Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the statement.

Well, thank you very much for that! Moving to take note of the minister's explanation would be rather generous because it wasn't an explanation, because the minister has engaged in obfuscation here, as has the government. Going back to July last year, after the election, when OPD No. 27 was initially moved and agreed to by the Senate, we were seeking the modelling that was to underpin the five per cent deposit scheme. The idea that I have lost my mind—whilst maybe on some level funny and it may possibly be true—in this case is not true.

Since July we have been seeking access to the modelling which underpinned the Prime Minister's assertion that the Home Guarantee Scheme's expansion to anyone, effectively, would only result in a 0.6 per cent increase in house prices. The lived experience here has been a six per cent increase in house prices in six months under the Home Guarantee Scheme. We went from 0.6 per cent over six years to six per cent in just six months.

Clearly the government have no idea what they're doing. The modelling done for them was completely wrong. The government knows that this housing gimmick, its five per cent deposit scheme, was deployed into a market which was constrained by a huge collapse in supply, from 200,000 houses a year on average down to 170,000 houses a year on average, and the fact that this policy was pushed into the market at that time—it was always likely to have a price impact, which is why the government went to great lengths to get it modelled.

Of course, the modelling was only done after the policy was announced. The policy was announced during the election campaign as a giveaway, and then the modelling was produced by the Treasury. But everything is redacted. When we see the pieces of paper we get back from the government—OPDs, FOIs, whatever they are—everything is covered up. So we can't actually see the basis point on which the modelling was done.

The lack of transparency and the attempts to smear the opposition as being of unsound mind do not go very far in providing the sort of transparency and integrity this government promised it would deliver for Australians when it was elected some four years ago. Given we are here on the day of the 2026-27 budget, in which the government is proposing to break all promises made about not increasing taxes, maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

At the most basic level, I want to acknowledge the Senate's desire, as evidenced by its repeated voting pattern, to have the documents provided for public inspection. It's not good enough for the government to say, 'In relation to factoring in the supply response,' which is what the modelling has taken into account, 'we're just going to redact that whole section.' The idea that we can't see how the modelling for the government was done makes a mockery of this chamber and makes a mockery of the people who sent us to do this work. All we're seeking to do is to get to the bottom of how the modelling was done and on what basis it was done, because, clearly, the lived experience has shown the modelling was wrong. Given the government tonight are apparently going to promise that 75,000 people are now going to have access to a first home, you won't be surprised to hear that we're sceptical of their modelling efforts, given the last one was so wrong.

So we've seen no further information from the minister this afternoon. And it's not just OPD Nos 27 and 119. There's also Senator Payman's OPD No. 208. Senator Payman has sought to get access to information, and she has received the same blanked-out, redacted pieces of paper. We have three OPDs on foot, but we have not been able to get to the bottom of the modelling underpinning the five per cent deposit scheme. At this rate, the minister will be coming in and having to do a lot more explanations where he accuses other people of being of unsound mind, which may be funny but ultimately does not advance the policy interest of the nation. This covering up doesn't help us get to the bottom of things, and it therefore doesn't give the government an opportunity to course-correct with their future policy intervention.

I'll call on the senator again to at least get the minister back to explain. I'm wondering what the value of that is. We need to seriously consider more coercive measures on the government ministers if they're going to treat this chamber in this way. Honestly, what's the point? We really need to consider whether we restrict the minister's ability to engage in this chamber in some form.