Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

What a bunch of baloney we've heard from those opposite. The Liberal Party opposed Labor's various attempts at housing policy because they are failed policies that we knew were going to be failed policies when they were introduced to this place over the last few years. History has now shown that they are failed policies, and we have been proved correct.

Let's start with the Home Guarantee Scheme, which independent experts and people such as the Reserve Bank have acknowledged has poured petrol onto prices in the housing market, causing them to rise by as much as 10 per cent. If you have forced up the cost of a house by 10 per cent and 95 per cent of that is going on people's mortgages, that, in the face of rising interest rates, is a direct hit on young Australians who are aspiring to homeownership. It's a way of making them poorer. In fact, lenders mortgage insurance, which those opposite jump up and down about in this place, was one to two per cent of the total house price. Property prices have gone up by 10 per cent under this Labor government's policy. That's 10 per cent against a cost of one to two per cent. That's the economics of this Labor government. That's the impact of this Labor government on young Australians who are aspiring to enter the housing market—which we support. The Liberal Party supports 100 per cent the aspirations of all Australians to enter the housing market.

What Australians don't want is to be renting. They don't want their landlords to be overseas corporations or the government. They want to own their own home. But they want to do it in a way that's affordable, and the way to do that is to address the supply side of our market. The one policy that the Labor Party has adopted in that respect was copied directly from us at the last election. It was a policy to cut red tape in the housing market, which they demonised during the election campaign, but post-election they have now suddenly, mysteriously adopted it. That is the only part of the Labor Party housing policy that is worthwhile. Young Australians do want to get into the housing market, but getting into the housing market at any cost is not good policy, and the Labor Party's policies in this respect, particularly the Home Guarantee Scheme, have been shown to push up the cost of the housing market.

We've got a situation in the broader economy where the Reserve Bank is currently trying to slay the dragon of inflation, trying to fight the fire of inflation, which is on the increase again. The Reserve Bank yesterday increased interest rates. But Michele Bullock in her statement after the announcement also said that they expect inflation to rise even further. That is very, very bad news for all Australians because what it does is smash standards of living, reduce the disposable income of households and, of course, put further upward pressure on interest rates. Many commentators are expecting not just the interest rate rise that we saw yesterday but a succession of interest rate rises over the year ahead. That will have a devastating effect on those young Australians who have been induced into the housing market by Labor's offer of a five per cent deposit, which has increased the cost of the house they bought in the first place and now, flowing through to inflation, is increasing the costs of their mortgage, as interest rates rise over time.

The trouble with this government's approach is that, while the Reserve Bank is attempting to slay the dragon of inflation and put out the fire, this government is running round with a can of petrol, pouring it onto the fire. Things like the Home Guarantee Scheme and the increases in government spending across the board are putting upward pressure on demand in the economy, which is putting upward pressure on prices, particularly in the housing sector. Nothing this government is doing is helping the Reserve Bank. We have fiscal and monetary policy working in opposition to one another.

We've seen this before under Labor governments—they can't seem to understand. While the Reserve Bank is trying to put downward pressure on inflation in order to contain rising interest rates, they are just throwing money into the economy, and that is having a very negative impact on all Australians. Standards of living are being destroyed. Household spending—the available family budget—is reducing. Pay packets are not keeping up with the inflation in the market and the rising interest rate burden on average Australians who own their own homes and are paying off a mortgage.

If the interest rate rises that are currently predicted come about, Australian households with a mortgage will be significantly worse off over the next 12 months, and that is on the back of the first 3½ years of this Labor government, which saw one of the fastest declines in the standard of living and in disposable household incomes that Australia has ever seen. Household budgets were smashed over the first three years of this Labor government, and, with rising interest rates, the damage to those household budgets will be even higher.

Other parts of the Labor Party policy which are also failing include their promises to build houses, which are proving to be extraordinarily expensive and slow. That's not surprising when you have a Labor government in charge of building anything. They want to have foreign corporations and superannuation funds building Build to Rent properties. I understand the idea probably came out of a Labor government focus group. It sounds good, but, in the end, Australians do not want to live in those sorts of properties; they aspire to own their own home.

Policy should be directed at reducing costs, and that means lowering the red tape burden on construction. It's also means getting the criminal elements out of the construction industry—yes, the CFMEU, but, if there are criminal building companies, they should be out of the construction industry, as well. We need to clean up the construction industry. We need to remove the extra costs that are present in that industry, and that will give Australian young people and Australian families the chance to get ahead, without having to pay the extra tax of the construction industry in Australia, with the criminality that has been very clearly demonstrated through the CFMEU activity and the fact that the Labor government was forced to put that union into administration. If there are other criminal elements within the construction industry, they also need to be found and drummed out.

The fact is, we are never going to solve these problems unless we can reduce costs that way. We also need to reduce the burden of red tape. It shouldn't take as long as it does to get a proposed housing development from a greenfield or brownfield site to construction on houses being underway. It simply takes too long in this country to get those projects underway.

We need to see a real effort at bringing that supply into the market so that younger Australians, in particular, can aspire to have their own homes and to have a mortgage that they can afford to pay. Instead, we see this government pulling on all the wrong levers, pouring fuel on the fire of inflation in the marketplace and pouring fuel on the fire of house prices, which makes it even less possible for younger Australians to get into the market. We see this government delivering very, very little in terms of their overblown promises to actually build houses.

In fact, they've purchased more houses—in competition with Australians—than they have built houses. They've gone out into the marketplace and purchased houses that Australian families, Australian young people, would have been bidding on. Rather than see those houses in the hands of those Australians, they have purchased them to put on their ledger that they've got some houses. That is not good policy. The Labor Party's policy suite has failed. It's visibly failed. It's demonstrably failed in the marketplace. It needs to be completely rethought. Throw these policies out and start again.