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

I rise to take note of Minister Farrell's response on behalf of Minister Ayres. I begin by expressing my continuing disappointment with the appalling response and the disrespect shown to the Senate on this repeated request to give us something fairly simple but very important—that is, the basic case and the estimates arising from a model about how the five per cent deposit scheme would impact on the critical question of house prices. We heard Minister Farrell this morning completely and deliberately misunderstand the nature of the request made repeatedly in this place, give us data on contingent liability, refer to that and not go to the key issue here, which is: What did the modelling show? How did it assess risk? What were the bounds of possibility for house price increases? This is not a trivial question. This country is in a serious housing crisis, and the Senate here is seeking information about the basis for decision-making.

We have a government which has contributed to the housing crisis through this five per cent deposit scheme. Of the scheme's modelling out of Treasury, the bottom line showed a 0.6 per cent increase or an additional $55 billion to property prices over the next six years. That in itself is a significant increase, but we know the reality has been way more significant and large and a real pouring of fuel onto a crisis in housing across our country. A record high $40 billion was given to property investors, taken out in loans by property investors, in the last three months of 2025, a absolute record take by investors, who poured it into investing in property, many of them already wealthy property investors, pushing that price up in advance, in their thinking, of the consequences of what this five per cent deposit scheme would do to house prices and rushing to get in ahead of that price increase and fuel their own wealth at the cost of first home buyers. So this scheme has actually been a disaster for house prices, as it is widely seen. What this Senate wants to know is what the thinking there was. What was the modelling? We have a clear right and an important responsibility to take that issue seriously.

Labor has to take its responsibility for making this crisis worse much more seriously. House prices have increased by 25 per cent in the last term of Labor over the four years. That is appalling. We need policy action and remediation of that crisis, which Labor is ducking. Mortgages have increased by $70,000 on average in the last 12 months. We've got people out there suffering with successive interest rate increases that are piling on stress to households already living in mortgage stress, not to mention the crisis of rental affordability. We're at record levels of rental unaffordability and low rates of available properties. Through the CGT and negative gearing, $53 billion has been wasted on tax concessions over the four years of a Labor government. There are policy instruments available to Labor to do better than to make the crisis worse.

So we want to know what's going on and how that modelling panned out. We want to see the workings of it, the assumptions, the impact and the risk assessments. The Senate's responsibility is to ask for those documents. To be treated in this way with this appallingly redacted document today is shocking. In a crisis, that Labor think they can come here repetitively, minister after minister, and give us a failed response, a nonresponse, to treat us like mugs is not on. In a crisis, we need better, and Australian people want us to do it. To refuse to acknowledge that the modelling exists and to fail to take our request for it seriously is a real breach of serious government action. The Senate is right, and the Senate needs to keep coming back and requesting the key documents and the arguments underpinning critical housing interventions that are having extremely negative effects on so many Australians who are trying to buy property, trying to deal with their mortgages and trying to find their way in an appalling rental circumstance. Labor has not taken the Senate seriously. It is a shame. It is shocking. It's on their conscience. We will be back seeking information to illuminate the crisis we're in, how to get out of it and the stats and modelling that underlie Labor's position.