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

I rise also to speak on this attendance motion. I've got to say I really hope people out there in housing-crisis land did not watch the minister's appearance, because I felt like I was in a very sad front bar with a set of worn-out senators after a hard week in the Senate, where he blew off a really significant crisis that is affecting so many millions of Australians. We got that kind of jokey, dismissive, contemptuous response. I must say, as a senator, I am absolutely outraged at that response. It was inappropriate. It's the most significant economic issue in this country, affecting millions of people—young people, their parents, older women who can't find a rental house, who are on the street and who are tipped into homelessness.

There has been a 10 per cent increase in homelessness in the four years of this Labor government. Shame on you to come in here, Minister, and be so dismissive and so contemptuous of a very legitimate request. This is a request for modelling on one of the government's central programs in its appalling array of programs which are failing to meet the crisis in front of us and are, in fact, a series of responses, including the five per cent deposit scheme, which are pouring fuel on a housing crisis like we have never seen in this country in the postwar period.

It's a crisis that is tipping people into living in tents in the parklands in my city and in every city. There is not a city in this country where someone who is looking for an affordable first home can afford, on average, a house. We see people in every city in our country, as they purchase their first home, entering automatically into housing stress. This is a really serious issue, yet we see this minister come in here and fail to treat it with any kind of seriousness. I am distressed by it. I am disgusted by it, and I think he should be doing better and his government should be doing better.

This OPD was passed in the Senate six months ago, and it asked for the total budgetary costs of Labor's expansion of the Home Guarantee Scheme. We've pursued this issue in estimates. We get told, 'Chase it in estimates.' We've chased it in estimates over and over again. They are serious questions about an expensive and significant program, and we get these appalling—I'm not allowed to use them as a prop—five blank pages as a response to us in the Senate. It is disgraceful. It is treating us with contempt. More importantly than treating us with contempt, as senators elected to this place, it's treating people out there with contempt—people out there who are trying to raise a deposit, people who are trying to get into housing. They are failing to give us the information we need to look seriously at a significant program.

Even though the government would like to think this OPD is completely complied with, it's the opinion of the Senate that it's not complied with. It's clearly not. It's a blank response. That is contemptuous. The Senate has rejected the government's public interest immunity claim, and we need the full costings. Labor's five per cent deposit scheme is turbocharging prices at the very entry-level point in the housing market where young people are trying to get in. Almost every economist in the country, including the economists in Treasury, said it would push prices up, and—hey presto!—it has, and they're up much more than the Treasury modelling predicted. We need to look at that modelling and understand it, and it is a completely reasonable request to seek it out.

As I said, there are no affordable houses for first home buyers in any city in our country, and the prices of houses at that lower entry level of the market have grown 68 per cent since 2020. That is an impossible circumstance for people trying to get into housing. Last year alone the price of entry-level homes grew at a rate of 12.3 per cent, and in recent months, since the five per cent deposit came into being, they have accelerated at a rapid rate. It was predicted by economists and recognised by Treasury, and all we say is: 'Show us the modelling. Let us understand what is happening. Show us the budget that is implied here.'

What we see here is a failure by Labor to be straightforward with the Senate about the information it received to analyse a significant program—in a housing crisis, a crisis that is affecting so many people. That response was a disgrace. The Senate deserves better, the minister needs to do better, and Labor has got to do better for Australians.