Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise, also, to speak on this motion. I've got to say, the minister's response today was extraordinary. It was insulting. It trivialised an issue that is affecting the lives of millions of Australians—first home buyers; young people; people who've given up on getting into housing. And he doesn't think this is serious. He made a lot of jokes; he thought it was an amusing issue. And he defended the hardworking public servants who try and get this data out to the Senate to inform decisions. He didn't deal with the critical question that this seeking of information is trying to address.

We are in a housing crisis where we need to know what works and what doesn't and the impact of policy changes on the critical crisis in housing. This OPD is looking for documents which show the effect of that five per cent deposit scheme on house prices—the second time the minister has been required to attend and explain the failure to comply with this matter. We're a chamber of review, and it's important that we get the data, the information that we need, so that we can take apart and examine, look at, the rationale and the modelling of the impact of this decision on pushing up house prices.

Prices are completely out of control in this country and they are affecting the lives of so many families and households. The parliament had no oversight of the recent expansion of the five per cent scheme which removed income limits entirely for people to have access to this scheme. Where is Labor's commitment to the low-and-middle income earners, the first home buyers, who really need the most help?

We've had people across the country who are experts—economists, the Reserve Bank, Treasury; so many experts—tell us, they all warned, that these changes would result in increased prices in housing, and they have. If you feed demand, you push up prices where supply is constrained—especially in the case of moderately priced housing, which is where first home buyers are focused. This change has pushed up prices at the lower end of the market. Prices of homes eligible for the scheme jumped 3.6 per cent in the last three months of 2025. That is incredible. First home buyers out there are despairing. They were despairing before a 3.6 per cent increase in that last quarter.

These are extraordinary times, and we have a right to the information, the assumptions, that are in this modelling. Now, with another interest rate rise, workers, renters and mortgage holders are going to cop even more economic pain from rising inflation, so we need real solutions informed by decent data. We need to cut tax breaks for wealthy property investors and build social and affordable housing but we also need to stop the very lucrative revolving door between ministers offices and the hugely profitable big-donor corporates, like the Commonwealth Bank. We need to break the link between those who advise and those who benefit from decisions.

When the Minister for Housing—or the 'minister for higher house prices' as the Financial Review called her today. When her adviser takes up a job at an institution that's amongst the greatest beneficiaries of Labor's policy in this case, what are mortgage holders, renters and first home buyers supposed to think? I'll tell you what they think. They think it stinks. They see it for what it is. They don't like it. They know it's a revolving door, and they know that they are affected by decisions which advantage the wealthy, institutions and advisers and do down those who are trying to make it work out there in the housing market. The revolving door corrupts our democracy. It prioritises the interests of big business over the community.

Australians are fed up with the jobs-for-mates mentality that has plagued successive governments. This is why we've supported—here, in the Greens—strengthening lobbying oversight by extending the ban on former ministers lobbying to five years and applying it to senior staff. The Senate has a right to ask for information and the Senate has a responsibility to hold ministers to account. When ministers come here to talk about the data they have not supplied, we should not be insulted and we should not be trivialised. We should be respected and provided with the information we need so that we can actually make the decisions that help homebuyers in a housing crisis, that help renters and that can come to grips with the biggest crisis we've seen in the postwar period, which deserves a serious minister bringing serious responses to the Senate. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.