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

Senator Tyrrell has submitted a proposal, shown as item 15 on today's Order of Business:

That the actions taken by the government to address housing shortages are insufficient in achieving its intended outcome, and more needs to be done.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in accordance with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians are facing a big issue, a housing affordability crisis. Australia is home to the second most expensive housing market in the English-speaking world. The dream of owning a home has become just that: a dream. It was a dream I had and worked really hard to achieve, and it took me a long time. I was fortunate enough, though, to be born at a time when things were a little bit easier. What I hear from many Tasmanians, younger Australians, is that they are living pay to pay. Saving for a house isn't on the table. All the while, housing prices continue to rise beyond the reach of new home entrance.

The RBA can't make housing more affordable, realistically. It can make the funds to buy a house cheaper but, when it does, they get cheaper for everybody, first-home buyers and investors alike. Realistically, the only path to more-affordable housing is the government, not The Reserve Bank. That's why the fact that the government is doing so little is so embarrassing. The Labor government says they are acting—and they're good at it, too. They throw money at first-home owner schemes and start up the Housing Australia Future Fund—then, pens down.

It's fair to acknowledge that generally crossbench politicians tend to criticise from the sidelines, complaining how bad everything is and never offering solutions. But that's just not me. I want to help fix things. So here are a few things we could do right now. The government could hire an architect to produce free floor plans for a series of low-cost housing designs, using off-the-shelf components wherever possible and for use in a wide range of communities. The federal government could pay councils who agree to use approved plans in a streamlined application process—a per-approval bonus. Councils would be held accountable and have to explain to ratepayers for failing to approve these applications. Councils already face pressures to vote down development applications from NIMBY advocates.

The government's target is 1.2 million new homes over five years. If 10 per cent of those were from this blueprint, it would fast-track 24,000 brand new homes and cost the federal government $480 million a year. To put that number into context, the Housing Australia Future Fund made $750 million last year and has supported 13,800 homes. Keep these approvals simple and subsequently reduce the cost of building. Mass manufacturing common components to a similar mould would make things cheaper. The cost of a bathtub moulding is the same whether you're making one or one million. The more you make, the lower the costs. And ultra-affordable building design could allow for economies of scale that would bring down prices on builds, which is impossible to match by relying on the private sector alone. This policy could increase the supply of cheaper homes on a faster timeline with less cost to the taxpayer while creating a bunch of jobs.

Look, putting more money into the hands of buyers is not a long-term solution. Every dollar you give a buyer is a dollar that gets spent at an auction. Labor is timidly following in the footsteps of the Liberal government that came before it, in thinking about housing as which side of the face you'd like to be punched in. Is it better to cheapen the single biggest investment the majority of Australians will ever make or to drive up the value of those investments, causing the remainder to fall further and further behind? For 25 years, both chose the latter. In that time, house values have outgrown wages at double the rate.

If you create a new sector within the housing market, you don't have to choose between driving down prices or driving up prices. The price of airfares between Sydney and Melbourne isn't impacted by the price of airfares between Darwin and Adelaide. One isn't competing with the other. You create a new sector which is not competing with the rest of the market. You make the cake and can eat it too. This isn't the only thing we should do or the only thing we can do.

An option that has not been discussed, an option worth exploring, is that right now it takes too long to build a house. It costs too much and we're not doing it enough. That's where the problem is—supply, supply, supply—yet we're throwing money at demand for housing, as though the way to fix a bubble is by blowing bigger bubbles and adding more suds. If building more is what we want, we can start by building in the right direction. Simply spending more won't get us far.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Our nation's housing crisis can't be discussed in isolation from last weekend's events. Thousands of Australians took to the streets to march, with the Australian national flag in hand. Shamefully, members of the government and members of the Greens have sought to mischaracterise these marches and impugn the character of those who marched.

The Minister for Multicultural Affairs described the marchers as 'blatantly racist' and having an 'anti-immigration agenda'. Senator Faruqi expediently used the marches to again voice her anti-Westernism and her deranged view that Australians are inherently racist. She said:

Racism is the foundation of settler colonial states.

This is from the same senator who gleefully stood in front of a placard calling for the extermination of Israel; the same senator who has attended antisemitic rallies where protesters waved terrorist flags; and the same senator who condones the barbarity of Hamas, who are the actual Neo-Nazis of the Middle East. Even the Prime Minister said the tone of much of the rallies was 'unfortunate'.

Much of the Left media imbibed and repeated these misrepresentations, again exposing their abandonment of journalistic objectivity. But Australians can see through the false narratives. The vast majority of people who attended those marches are proud and decent Australians who love our country. They marched because they have legitimate concerns—concerns about the impacts of unprecedented mass migration under the Albanese government, and concerns about ruptures to our social cohesion because mass migration has opened the door to people who reject our values. The majority who marched weren't antimigrant or racist. In fact, many who marched were clearly of a migrant background, and they sang our national anthem in solidarity with those around them.

These Australians simply want an end to uncontrolled, unplanned—

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Price, I'm sorry to interrupt, but this MPI is on housing.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Correct.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay. I just make that point. You have the call.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These Australians simply want an end to uncontrolled, unplanned and unsustainable migration. They want the restoration of controlled, planned and sustainable migration. They want these things because they're seeing the ramifications of mass migration with their own eyes. They're seeing a deterioration of local services, where it's harder to get an appointment with a GP or a specialist. They're seeing greater pressures on infrastructure, with more congested transport and wear and tear, of course, on the roads.

They're seeing the impact on the housing market, where greater demand for homes has meant less supply. This, in turn, has seen rents soar and home prices skyrocket. By bringing in a record 1.2 million migrants in its first term, Labor has unleashed a housing crisis, and frankly none of the government's policies to boost housing supply are working. Not a single new house was built in the government's first term under its $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund. Moreover, to reach the 1.2 million homes Labor have promised to build by 2029, they'll need to hit a target of 250,000 homes a year, and yet they're building barely 170,000 homes a year. Just yesterday, the ABS confirmed approvals fell by 8.2 per cent in July. Under Labor a record number of building companies have gone bust—big, small, regional, metro. They're all struggling. Labour's disastrous renewables-only energy policy has driven up the cost of living, including housing construction.

The building sector has also been hamstrung by a control-obsessed government. Labor has enacted some 5,000 new regulations since coming to power. This overregulation has made it harder and more expensive to build homes. Here's the truth: Labor's housing crisis, its undermining of homeownership and its mass migration agenda all benefit this government. More Australians become dependent on the state, more Australians are forced to rent for longer, and more Australians become reliant on Labor's handouts. That's exactly what this socialist government wants, so it can cling to power at any cost.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That contribution showed you just how out of touch the opposition is. The contribution on housing ranged across a number of issues, but Senator Nampijinpa Price's reference to the Labor Party government was set nowhere in this century. I mean, it's seriously sad that someone gives a contribution like that, because the Albanese Labor government is acting on housing. We're making it easier to buy a home and fairer to rent a home, and we're building more homes across the country, including in my home state of Tasmania.

From 1 October this year, every homebuyer will be able to purchase a home with a deposit of just five per cent. The Commonwealth will guarantee part of their loan so they do not have to pay lenders mortgage insurance. That means thousands of young Tasmanians will get into the market years earlier. Over the next year alone, this will save first home buyers $1.5 billion in mortgage insurance costs. In Tasmania, almost 2,000 more Tasmanians have already gotten into their first homes under Labor's five per cent deposit policy. That is real practical help for young people in our state who might otherwise have missed out.

The real issue is supply, and that is exactly what Labor is addressing. Our $43 billion Homes for Australia plan is the boldest national housing plan since the post-war years. More than 5,000 homes have already been completed with Commonwealth investment, with another 25,000 in planning or construction, and we are delivering 5,000 social and affordable houses, with projects already underway in Tasmania. In Hobart's northern suburbs, Commonwealth funding is helping to deliver new affordable housing, giving families in Glenorchy, Goodwood and Moonah a real chance at a secure home. Thanks to the Housing Australia Future Fund alone, we are delivering more than 600 new social and affordable homes in Tasmania, with no thanks to those opposite, who blocked and delayed every single housing measure in the last term of parliament.

Senator Duniam may scoff over there, but they voted against every housing—

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How many houses have you built?

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, if you'd listened to my speech, Senator Duniam, then you'd actually know the answer to that. But I'll tell you what: it wasn't done with any help from you or the opposition, because all you do is block and delay. You've blocked and delayed every single housing measure in this last term of parliament. Let's hope that changes. But let's compare this to what those opposite did over their decade in office. I'm sure those in the opposition won't want to hear this, but they built just 373 social and affordable homes. They didn't even bother to appoint a housing minister for most of that time. The silence says everything over there; they're not interrupting now! Housing was simply not a priority for them.

In Tasmania, the consequences of that neglect are plain to see. Hobart remains one of the least affordable rental markets in the country. Families are squeezed out. Waiting lists for social housing are far too long. Builders and tradies tell me projects are being held up. This did not happen overnight; it happened because of nine long years of Liberal neglect. We also recognise that, while we're building more homes, families need help now. That is why we've increased Commonwealth rent assistance by almost 50 per cent, providing direct support to more than one million households. This is the biggest boost in 30 years. We're helping people with the cost of rent while we focus on the long-term fix of building more homes. Labor governments have always been nation-builders. Just as Labor once built the homes that gave a generation stability— (Time expired)

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

Australia has become a country where your birth year and your parent's wealth matter more than your pay slip when it comes to owning a home. That is not a housing system; that is a generational lottery, a lottery where the winners are those who bought decades ago and the losers are locked into a lifetime of renting, insecurity and debt.

Homeownership was once achievable on a teacher's wage, a nurse's wage or a tradie's wage. Homes used to cost two or three times your annual income, not 10 or 12 times. But young people today are staring down the barrel of lifelong renting, precarious leases and a housing market rigged against them. They are told 'to just work harder' and 'to stop eating smashed avo', while being asked to pay $600,000 for a fibro shack or $700 a week to rent a mouldy flat. Australia has a huge problem with intergenerational housing inequity and it's growing wider every single day. What is Labor's response to this crisis? Will they bring forward a bold plan to attack the root causes and to confront the tax concessions that let investors outbid first home buyers at auctions every Saturday all around this country? Will they launch a nation-building public housing program to rival the postwar build that was so important to housing in previous decades? No. Instead, we get a mirage, not real action.

Expanding the government's five per cent deposit scheme will only drive up house prices further when they're already out of reach for so many. Guess who benefits: banks and property investors. It's a lay-down misere out there in the land of economists. It is clear that this plan will drive up prices and not assist those first home buyers. It's tinkering; it's not transformation. It's making the problem worse in the longer run. Call it what it is. This is not a housing plan; it's a PR stunt. Labor wants the headlines without the hard decisions, but young Australians can't live in a headline. They can't raise families and retire with dignity in a housing system built on speculation and tax breaks for the very wealthy.

Meanwhile, the very policies that could fix this are sitting right in front of us. End the obscene tax concessions that push house prices out of reach for first home buyers. Redirect billions in public money towards building the homes we actually need—public homes, affordable homes and secure homes in the places where we need them. Up until the mid-1970s, government took a hands-on approach to housing—constructing homes for people to buy or rent at low cost. Investors weren't prioritised over the rights of people who needed shelter and governments helped people buy with cheap loans. It was these settings that generalised the homeowning dream to over 70 per cent of Australian households by the late 1960s. We did it then, and we can do it now. But, first, we need to turn off the neoliberal Kool Aid at the Labor drinking trough.

This government needs to ask itself who it's here to represent. Is it the Property Council, housing developers or the banks, which are all keeping housing out of reach? Or is it first home buyers, owner-occupiers, families, young people, children, older women and future generations? The Labor Party's plan for housing is a betrayal. It's a betrayal of every renter living one rent rise away from eviction and of every young family locked out of the housing market. It's a betrayal of the idea that in this country, if you work hard, you can build a life with security and dignity.

The Greens will keep fighting for major change, for bold reform, for public housing and for a future where your age and your parents' wealth won't determine whether you have a roof over your head. Housing should not be an intergenerational tug of war. It is the foundation of a fair society. Unless we confront the crisis with honesty and courage, we are not just failing one generation; we are failing them all.

Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise and speak on housing, which is an issue of critical national importance. I'm proud to say that the Albanese government is the first government in a decade with the gumption to tackle this issue head on. We stand at a crossroads in this nation. Without urgent and decisive action, we risk condemning future generations to being locked out of the housing market. As a young mum from Queensland, I am determined to get this right for those Queenslanders who are struggling right now to get into the housing market, and we must get the policy settings right for future generations. So I agree with Senator Tyrrell when she says that more needs to be done, and it will be done.

The Albanese government is doing more than any government in recent memory. Our ambitious $43 billion Homes for Australia plan includes a commitment to deliver 55,000 social and affordable homes as well as initiatives to make it easier to buy, to make it better to rent and to build more homes. This is the boldest and most ambitious suite of housing initiatives by any government since the Second World War.

I think it's important to detail exactly how Australia got into this mess, which means a quick history lesson. For a long time, Liberal-National governments basically tapped out of taking any responsibility for our housing challenge. Successive conservative governments left it to the states to carry the can for a problem that the lack of federal leadership actually helped to create. So when we ask ourselves the question, 'How the hell did we get here?' the answer is sitting opposite—the Liberal Party and the Nationals. I think most Australians have seen their behaviour for what it is—an abandonment of their duty for the decade they were in government and political opportunism in the now. It was an absolute betrayal of the Australian dream to own a home when they blocked housing legislation in this place with the Greens.

The good news is that now, for the first time, Australia has a government committed to stepping up to the challenge of addressing this housing crisis. Labor is working to clean up this mess after a decade of inaction, scapegoating and excuses from those opposite. I don't say this for petty political point-scoring. I say it because it's important to understand the enormity of the task now in front of us, as a nation, in dealing with a decade of inaction.

I know there is a sense of desperation in the community and a sense of despair about the future because so many hardworking Australians, who are doing everything right to save for a house and being incredibly responsible with the family budget every day, still struggle to buy their own home or find an affordable rental. To those people I say that the Albanese government hears you. We hear the concerns of young people and families, seniors and singles who feel they will never have the chance to own their own home. We hear the concerns of parents who worry they won't be able to give their kids the stability they enjoyed at the same age just a few short decades ago. We hear the concerns of renters whose rents are going up too high and far too often. We hear you, we have acted and we are delivering.

In fact, since our election in 2022, despite the stonewalling of Greens senators and the conservatives in this very building, throughout the last term of government we delivered an impressive number of initiatives to improve housing conditions. We have seen more than 180,000 Australians helped by our government to buy their first home with a five per cent deposit. We have supported more than one million Australian households to pay their rent with our almost 50 per cent increase to rental assistance. We've created a real turnaround in homebuilding, with 500,000 homes built since we came to office. We've got more than 25,000 social and affordable homes in planning or construction, with over 5,000 social and affordable homes completed.

These are all positive numbers and a reason to hold hope for the future, but we are not resting on our laurels. We know we need to keep building. We know we need to make it easier to build, and we know we need to make it quicker to build. Labor is putting the decade of disaster under successive Liberal-National governments behind us. The good news for Senator Tyrrell is that we're already implementing actions to improve the future housing market. In this term of government we're going to build more than one million new homes in the next five years. That's a bold aspiration, but it is our target through the National Housing Accord. Plans are under way to construct 55,000 social and affordable homes—an area of critical need. We're also training more tradies at TAFE to get Aussie workers on the tools with a $10,000 incentive payment to study trades. (Time expired)

Tyron Whitten (WA, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia's housing crisis is not just a policy failure; it's a national disgrace. We're witnessing the slow, systemic destruction of our great Australian dream. Young Australians—our future nurses, teachers, tradies and parents—are being priced out of their own country. They finish school or university, try to build a life and find that homeownership is now a luxury for the few, not a future for the many. The average home now costs over a million dollars. That's not normal; that's obscene.

What does the government do? They pour fuel on the fire. Labor's response is not to ease pressure but to turbocharge demand through mass immigration. Over half a million people were added in a single year—the highest intake in Australian history. Then they act shocked when 92 people show up for a rental inspection in Perth. That's not a queue; that's a desperate scramble for shelter. It's not a market; it's a war zone. And this government dares to call itself compassionate.

Let's talk about Labor's so-called solution of 1.2 million homes in five years. That sounds impressive until you look at the results. At Senate estimates earlier this year, we discovered that their flagship Housing Australia Future Fund—the HAFF—has produced just 17 homes in two years. That's not a housing strategy; it's a scandal. What's worse is that they proudly talk about acquiring a few hundred homes—buying properties already on the market. That doesn't add supply; it reduces it. It puts the government in direct competition with everyday Australians—with first home buyers, with single parents and with young couples already priced out. This is not a policy. This is economic vandalism dressed up as PR.

Worse still is that Labor's approach is draining skilled workers out of the private sector into bloated, inefficient government contracts. Why? It's to meet political deadlines and to fuel press releases. Tradies are being hoovered up by the state not to build homes for Australians but to tick a box for another media stunt. Plumbers, sparkies and tilers are in short supply. The industry is already stretched to breaking point, and now they want to double housing construction—with what workforce, with what skilled labour?

That brings us to Labor's mass immigration intake. Millions have arrived under this government, but how many are qualified tradies? Where are the carpenters, concreters, electricians, roofers, tilers, plasterers and landscapers—the people we need to build homes? Labor can't tell us because they don't know, and, frankly, they don't care. Most new arrivals come from countries with lower building standards and would need full retraining just to meet Australian codes. Even those with experience often can't contribute without upskilling. We need a doubling of skilled trades, and Labor has delivered a flood of unskilled labour that will build nothing. This is not immigration policy; this is market sabotage.

I ask the question that every Australian is asking: where is the money going? We were promised transparency; we got silence. We were promised homes; we got headlines. We were promised action; we got 17 houses. The Housing Australia Future Fund isn't just a failure; it's a con, smoke and mirrors designed to fool the public into thinking something is being done when in reality the government is doing nothing that actually works. Australians are suffering. Rents are soaring, mortgages are crushing families, homeownership is now a fading dream for an entire generation and Labor's response is more migration, more spin and more broken promises.

One Nation stands with the Australians who have had enough, who are sick of being lied to, sick of watching their kids be pushed out of the market and sick of a government that won't face reality. Labor has failed on housing. They've failed on supply, they've failed on skilled migration and they've failed to deliver anything but excuses. One Nation and everyday Australians demand answers not tomorrow and not after another review but now. They demand real answers, real solutions and a government that puts Australians first, not last.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for discussion has expired.