Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Right? It's curious as to how it's One Nation's plan when it's actually the words of Senator Bragg that Senator Roberts is using.

Let me be very clear: One Nation has no plan for anything in this country aside from dividing Australians. And to suggest that migrants in this country are responsible for the housing crisis is false and lazy. The fact we do not have enough houses in this country is a failure of housing policy, not the fault of any single migrant that has come to this country. I take offence to it, Senator Roberts, as I'm a first-generation Australian. My parents were migrants who came to this country in the 1960s and worked their guts out. I don't know if it's perhaps One Nation policy that I should go back to where they came from, even though I was born here. Perhaps I'm occupying a house that I shouldn't be occupying.

So let me talk about homeownership in a legitimate policy discussion. The problem with homeownership in this country is that we do not have enough houses. The problem is with supply. We need legitimate, robust policies to create more houses in this country so that young Australians—all Australians—can realise their dream of homeownership. That is our job here. It is not to divide Australians and not to point blame at individuals on the street as to why someone may or may not be able to buy a home.

Our concern and the reason for my colleague Senator Bragg's private senator's bill is that we do not believe that the Home Guarantee Scheme is going to help. The Home Guarantee Scheme will create more demand—and it has created more demand—without addressing the underlying lack of supply. This is not something that just Senator Bragg is saying. This is not something that just the Liberal Party is saying. The Reserve Bank governor, Michele Bullock, has confirmed that there would be, in their view, a price increase for first home buyers as a result of this scheme.

We absolutely want more young people, more Australians, to be able to own their own home, but we have to address supply. We don't have enough houses in this country because it is too hard to build a house in this country. The building code and the relevant regulations and requirements are so difficult to navigate that it is so much harder than it should be to build a dwelling in this country. That is something we have to address.

This is something we took to the last election. We campaigned on freezing the NCC. When we did that before the last election, Labor accused us of wanting to build dodgy homes, shoddy houses: 'You want really bad houses.' No, we don't. We want good-quality houses that actually get built, instead of winding Australian homebuyers and builders in this never-ending cycle of red tape. But guess what? Labor now want to freeze the NCC because they understand now what we understood before the last election—that it is too hard to build houses in this country.

I've spoken in this chamber many times about the challenges that Australians are facing from the construction industry because of the prevalence of unacceptable conduct by the CFMEU. That is something else that needs to be addressed. There are rogue elements of this union that make it harder and harder and harder for houses and units to be built in this country. They interfere in the process. Independent analysis has confirmed that the cost of the dwellings inside an apartment building can be up to 30 per cent higher where the CFMEU is involved. Are we just going to blindly pretend that that is not happening or are we actually going to address that? We know that. We've heard it over and over. You should have a look at my social media; I get attacked by people on there all the time in relation to this topic.

I am not talking about the rank-and-file members of the CFMEU, the hardworking people who need the protection of a good union to ensure that their rights are realised on a worksite. I'm talking about the people that do the wrong thing and use the money and resources of the CFMEU as if they were their own. They use it to bully, they use it to intimidate and they use it to line their own pockets, and they do that at the expense of everyday Australians who go to work and try to do the right thing, and everyday Australians who try to own their own home but can't because it's getting far too hard. We can't ignore that anymore in this chamber. We can't pretend that it's not happening, because it is.

We've been speaking a lot about build-to-rent as well. Build-to-rent is not the solution to the housing crisis in this country. Liberals believe that, if someone would like to buy their own home, they should be able to do that. The solution is not to say, 'It's too hard and too expensive to own your own home, but what we're going to do is assist you into a cycle of forever renting.' There is no issue with renting long term if that is what you want to do, but that should not be your only choice.

The Liberal Party believes in choice. We believe that you should be the person that determines what you are going to do with your life. So if you want to own your own home, you should be able to do that. You shouldn't be told: 'No, no, no: owning a home is not for you; renting is for you. We would like the super funds to own the homes, and you can rent your home from the super fund.' But, mind you—and I've spoken about this many, many times, and I'm going to get cranky messages and cranky emails about it—I don't hate superannuation. Let me be clear, and let me start with that. Superannuation is important, but it is not the answer to all the problems. When superannuation started in this country, most people who wanted to own their own home were able to. That is no longer the case. We need to look at the circumstances we face today. Again, I've spoken about it many times.

The largest-growing cohort of homeless in this country is women over 55. A 55-year-old woman cannot access her super to help her buy a home so that she has housing security in retirement. However, 10 years later, she can access that super to pay rent to someone and diminish her super asset in paying rent. But she can't use it to buy her own asset. That is fundamentally wrong. We cannot pretend that is okay.

People suggest that, because I speak about that, I hate super, or that Senator Bragg hates super. But we actually see that there are problems in the way this system now operates. Like any system, over time, changes need to be made. Yet superannuation has turned into this sacred cow that nobody is allowed to touch, despite the fact that we know that the one single thing that has the most import impact on someone's security in retirement is owning their own home. We are no longer focusing on the importance of acquiring that asset but, rather, saying, 'Here's some superannuation, and you have to put your money into that rather than putting it into your own home.' You don't get the choice. I don't understand that.

I think what's really hard for me to understand is why this government won't allow a pathway that creates that choice for Australians. My view, and the view of my Liberal colleagues, is that it is the job of government to create frameworks for individuals to ensure that they have every opportunity to do what they need to do and then to get out of their way. It is not our job to interfere, it is not our job to tell people how to live their lives, and it's not our job to tell people, 'You can own a home only under the criteria and the circumstances that we tell you that you can do that under.' That's why we think this scheme isn't a good one, that in fact it is probably a reckless one.

Yesterday we saw interest rates rise, and it's probably not going to be the first rise we see. Inflation has gone up to 3.8 per cent, and the Reserve Bank has indicated a view that it might go up to somewhere around 4.2 per cent. That is an example of the impact of this type of housing policy. We said this last year. We said this would happen, and it has happened. The Reserve Bank said this was likely to happen, and it has eventuated.

So, again, when those on the other side suggest that Liberals do not want people to own their own homes, that is wrong. We absolutely do. I heard numbers being spouted yesterday about X thousand people who wouldn't have been in their own home, that we tried to block that. No: what we did was try to explain that you can't address the housing crisis by simply facilitating greater entry and not addressing supply. You must address supply. That is what we are trying to do. It's not what One Nation are trying to do, despite what Senator Roberts might suggest. The problem is: who ends up paying for all of this? It's Australians who do. The Australian taxpayer does. We have to pay higher taxes to fund this largess. I think one of the things that we need to consider and that we need to do—and this bill from Senator Bragg does—is ensure Australians are protected from whims of government making really significant decisions without meaningful consultation or parliamentary oversight. That is what has happened here.

Regulation should be about filling in the detail and making things clearer and simply, but not making substantive changes to the way our actual economy functions, interfering the supply and demand mechanisms of housing, which is what has happened here, and, again, it's interfered with the demand mechanism without allowance or appropriate supply.

For the Liberal Party, our priorities are to boost housing supply, to boost development, to boost homeownership and to reduce the red tape around construction to ensure that quality dwellings are built, are built in a timely fashion and are built without consumers and builders being run around in circles on what they can and cannot do on their own land. Recent ABS data showed us that home completions In the September quarter of last year fell by almost 4,100 dwellings compared to the year before. At a time where we have a crisis of supply, that's 4,000 fewer dwellings over a 12-month period. This indicates to us the significance of the problem coupled with the fact that now we have a scheme that brings more people in without the requisite supply, with diminishing supply, and the cost burden of that demand driven scheme lies squarely at the feet of the Australian taxpayer. That is unacceptable.

In just three years this government has presided over a huge increase in Australia's population whilst overseeing a collapse in construction. This needs to change, and this needs to be seriously addressed, and I believe it is incumbent on those of us on these two sides of the chamber to do that together to ensure that every single Australian that would like to own their own home can do so without being pointed to a build-to-rent scheme.