Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Are you moving to take note?

I'm moving to take note of this explanation, if you can call it an explanation. What it really was was a continuation of the government's obfuscation across the board. It doesn't matter whether it's FOI, answers to questions on notice or orders for production. The government is refusing to provide the information. Frankly, it is offensive to the taxpayers to hear the minister come in here and spend most of his time on the explanation making jokes—which may in some ways be funny—about the Liberal Party's review. It has nothing to do with the matter before the Senate.

The reason that we have this ODP before the Senate is that the Prime Minister of Australia has been citing data to support his position—according to the Treasury, he says—that prices would go up by 0.6 per cent as a result of Labor's massive expansion of the Home Guarantee Scheme, also known as five per cent deposits. The minister apparently says that compliance is a series of blank pages, but the modelling, of course, is not blank pages. The modelling would be a series of numbers with a series of assumptions and risks, and this modelling was, of course, an afterthought. This policy of five per cent deposits, open to anyone, without any means testing, without any place caps, in a supply constrained environment, was announced during the election campaign in May 2025. It was only in July that the government decided, 'Oh, maybe we should get some modelling to see whether or not this idea is going to force prices to change.' Apparently, the Treasury came back and said it will by 0.6 six per cent over many years. But the problem with that is that the 0.6 per cent was eclipsed with a 3.6 per cent increase in the December quarter alone—the first quarter of the operation of the scheme. So it was wiped out, and the community feels it. If you look at the Cotality data, you can see that entry-level house prices are massively increasing compared to houses that are more valuable. This is a policy which is making life harder for younger people. Ninety-five per cent mortgages are already going to be hard work, but this is pushing the prices up in this supply constrained environment to the point where people can't afford to get a mortgage and will never get a mortgage even with this five per cent scheme.

This point of this exercise is to get to the bottom of this. It started in August. The Senate passed a motion asking for the modelling. In September, I wrote to the minister, asking for the answer. We finally got something in December that was mainly a redacted piece of paper. It was four or five pieces of paper, 95 per cent of which was totally redacted or covered up. Of course we have asked for those redactions to be removed, because it is not true—and this is the main point—and it is unreasonable for the minister to argue that the modelling is cabinet-in-confidence. The modelling is produced on a piece of paper by the Treasury. If you don't believe me, go and refer to the Hansard for economics estimates, where you'll see the person from Treasury who actually did the modelling, and he will say: 'Yes, we did the piece of modelling. It was on a few pieces of paper, and we provided them to the government.' That is not a cabinet document. It's not. The idea that, according to Minister Ayres and Minister O'Neil, they've complied with the thing and they're not going to provide any more information because it's cabinet is incorrect. It is not correct.

Effectively, if the government think this is the end of the road on this process of trying to get to the bottom of the five per cent modelling, then they are mistaken. We will never give up on using the powers of the Senate to get the documents we are supposed to get. We're not doing it for ourselves; we're doing it because that's our job. Our job is to get to the bottom of things, to expose maladministration and to consider the documents that are given to the executive to make decisions. In this case, the executive had made the wrong decision. The policy is flawed and wrong, and it may have been based on modelling that is completely flawed and should be released. It is not a cabinet document; it must be released. I thank the crossbench for their forbearance and their support, and I indicate that we will continue working on this until we get to the bottom of it, so stay tuned.