Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I'd like to thank Senator Bragg for this motion and for the opportunity to discuss the important relationship between taxation and housing. Here we are, two senators—one from New South Wales and one from Victoria, the two largest states in this nation—in a State of Origin on housing. Housing affordability is the battleground, and in the stands are young people—there they are, all the way up there—some of whom will be locked out of housing, but not on our watch; older people of limited means; and then everyone in between who does not have that default option of the bank of mum and dad.

But, before we kick off, the outcome has already been settled. I turn to a publication by the Fairfax papers that came out on the weekend, on 19 June. It declares that Melbourne is poised to become the biggest, most liveable city. It says, 'Just ask the growing wave of Sydneysiders moving to Melbourne.' A former Sydneysider, now homeowner in Melbourne, in the suburb of Clifton Hill—it's got beautiful terraces, leafy streets and lots of parkland and it's near trams and amenities—said: 'I rented the whole time I lived in Sydney. The idea of buying a house in Sydney seemed completely unattainable. There's no way we'd be able to own a house like this in a comparable suburb in Sydney.'

According to Domain, there is a $700,000 price difference between houses in Sydney and houses in Melbourne. The median price of a house in Sydney as of March was $1.79 million. In Brisbane it was $1.21 million and in Melbourne it was $1.08 million. Across all types of dwellings, whether they be units or houses, Melbourne is nearly 40 per cent cheaper than Sydney, according to CommBank. Why? Because Melbourne is actually better at building homes than just about any other state in this country.

According to the State of the housing system report that was released in April of this year, Victoria built the most homes out of all the states in the period from 2019 to 2024, at 306,000—this compares to 251,000 in New South Wales—and Victoria is on track to meet its target goal according to the housing accord. This is clear evidence that increasing supply actually improves housing affordability. It decreases—it puts downward pressure on—prices. We are certainly backing this in with a $47 billion housing package, which is designed to deliver an additional 100,000 homes for first home buyers, to ring fence these from everyone else; $2 billion for enabling infrastructure like payments, powerlines and pipes, of which $500 million will go towards regional Australia; and, of course, we are intending through the Housing Australia Future Fund to build 55,000 social and affordable homes. But we know that this is not enough. It is not enough.

In 1999, a home cost about four times your median income. It's now around eight times. If you were in Sydney, however, it would cost 10 times your median income, and in Melbourne it's seven times. That is clearly unattainable for most working people. The average age of a first home buyer in 1999 was late 20s. It is now 34 to 36. One in five first home buyer loans by Westpac are given to people over the age of 40. In other words, people are ageing into first home ownership. That has knock-on effects on everything else, including relationships, having children, settling down and so on.

We are not standing back to admire this problem any longer. We are acting. The changes to capital gains and negative gearing are having an immediate effect. They haven't been legislated yet, but they are already cooling the property market. They are giving this $12 trillion housing market a bit of a haircut. It turns out that most people do support it. Polling by Resolve out today shows that 54 per cent of Australians support this, and 60 per cent of 18-to-34-year-olds support it. Support is seen right across all income brackets: high income, medium income and low income. The support is there because people intuitively understand that we need to give first home buyers a foot in the door, and we need to enable them to compete against property investors. This is why we're doing it.

Those opposite can berate us, but they, along with the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation, all voted against every single one of our measures to increase housing supply and to make homes more affordable.