Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support Senator Bragg's reference to the economics committee particularly because Housing Australia, as Senator Bragg said, has billions and billions of taxpayer dollars, but the reality for taxpayers is that it failed to build any houses in the whole of 2025-26. Think about that. This government has set up a housing agency. That sounds like a good thing. They put $10 billion of taxpayer funds in it. That's a lot of money. You would therefore expect that, when we ask simple questions of the government on behalf of the Australian taxpayer about how many houses this fund has actually built, they would be a little surprised to be told that the reality under the Labor government is that in the whole of 2025-2026 this fund failed to build one home.

What's worse is that, in October 2025, the Chair of Housing Australia was forced to resign. Why? She was forced to resign after it was revealed there was a secret 2024 Treasury report into the former chair's alleged conduct . On top of that, you have dysfunction in the agency. The staff are quite literally walking out the door. On top of that, there are workplace safety complaints. What is worse is there's a secret report that nobody was supposed to see. Now the government just wants to quietly appoint the next person to run the whole thing.

This is billions of dollars of taxpayer money with a dysfunctional agency. The government says to us: 'We don't want any questions. We don't want any scrutiny. We just want to hand the keys to the next person and pray to God they do better than the last person.' We're saying no, and that is why Senator Bragg has moved this motion. This is something that does need to be inquired into by a committee—in particular, the role of the chair in leading the agency that is responsible for policies that shape the housing market, because to date, based on the statistics alone, it failed to build any houses in the whole of 2025-2026. It has been a total failure.

The government has put $10 billion into the Housing Australia Future Fund, $10 billion of taxpayer money. They then told the Australian people that this fund will build thousands and thousands and thousands of homes. They were actually very proud of that announcement. They had press conferences; they put out press releases. It was the biggest thing since sliced bread—$10 billion. Yet the reality under Albanese Labor, when you step away from the press conference and step away from the press release, is this: in the entire 2025-26 financial year, how many new homes did it build? Zero, not one, nought. I'm not making it up. That's in the government's own Treasury portfolio budget statement. It's there in black and white.

And right next to the zero, as Senator Bragg articulately put it, it also states in black and white that the target is now at risk. At risk—seriously? It's absolutely at risk, because the agency isn't building any homes, because of what's going on within the agency itself. Staff turnover was more than 25 per cent in one year, with one in four people walking out the door in the 12-month period to August 2025. What is worse is their own staff survey confirmed this. The people who work at this agency are saying to the government and the Australian people: 'The agency is broken. We might have $10 billion of your money and we built no homes in that financial year, but what is worse is we are telling you the agency itself is broken.' It also has four work health and safety cases. What's strange about that? It's a housing bureaucracy. These are not tradies on a building site. They are office workers, and there are four safety complaints. Quite frankly, that tells you about the culture in this place.

Obviously, what's worse is the person who headed up the agency, the chair of Housing Australia, was forced to resign. Why? It came out that the government's treasury department had secretly commissioned a $24,000 report into allegations about the chair's conduct. It was a secret report for 24 grand of taxpayer money to investigate the person who was supposed to be running what is now, as we know, a dysfunctional show. This is the summary: the government spent $24,000 on a secret report investigating the chair of their own housing agency, the chair has gone, the staff are leaving, no homes have been built, and the government want the taxpayer to trust them with the next appointment. Senator Bragg, you're right; it needs to be inquired into, and we need that transparency.

But it actually does get worse. What did the government do when it found all of this out? The government actually has this information. Did they clean up the agency or overhaul the agency? No, they didn't. They sent in a person known as an observer. The bad news, though, for the Australian taxpayer is that nobody has a clue what this observer actually does. We think they sit in a room and observe, but we're not sure what they're observing. But, when a government feels the need to put someone in a room just to watch what a board is doing, quite frankly that tells you everything. This place is either heavily conflicted, deeply dysfunctional or, worse for the Australian taxpayer, both.

That's Housing Australia—billions in, zero homes out in 2025-26, boss forced out, staff fleeing, safety complaints, secret reports, a mystery observer. The government can't even pretend it's working anymore, and that's why I say shame on the government today if they are not supporting Senator Bragg's motion, which does nothing more than demand transparency on behalf of the Australian taxpayer. But, no, they probably won't support this motion.

Senator Bragg has been absolutely right on this, and this is what he said: 'We cannot continue to fund a housing bureaucracy in Canberra that brags about spending billions while building fewer houses. The next head of Housing Australia should have to front up to the Senate and prove they are up to the task before they get the job.' You're absolutely right, Senator Bragg. It is time for transparency. The time for supply is overdue, and it is time to restore the Australian dream of homeownership.

Sadly, these are facts. Senator Bragg and I aren't making this up. This is in the budget paper. This is the reality of the Housing Australia agency. That's why we need transparency.

Let's now put this into context. Sadly, it gets worse for the Australian taxpayer in the context of what the government dropped last night in the budget. If you think Housing Australia is bad, it gets a whole lot worse in the budget. Here's the budget in three words: broken promises everywhere. The Prime Minister promised 50 times that he would not touch negative gearing or capital gains tax. He said that to the Australian people prior to the election, yet on Tuesday night, last night, he did both. He didn't bend the truth. He didn't stretch it. Quite frankly, he snapped it in half and threw it in the bin. Fifty times prior to the election he looked Australians in the eye and he said no. And then last night he broke every one of those 50 promises, and he did it anyway.

Every Australian who bought a property, invested in shares or made a plan for their retirement in the last 12 months did it based on what the Prime Minister told them. Yet the centrepiece of this budget is a $77.2 billion tax hike over the next decade—$77 billion ripped out of the economy. There's a brand new minimum 30 per cent capital gains tax on everything. The 50 per cent discount is gone. If you are a young person and you're investing in crypto, ETFs et cetera, guess what? He's going to tax you. The Prime Minister is now coming after your aspiration, and he is taxing you. There is $77 billion in new taxes over 10 years. That is not reform. That is the biggest broken promise in Australian political history.

Does it even work? Does it fix housing? This is what Mr Albanese wants the Australian people to believe. The answer is pretty obvious. All of the experts were out there today saying, 'No, it makes it worse.' We actually don't even have to guess. The government's own numbers say so. The government today wants to turn its back on what is in black and white in their own budget papers. Their own modelling says these tax changes will mean 35,000 fewer homes over the next decade. Not more—fewer. For those listening in to this broadcast, go to page 158 of Budget paper No. 1: budget strategy and outlook. In the final paragraph it says that over the next decade, the increase in supply is expected to be around 35,000 dwellings fewer compared to no tax policy change. That is what is said in the government's budget papers. On what planet does a government that wants to increase housing supply bring in a tax that it had promised 50 times before the election it wouldn't and that its own budget papers state is going to have an impact of 35,000 fewer houses? Quite frankly, it's a government that doesn't know what it's doing.

What did Australians get out of this budget when it comes to housing? Unfortunately, it gets worse, because, as Senator Bragg knows, housing is actually directly linked to migration. Over two terms, the Albanese Labor government will have presided over the arrival of two million people to Australia. Think about that for a moment, Australia. I can tell you that this government is not taking the impact into consideration. This is not a migration intake. This is a transformation of this nation, undertaken without a plan, without the infrastructure to support it and without the honest conversation that the Australian people deserved. There are no new cities, and no serious housing targets have been met. There is no credible answer as to where these Australians are going to live. You have Australians that today woke up in their car. They slept in a car park with their family overnight, and do you know what this government says to them? 'Too bad, so sad. We're going to prioritise bringing in two million additional people to this country over you.' That is an absolute disgrace.

The result of this government losing control of migration is plain to see in every capital city, and the data doesn't lie. Australia, this is what is happening because of the Albanese government. Rents have surged. Don't take my word for it. If you're a renter, you know you can't afford to pay your rent. Vacancy rates have collapsed. Young Australians who did everything right—saved, worked, waited—are now being priced out of the market not by bad luck but by deliberate policy decisions of the Albanese government. This is a simple economic fact. When you run the largest migration intake into the tightest housing market, guess what happens? There are less homes for Australians, and this government doesn't care. It is continuing to bring in more people. That is an absolute disgrace.

We have people in Australia waking up in cars every single morning, and the government laughs at them and says in its published migration statistics, 'We're moving full steam ahead and bringing in more people.' You've got broken promises, higher taxes, more debt, lower living standards and fewer homes. The Australian people can see it, and they won't forget it.