Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given to all coalition senators' questions today.

I want to start with the last question that was asked by Senator Paterson. What was very telling in the response from Minister Gallagher was her unwillingness to give a very simple response to a question that only required either a yes or a no answer. What we're seeing with this government here, with the charade of the productivity so-called round table last week, is that they're laying the foundation for some changes when it comes to tax.

There's no doubt that this government is laying the foundation to impose higher taxes on Australians because they have no other option but to raise taxes for hardworking Australians—because of their spending. The spending that is going on with this government is out of control, and it is impacting upon the ability of this country to pay for it and afford it. The only way you can do that is if you increase taxes.

It's just like they did in the last term with their so-called Jobs and Skills Summit, where they used that as a method to bring in legislation that wasn't talked about before the previous election. When it comes to industrial relations, they use the Jobs and Skills Summit to be the vehicle to justify significant changes in the industrial relations landscape. I've got no doubt that that is the tactic that they're employing here with their so-called productivity round table, which they held last week as a way of saying some ideas came out of that forum that they could then take on and use to justify changes to the taxation system.

Now, this is not something Australians voted for at the last election. In fact, there were commitments made, and we heard it through the questions that were asked and the statements that were made. The Prime Minister said that there won't be any changes, but we know that the Treasurer is not so convinced. As Senator Paterson pointed to, there was an interview that took place on 24 August where the Treasurer said, 'It remains to be seen,' as to whether or not there will be any increased taxes. What we've got is a real difference between what the Prime Minister is saying and what the Treasurer is saying. The Treasurer knows that the only way that they can deal with their increase in spending, their out-of-control spending, is to increase the taxes that Australians are paying. That is, of course, going to have a significant impact on productivity, the very thing that that whole forum was meant to be about last week—increasing productivity. It's the P-word that this government will not deal with. They will not deal adequately with the significant productivity changes.

I mentioned industrial relations. We're seeing such low levels of productivity in this country because of all the complications that this government has imposed on businesses operating. Productivity is at an all-time low. I've just spent the last week up in the Pilbara. The resources sector is known as one of the most productive sectors of our industry, of our economy, and we're seeing the unions get more involved in workplaces—workplaces that pay the highest possible wages, well above market rates. We're seeing more and more involvement of unions there, increasing the complexity of running a worksite, increasing the complexity of delivering for customers and increasing the complexity of what it takes to deliver a profit, return the profit to shareholders and, indeed, make this country productive.

That's what we're seeing under this government because this government is out of control when it comes to managing the economy. We're going to see the impact of this in time. I have no doubt that they've laid the foundation. They're going through it, and it will only be a matter of time before we see some tax proposed, and they'll say, 'This is what was discussed,' or, 'This was the foundation that was laid at the productivity roundtable last week.' Well, Australians will see through this, and they will hold you to account.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I look forward to making my contribution here, but, for the poor devils who may have just tuned in or been sitting through this painful last hour and 10 minutes, you could quite rightfully ask, 'Are we on the same planet?' We are; we're on the same planet. That mob over there—I don't know what planet you mob are on. I really have no idea.

I won't apologise—I actually come with dirt under the fingernails. I actually worked blue-collar. I actually had my own business. For those over there who've just come through university, joined the Young Liberals, latched onto a senator or a member and then got themselves a good seat, I apologise. It's not your fault; you know no better. But, seriously, through my whole working life, there has been nothing more powerful, whether you are in your worksite or with your workmates, whether there be two, three, four or five of you or hundreds, than when you actually have the ability to engage, talk to your employer and talk with your workmates in front of the employer to put forth ideas about how you improve your workplace, how you improve the boss's profitability—there's no problem with that—how you make it a far safer workplace and how you all share in the spoils of profitability.

The Albanese government needs to be commended. As I was reminded earlier on in question time, there were nine long years, three prime ministers and a rabble where the tail wagged the mangy dog. The tail, the Nats, were wagging to get the mangy dog, the Libs, moving. They prided themselves on secrecy and behind-doors dealings, always behind doors, and then they'd lob it on us. The Albanese government comes up under the brilliant stewardship of the Treasurer, Dr Chalmers, to say to the Australian public: 'What can we do, and how can we do better? What are your ideas? Everything's on the table—it's not a problem. Come and share them. Come to Canberra not for one minute, not for 10 minutes, not for half an hour and not for an hour but for three days. Chuck out all the ideas you've got.' Fantastic; I applaud that.

What they don't tell you is that there wasn't just one productivity roundtable for three days; there were many. There were dozens going on around the nation. All the ministers, as well as the other government members of parliament, were engaging with their communities in productivity roundtables to get ideas to bring back to the government, because we on the Labor side don't sit there like the master-servant side over there, who say, 'We've got all the great ideas, and everyone else is dumb.' We actually want to share and get feedback. And what did we get? It makes me want to vomit—'Sky after dark'. I can't believe I've actually used those words! I must say there are a number on that side over there. I've heard that the Nats' and the Libs' members, the actual grassroots members, tune into 'Sky after dark' so they can work out what the hell their party is on about, because they don't know because they don't get engaged and they don't get included. We want to include.

I applaud the government. I applaud the Prime Minister and Dr Chalmers for having that ability to say, 'Let's get some ideas.' There were all these ideas flagged around. I heard Senator Roberts. I've got the greatest of respect for Senator Roberts. I don't agree with anything that he does politically, but I think he's a very nice, decent human being—I really do. Senator Antic is a real good guy, but we're not on the same page, mate. But you're a decent man, and I know you've got to play up to your constituents at 'Sky after dark'. I get that. But you heard Senator Roberts ask Minister Gallagher three times about something that he's heard or read in 'Sky after dark' or the Murdoch media about how your bedroom's going to get taxed if it's spare. The minister could not have been more clear—not once, not twice but three times—that there's no such tax. Then we hear the regurgitation coming because this lot have read stuff in the Murdoch media, that trash, or 'Sky after dark' that keep wanting to tell lies. It's not happening.

I feel so sorry for the Australian public. I note up in the galleries are school children. Please—we're not all like this. There are actually some decent people here that are absolutely concerned about your best interests and where we go for your future. After all these years, I think I need to take a pill. I need to have a lie down, because this is just getting worse and worse, and it's not just me. I'm actually embarrassed of the standards of the questions that come from the most inept opposition that we've seen in many, many decades. (Time expired)

Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd just like to convey, for having received the lovely feedback from Senator Sterle about me being a very decent human being—it's very true, by the way; I am—that back. You're on the wrong side of the chamber, I reckon. I don't know what you're doing over there mixing with the socialists. You should be over with the good guys, where you belong, because I think you're alright too. That's a lovely moment for the Australian people. But we are here to talk about more important matters than my love for Senator Sterle. We are here to talk about the important matters that were raised by the coalition senators on this side this afternoon.

One of them was a very good question, from Senator Bragg, who asked the minister about the housing crisis. By the way, it's not a storm on the horizon. It's here right now today, and Australians are feeling the pinch of that crisis. Of course, if it were true that those opposite were actually speaking to real Australians, they would understand that in the way that we understand it. Every time I talk to an Australian, be they young or old, they tell me the same thing is on their mind, and that is the state of housing in this country. The minister glossed over the response, I think, to the question. The question was what was driving this. The answer to that is multifactorial. The main one, of course, is the state of the economy generally. We've seen Labor promising working families in this country for a long period of time now a better life, but they're delivering weaker growth, higher energy costs and falling living standards. Household growth in itself is going backwards at a rate of knots, and productivity has flatlined. In fact we know, because we on this side of the chamber have said it until we're blue in the face that Australia's plunged from 13th to 18th in global competitiveness over the last few years. Prices across the board are skyrocketing, and that is affecting the housing market more than anything at all. We've heard them campaigning against this National Construction Code, and now they tell us that they themselves want to freeze the National Construction Code. They really don't understand the nexus and genesis of what's happening. But we have to understand that there is an elephant in the room when it comes to the housing crisis—that is, the mass migration crisis that we're seeing in this country and that we have seen over the last few years.

The financial year 2023-24 saw net overseas migration at around 446,000 new people coming into this country. The previous year was just over half a million—536,000—people coming into this country. That's just over a million people that have entered this country over the last couple of years. Australians are now competing with people from overseas every single day to afford affordable homes to either rent or buy. It's not only the housing market which is under threat; it's also our transport system, our health care and our schools. The fact is that immigration should be doing something for Australia rather than the other way around.

I would suggest that the current model of mass migration is not serving the interests of the Australian people any longer; in fact, it is now doing quite the opposite. The number of times young Australians have talked to me about turning up to rental inspections and being there with 50 to 100 other people—all waiting in line and all looking for their opportunity to rent a property—is the overarching factor over and above the competition and the state of the economy. I know that, at the last two elections, I didn't hear that discussed by the government; I didn't hear this plan to continue to allow huge numbers of people through the gates. I certainly didn't vote for anything of that nature with that in mind, and there are no Australians that I'm aware of that did that either.

This policy is, frankly, tearing at the fabric of this country. It is taking away from Australians what they have an absolute right to expect. We heard, over the election period, Morgan Cox get on Q+A on the ABC and talk about this very issue only for 'how dare he' to be howled at him. This is a man with a young family and a wife—who was born overseas, I think—so hardly the caricature of a person that they like to cast in this. Talk about this very issue, how it's affecting Australians and what it is doing to the very fabric of this nation. That is the overriding issue on the housing crisis, I would suggest.

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a question time that was. We had a question on superannuation from the party who wants young Australians to drain their superannuation in order to get into housing. We had a question on housing, again, from the party who voted against our government's entire housing agenda in cahoots with the Greens. We had a question on the application of fiscal rules from the party who repeatedly fail to follow their own in government. And we had a question on tax from the party who took higher income taxes to the last election as their policy and then were shocked when the Australian people rejected it. What a way to set the agenda in question time. But let's go to housing.

I am deeply proud of our government's housing agenda. As I said, whilst those opposite think the way to solve the housing crisis is to tell young Australians that they cannot both have a meaningful retirement through superannuation and own a home, their policy is—and has been for a number of years—to get young Australians to rip out their super to pay for housing. We have a higher ambition for young Australians. We believe young Australians deserve to have both.

We know that, in Australia, it is simply too hard for too many people to get into a home. This isn't just an issue for young Australians—although it affects young Australians most acutely—who are seeing a completely different intergenerational deal being offered to them than what was offered to the generations beforehand. We've got an opposition party who is coming up with policies which will continue to undermine that and which will continue to affect and alter that intergenerational bargaining by saying, 'You can use your superannuation to buy housing.' What about your retirement? Why can you not have both? We need to have a better ambition for young Australians and a better deal for them.

The fact is, when it comes to our housing market, this is a problem fundamentally of supply. For the past three years in government we have pulled every lever we can to try to increase supply of houses into the market. And the fact is: every single time we walked into this place with a proposal to increase supply and a bill which would increase the number of houses available to Australians, which would help Australians get into the housing market, what did those opposite do? They voted against it. They joined up in the 'noalition' across the benches in this place to vote against a housing agenda which would have made a difference to supply and to young Australians.

But we know the work of our last term of government is not everything. There is still so much more we can do and are doing. We are putting every single idea on the table to unlock more houses into the market to help Australians buy a home because we understand fundamentally what that means to young Australians and what that intergenerational bargain should be. It shouldn't be the case that your parents and your grandparents got to enjoy a different standard of living and a higher standard of living than you could ever hope to as a working Australian. That shouldn't be the case for young people in Australia.

Yes, we held our economic round table, the principle being to bring the best ideas to the table because we are a government that listens, that consults and which thinks we are better when we have more evidence, more facts and more substance to the policy narratives and discussions we are having in this country. We think that makes us a better government, makes our ministers better and makes our policies better, and that means we can deliver more for the Australian people. That's what our round table was about. We will continue to prosecute an agenda on housing focused on the key fundamental challenge before us; that is, supply. We will do it because we are a government fundamentally focused on the founding principle, of all of us as Labor people, of fairness and intergenerational equity. We know that is not the case in Australia at the moment.

Question time today was about trying to undermine a process which would lead to better policy outcomes in Australia. It was about gotcha questions on an agenda which we are running with and the opposition has failed to support for three years—an opposition which would rather see our government fail on delivering more housing to Australians and rather see our government fail on building a strong economy than see Australians benefit from all those things. They are so self-focused on themselves that they would rather us fail. That's not our approach. We're about bringing in the best ideas to create the best policies to be the best government we can be for the generations of Australians to come.

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Where to begin? The fact is, whichever way you want to dress it up and whichever way you want to describe it, most young Australians have given up on the dream of owning their own home. It is our desire for young Australians to own their own homes. That's what we have worked towards over many, many periods of government. Our focus isn't on institutional investors. Our focus isn't on superannuation funds. Our focus is, as it absolutely should be, on everyday people, young Australians, who want to own their own homes.

My colleague Senator Antic talked about the fact that young Australians are competing with people from overseas to purchase housing. But they are also now competing with the federal government, with the HAFF purchasing homes as opposed to building them. The government have now purchased more homes than they've built. Why should young Australians be competing with the federal government to buy homes, because they don't know how to build homes? The government's own advice from Treasury has stated that they will not reach the targets they have set for themselves, whilst young Australians continue to struggle not only to buy but to rent. Whilst there was the announcement around opening up the five per cent deposit scheme to everybody—great, but what are they going to buy? Where are the houses that they need to buy? Instead of dealing with those important questions, they continue to point the finger at the opposition. Ultimately, you are in government, and it is up to you to solve that problem.

As we've said over and over, we'll be constructive when we can, but we will absolutely be critical when we see that you have failed to do that. One of those is in relation to the construction code. We took that to the last election. It was bagged by the government—'the shoddy coalition', 'shoddy building', 'shoddy this' and 'shoddy that'. It's highlighted very clearly that the changes that this government made in 2022 to that code have made it harder, made it take longer to build and made it more expensive to build dwellings. Now they're saying that they too will pause changes to the construction code, a code that is some 2,000 pages long. It's three separate volumes. Good luck if you're an Australian small business trying to navigate that.

Question agreed to.