inquiry which is going to be mainly financial in nature. It will look at some of the qualities of spend, no doubt, and it will make recommendations to the parliament and the government. But a Senate inquiry can look at the governance and structure of the agency.

The board appears to be a very politically motivated set of appointments. I have to say that the competence of the board is really in question. Even at the Senate last estimates hearing, when I was able to ask the new chair when they were appointed, they didn't even know. They had to look at a piece of paper to find out that they had been appointed in the last week before the estimates hearing. Maybe this particular person was appointed because that they didn't have any knowledge of the issues at Housing Australia; they predated his very recent appointment.

These are all the reasons why the Senate should vote for this motion. We should have an inquiry which allows us to make serious recommendations about the structure and operation of this agency. The Audit Office will do the financial piece, but we should do the governance piece. If the government are going to spend this money, we should try and encourage them to do it as best as they can for the Australian people. These aren't our policies, but our job is to hold the government to account, to get value for taxpayers and to make sure that there is no maladministration. That is our job. So that we can do our job better, we are hopeful that the crossbench will support this motion.