I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by coalition senators today.

What we have with Labor's housing policy today, explained to us in question time, is a series of misses and own goals. We've got fewer homes being built. We've got higher repayments, if you're a mortgage holder. We've got higher rents, if you're in the rental market. We've got falling house values, and, increasingly, we've got home borrowers in the situation of either negative equity or mortgage prison, as it's called.

The Foreign minister was quite right to point out that this was a supply issue, fundamentally an issue of supply and demand, but, if you agree with that diagnosis, then the prescription needs to be more supply. What we've seen from this Labor government is less supply. We're seeing fewer homes being built—173,000 homes last year versus a requirement of 240,000 homes a year to meet Labor's own housing accord targets. We've got builders in the construction industry going broke. We've had 13,000 construction businesses become insolvent since Labor came to office, and we're seeing more and more collapses in the construction industry. Builders are not building right now, because, in a falling market, they can't pre-sale. They can't pre-sell apartments and properties. They find it harder to raise capital, and they can't guarantee a return on their investment, so you've got builders putting down their tools.

We've got a lack of investor confidence. The changes to tax settings, the abolition of negative gearing and changes to the capital gains tax discount regime, in Labor's budget of broken promises is causing investors to withdraw from the market. Labor's own predictions in the budget said that there would be fewer homes and higher rents and a moderation in house price growth, but what we are seeing is all of those things happen at a much faster rate and in a much more pronounced way than we expected. In the situation we've got right now, if we've got falling house prices, we've got investors sitting on the sidelines, because they don't want to invest into a falling market. Further, we've got institutional investors and individual investors no longer able to enter the market in the same way, because of the changes to the negative gearing treatment of investment property and existing homes, so we've got less investment in the market. We've got builders building less because of less confidence in the market, and we've got fewer homes being built.

You put all that together—the housing market is in crisis here in Australia. This isn't just a cyclical correction. This is a fundamental change to the structure of the housing market. Just today, there are reports that it's now going to take new homeowners some eight additional years to save for a house deposit, if they're doing so through vehicles like shares or like managed trusts or investments, because of changes to the capital gains tax regime. Reports again today are showing that a large number of Australian households are in so-called mortgage prison, owning less than 20 per cent of equity in their home because of the deterioration of values.

If you're a renter right now, you're paying more. All the indications are that, with the rental market tighter—with markets like Sydney and Perth with about one per cent vacancy—landlords are going to have to put rent up even further because they no longer get the benefit of negative gearing. If you're a mortgage holder, you've endured something like 15 interest rate rises—including three this past year and the very strong possibility of a fourth later this month—which means you're paying more in interest every month. Even if you own your own home, you've seen the value of that asset, the most important asset that many families own, deteriorate remarkably.

This is an issue of supply and demand. In Labor's policies, what they're doing is they are crimping supply and they're doing nothing to introduce demand. The Liberals' approach is the opposite.

We hear a lot being thrown around right now. It's really not helpful to use emotive language like 'mortgage prison' and 'trapped'. There's nothing unusual in many buyers finding themselves in a temporary period of so-called negative equity. That means at a particular point in time you owe more than the notional value of the house under your mortgage. That's always been less than two per cent in Australia. It was much higher under the previous government.

Current figures are around one per cent, and the RBA and many real estate analysts have pointed out that this is not an issue for long-term investors. Most people who buy a house are doing it for the long term, and what matters is the valuation five, 10 or 20 years down the track. A temporary period of negative equity is a silent issue, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia. It is not one that we should seek to make political hay out of. It is something that is not unusual.

For decades the Australian property market has had cyclical features about it, so there will always be periods where house prices do not go up in a straight line. House prices have a period of moderation. Particularly over the rapid growth in the post-COVID period of low interest rates, we saw a huge spike in house prices. Therefore, it's only understandable that at some point there would be a cyclical correction and we would start to see house prices moderate. That means, if you bought a house at a particular time, you may find in the immediate period afterwards that the price goes back somewhat. It doesn't actually have a direct economic consequence unless you're in a position to sell—unless you are forced to sell.

One of the great things that we've achieved in recent times is record generational low unemployment in Australia, very much in the low 4½ per cent range, which is almost considered full employment. When you have those levels of strong employment, you don't have the levels of mortgage stress and forced selling. That is one of the really important things to underpin: the very responsible approach that Australian households and mortgage holders take. They are in very strong balance sheet positions to be able to service their mortgages. Whether households are able to continue to service their mortgages—that is what really matters, not a notional valuation compared to the loan book.

I think it's helpful to get some facts on the table around that, and there's a reason why we're acting on housing in the first place. I cannot see how anybody could say the status quo was acceptable. We've seen house prices grow by 400 per cent since 1999—400 per cent. Wages have probably grown by around half of that amount. It's made homeownership totally out of reach for a whole range of middle-range professions that used to aspire to homeownership and now no longer have that opportunity. We are trying to correct that and give ordinary working people an opportunity to get into their own home.

That is not just an equity issue or an intergenerational equity issue; it's also a productivity issue. Workers need to be able to find housing where employment is, and we want to be able to have affordable housing so people can tap in to the employment opportunities that are out there. One of the most important ways, as was outlined in question time, is increasing supply. Supply is the main game here. Yes, there are some tax measures, but supply is what this is all about in this debate and will continue to drive more housing.

We're taking note of all answers given to coalition senators this afternoon, but there was one answer that stood out to me as a South Australian. It was the answer given by Minister Wong about the closure of the Whyalla blast furnace which was recently confirmed by the administrators of the plant. They confirmed that it will never be relit now, which is a surprise to almost nobody but a tragedy for the 500 workers who are going to be made redundant. They're expected to be victims of this closure, and it's my contention therefore that they are also victims of Labor's relentless ideological pursuit of the climate scam, as it is now known and as it is now openly referred to.

The so-called decarbonisation of this country makes it near impossible to do any sort of manufacturing and therefore provide jobs for Australians. It certainly makes it impossible to keep a blast furnace competitive by price. We were talking this morning about what sort of prospect you'd have of building this very building we're in today when a result of the climate scam is that we don't even make flat glass in this country anymore, let alone any of the other products that would have gone into it. That's the Australia we live in now.

All the while, our international competitors blast ahead, so to speak. You don't think you're going to see the same excuses the government are using for this closure—'old equipment', 'hole in the ozone layer', 'my dog did it'. Whatever the excuses are, you don't see them coming out of the People's Republic of China; they're just carrying on. And what have they got? They've got cheap energy.

Once again, Labor prioritises their positioning in amongst the global elite and in amongst the global climate glitterati higher than they do Australian jobs. It doesn't sound very much to me like the words that we heard coming out of the great premier from South Australia, the exalted man that can do no wrong in the eyes of the Adelaide Advertiser! By the way, the Adelaide Advertiser gets a lot of kickbacks from the state government in South Australia. It's totally unrelated, but I thought I'd throw it in there, just as we're here! The words 'green energy superpower', 'green energy superpower', 'green energy superpower'—it doesn't sound much like a green energy superpower out in Whyalla anymore.

The other one who stood up this week was the great—what do they call him?—minister for climate or the minister for the environment, Minister Bowen, who is the gift that keeps on giving. My advice, though I hate to give advice to the Australian Labor Party, is to keep rolling that guy out, particularly on social media, where he has almost a world record now in ratios. For people who don't know what a ratio is, it's when you put up a comment and you then get smashed by the comments coming back at you. He is a world leader in that respect. But he also—what did he say? He said he 'never bought into the hype'. It's unimaginable. To say those words—they're right here. It must have been 15 times that he bought into the hype or at least proclaimed to. On 13 April 2023—it's a long time ago, by the way, so maybe his memory is not quite there—the minister said:

Today's release of the annual State of Hydrogen report reinforces that Australia has the foundations to become a global leader in green hydrogen.

On 23 May of the same year, he said:

Now some people might think, oh, you know, is green hydrogen real, is it going to happen? Well, it's already being manufactured right there in Gladstone …

I'm going to run out of time, but there are so many more. There are millions of them! Unbelievable! (Time expired)

Can I start by expressing sympathy with the people in Whyalla and an understanding that they are going through a really insecure period at the moment. When industries that are highly important to local towns are in jeopardy or have threats associated with them, it creates deep insecurity around jobs and people's lives. So I think it's incumbent on us to recognise that when we start debates like this, because these are people's lives, and there are huge impacts not only on people's economic futures but also on their families and their communities. So I start on that note.

But I quickly turn to a note of incredulity because the coalition's approach to this today just illustrates once again why they are not an alternative government in their current state. The first reason for that is that their industry policy has no coherence. It is utterly contradictory at its core, and the people opposite don't understand where they stand on this economically. Industry policy has had a complicated and difficult history in this country, but it is something that requires close attention.

The reason I say they have no coherence is that in the past you could reliably know that the coalition would oppose industry policy. People like former treasurer Joe Hockey would stand there and tell the car industry to go overseas, damned be the jobs, damned be the impact on the Australian economy. But today you don't know that because they don't know where they stand. They're opposed to the investment in Australian industry. They opposed Future Made in Australia. But every time one of these plants is under jeopardy, every time people's jobs and communities are on the line, they come in here and bleat about it. They complain about the job losses, but they don't actually support the solutions.

The second reason they have no coherence or no credibility as an alternative government is they don't look at the whole picture because the whole picture requires you to see the whole board but then also look at details. The opportunism on show today was really quite something. You've had opposition members say that this is all about energy. Well, actually the blast furnace that has shut down and is causing this difficulty is actually about a failure to invest in that maintenance and the technology itself, but it also reflects an older technology that probably needs to be replaced in the long-term. So when they talk about energy, they're really talking past the blast furnace issue.

It's a blast furnace that the people in Whyalla have tried to get working, but they can't do it and keep workers safe at the same time. There was not a word about worker safety today either when it came to the blast furnace. You then had Senator Antic saying, 'We should just try and emulate China because the only difference between the Australian economy and the Chinese economy is they have cheap energy prices.' You must be joking. The simplistic reductionist nonsense on economic policy that comes from the coalition today must make their former finance ministers and treasurers just embarrassed to be a part of this party.

But I can tell you there's a different approach on the Labor side. There's a different approach that is committed to not only a thriving and dynamic market economy but one recognises that, in the global environment we're in right now, industry policy has changed as well. That's because we have a strategic environment that requires us to allyshore and friendshore some aspects of our supply chains to prevent monopolies. It's because, from a competitive perspective globally, we have countries around the world that are also protecting their own industries, and in order to give Australian companies and firms and workers a fair shot and a fair and free marketplace, we need industry policy here too. It's about levelling the playing field. It's not about giving us an unnecessary advantage. It's about recognising the global environment we're in.

The third thing is that it's recognising that industrial capacity is important for an economy. It's important for two reasons. It's important for jobs and it's important to ensure that you have diversity in an economy so you're not vulnerable to price shocks. If you're highly limited in the number of industries and areas that you compete in globally and one of them goes up or down, you effectively go up and down with it. That diversity is important too. This government recognises that the government needs an industry policy. Government can't be the dumb money, but it needs to be done in a structured and smart way.

The irony coming from those on the other side of this chamber! It is devastating what the closure of the blast furnace means for the people of Whyalla. As a proud South Australian, it is something that you never, ever want to see. This is after $2.4 billion of taxpayer money was invested to keep this blast furnace going and to keep the ability to make steel a sovereign capability here in Australia.

The irony is not lost on me. We live in a country that has bountiful resources. We have more iron ore than we could possibly ever, ever need, we have gas, and we have coal. What we don't have in this country is cheap, reliable power that makes us able to manufacture things like steel at an affordable rate. You want to talk about why the investment wasn't made into the old technology of the blast furnace? That's because companies, the steelworks, were too busy paying high electricity prices. Because of the high energy prices, it was no longer economical to be able to make steel and to be able to invest in the technology that they needed to keep the steelworks going well into the future.

The politics and ideology from this Labor government has meant that the only steelworks we have left in South Australia is now shut. What does that mean for Australia? What does that mean for our sovereign capability? What does that mean for the township of Whyalla? Overnight 600 people lost their jobs in a country town with no prospect of anything to replace it. I think of some of the job offers that the Labor premier in South Australia was talking about yesterday. They were talking about between 10 and 15 jobs. Well, that's going to be really great for the 585 people that aren't going to be lucky enough to get one of those very few jobs.

This is an absolute disgrace and a failure in policy from this Labor government not just at a federal level but at a state level too. We want to talk about this green hydrogen fantasy and how green hydrogen was going to mean we could make green steel in Australia. That fantasy has sent us down a path of not being able to make steel at all. What is this going to mean for things like Osborne? We want to build submarines and ships in Australia, but we can't make steel. What is it going to mean for places like Henderson? What does it mean for our Defence capability in this country that we are going to rely on international supply chains at a time when this government says we are living in the most dangerous strategic environment since the end of the Second World War?

This Labor government has followed a net-zero ideology, and what it has done is kill the industrial base in Australia. They have gutted it. It has meant that towns like Whyalla won't prosper anymore. Those 600 people are going to have to move away and find jobs elsewhere. When we do get that new technology, if there is a new blast furnace that the new buyer of the steelworks might invest in and put in—but who knows, because there is still no buyer. There are people that are interested, but, now that the blast furnace doesn't start, are they still interested? Are we still going to be able to sell it, are we still going to be able to make steel, and who is going to make that steel? The people that have lost their jobs can't sit around and wait six months, until a new buyer comes in, for a new job to be offered to them. This is an absolute, catastrophic failure. This is what following a net-zero ideology is doing to Australia across our whole country, and it's a disgrace.

Question agreed to.