Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) | Hansard source

I feel it is extraordinary to have a conga line of Labor backbenchers coming out to talk about housing supply when every single one of their policies in the last four years has been designed, whether by intent or by incompetence, to make it harder for Australians to own their own home. My least favourite at the moment is the five per cent deposit scheme, which not only drove up house prices but, in combination with the out-of-control spending and higher inflation under this government, has meant that those Australians who went into that program are now faced with having more debt than equity. What a shocking position to put people who are desperately trying to get into their own first home in, and it's one that the coalition warned about. We said: 'This is a failed policy. It will end up leaving people worse off.' That's exactly the situation that we're left in.

The most recent budget—it's terrible. It's anti-aspirational, and it is not delivering more houses. We know that Labor is more than 100,000 dwellings behind the 1.2 million housing target by mid-2029. It will miss this target by more than 200,000 houses. This is a government that is planning to fail. It is extraordinary to me that there is no understanding of the basic economics of when you have out-of-control spending, when you drive up inflation to some of the highest rates in the advanced economies, when you drive up interest rates—for people listening, inflation is a term that's used a lot but not always well understood. Inflation simply means you pay more. You pay more for your groceries. You pay more for your rent. You pay more for your shoes and your clothes and every other thing in your life. It also means that the RBA, whose only purpose in life is to keep inflation to a band, is then forced to increase interest rates. If you're a young person seeking to get into the housing market, the Labor government's out-of-control spending has pushed up inflation, made it harder for you to buy every single thing in your life and then also driven up interest rates, which means that the deposit you've worked so hard to build is worth less. Your bank is going to lend you less with a higher interest rate.

Of course, the final thing is that, once Labor's finished spending their money, they come after yours. It also increases taxes. This is the trifecta of antihousing policy. Thanks very much to Labor, because we have the highest inflation and the highest interest rates for the G7, for many developed countries, and Australia is unfortunately the winner in that competition.

Housing is incredibly important. Australia, unlike many other countries, still has a goal for people to own their own home. Many other countries have already given that up. They have long-term rentals and that is an accepted way of life. But in Australia the idea of owning your own home is a dream, an aspiration that everybody aspires to. But, under this Labor government, you are worse off every day. And the budget, in its latest round, will only make that harder.

The changes to capital gains tax mean that if you seek to buy a home or, potentially, to rent out a room, you are now disadvantaged under this government's policy settings. I'm not sure why this was such a burningly urgent priority for the Prime Minister, a man who has benefited from the John Howard reforms to capital gains tax of many years ago. He was happy to take the gearing and happy to take the tax benefit. Yet now that he's out of the investor property market, he's willing to leave everybody else in deep water. I think it is mean spirited and—worse—means that Australians who wish to own their own home and wish to benefit from the great country we live in are destined, under this Labor government, to have higher prices, higher inflation, higher taxes and no access to a new home.