Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Trade and Tourism (Senator Farrell) to a question without notice I asked today relating to foreign investment in housing.

On the night of the last census, one million homes in Australia were vacant, twice what we need to solve the housing crisis. Yet, after my question today, it's clear this government has not done anything to find out why these homes are vacant. Instead, the government has introduced a bureaucratic Housing Australia Future Fund that will, even if we take it at face value, build just three per cent of the number of homes currently sitting empty around Australia. That's just 30,000 homes, as compared to the one million already built and sitting empty. At no time has this government thought, 'We really should see if we can get people into those empty homes.'

We don't know how many of those homes are foreign owned, either directly or through dodgy beneficiary arrangements, because the government does not want to know. Minister Farrell made that clear in his answer, if indeed there was an answer somewhere in there. Let me educate the minister. According to data from the New South Wales Treasury, then extrapolated to other states, it's likely that every year in Australia 5,000 foreign buyers purchase $5 billion worth of housing. Many of them then lock up the properties for years until the prices rise and then sell the properties as brand-new, taking the homes out of the rental market. These purchases include shell companies buying multiple properties and foreign owners purchasing properties under the Foreign Investment Review Board limit, unbeknownst to the Foreign Investment Review Board. This minister did flag that a foreign owner of a property valued above $1 million who leaves the country must sell the property within six months. I flag a question on notice asking how many prosecutions have actually been made and if, in this situation, a foreign buyer is not allowed to rent the property. The minister's answer there was misleading to the Senate.

Canada, New Zealand and 30 other countries have banned foreigners from buying homes, partially in response to this very problem. Canada's rental price fell about 12 per cent in the three months before their ban started in January this year, then fell about that much again for three months afterwards. Home values fell only enough to help home purchase, not enough to put homeowners into negative equity. Prices are now rising again, because Trudeau is allowing in 500,000 new immigrants a year. It's not rocket science; it's simple supply and demand.

Question agreed to.