Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak about the agenda that this government brings to the 47th Parliament. It's a minimalist agenda in the face of really important and serious national crises. This government has returned to a new parliament with a lacklustre agenda on so many things. Where is Labor's ambition? Where is their drive to tackle the heart of the climate and housing crises that this country faces? This is the most progressive parliament in my lifetime, with a 94-seat majority for Labor in the House and a Greens contingent here to support progressive change to deal with our big problems.

I will give you an example of unambitious reform. This week they're tinkering with a first home guarantee scheme that allows first home buyers to buy a house with a five per cent deposit. This policy will feed demand. The announcement this week to expand the program will allow access for everyone, regardless of their income. It is so far from a progressive innovation. It's both unfair as a system and going to push house prices in the wrong direction, which will drive down rates of homeownership in a housing crisis. Eligibility is now uncapped in relation to income. People with incomes of several hundred thousand dollars now have access to government support to help them leap into the housing market. We won't stand in the way of people getting support for housing, but the scheme as the government has enlarged it this week will turbocharge demand and unfairness.

Inequality in the housing market is wild at the moment, and it feeds general inequality, especially intergenerational inequality. This tinkering with a Morrison-era scheme of 2019 fails to deal with the nature of the housing crisis. Not only that; the tinkering will actually hurt first home buyers in the long run. The policy is making no change to the huge tax breaks that keep wealthy property investors in competition with first home buyers, driving up house prices and driving down homeownership rates. It does absolutely nothing for the six million Australians who are renting, or trying to rent, all around our country. This policy will also enormously increase the level of debt to many first home buyers. If people are borrowing with a five per cent deposit, it means that they get saddled with a massive 95 per cent debt in a housing market where average prices in most of our cities are now around $1 million. They will be even more vulnerable to interest rate changes, massive mortgage repayments and crippling debt. We need a different demand-side policy and we need to dampen demand from those wealthy property investors by winding back the unfair capital gains tax discount and negative gearing policies.

But what do we get instead this week? Labor have shown they can take urgent action on housing, and this week we saw them do it, but did they do it for Australian nurses or teachers? No. They did it for US foreign troops and US contractors. The first housing bill Labor have introduced to the 47th Parliament is the Defence Housing Australia Amendment Bill 2025. You literally can't make this stuff up. The contradictions are incredible. We've got a government that tells us that they can't expand public housing at a rapid rate and they can't fix housing tax reform, but what they can do is build public housing for US defence personnel and contractors.

They are ambitious to provide public housing for US troops and those contractors, but where is their ambition for the 170,000 Australians on the waiting lists for public housing? Where is their ambition for a teachers housing authority or a nurses housing authority? This is where we should be expanding our housing, for Australian workers providing those essential services. Instead, Labor's first housing bill builds houses for foreign US troops as part of AUKUS. Not only are they denying Australians housing that they need desperately; they're giving it to US personnel instead.

Where is the election mandate for this policy? I've gone back and looked for it. Where is the promise during the election that this would be what they'd concentrate on?

We have a proposal in front of us that has got no budget. It's got no costing. It's a bottomless bucket of assistance for housing for US troops. What is wrong with the government that it has so much ambition in that quarter and none for those Australians who are desperate? It's a bottomless cup for US personnel but too little for those facing a housing crisis here.

This government is also failing on transparency. We need to see much more serious recognition of this chamber's role in scrutiny and an end to all of the avoidance we see. We're calling Labor out on scrutiny. We need to see more of it into the future.