Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McKim has submitted a proposal, under standing order 75, today, which has been circulated and is shown on the Dynamic Red:

The need for the Australian Government to reform their $181 billion tax breaks for wealthy property investors and their 5% deposit scheme which are threatening the stability of our housing system while the big banks are on track to make $30 billion in profits this financial year.

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 line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

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

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Australian Government to reform their $181 billion tax breaks for wealthy property investors and their 5% deposit scheme which are threatening the stability of our housing system while the big banks are on track to make $30 billion in profits this financial year.

I'm speaking to the urgency of the housing crisis. We're in a housing crisis that's becoming more severe every day in this place. I know young people who are too frightened to open a newspaper for the bad news that lies there every day about what's happening to house prices. There was a more than one percent increase in a single month, in October—the fastest monthly pace in the last two years. House prices are increasing everywhere—in every city, in every regional town, in every country town. One in three houses in Australian suburbs is now worth an incredible $1 million. No wonder 59 per cent of renters don't think they'll ever be able to afford to buy their own home. Homelessness levels are at their worst in living memory, and homelessness services are being pushed to the brink.

The major parties are failing us. Labor has been in government for three years; when will they take accountability for making the crisis worse? Labor's failure to reel in the tax breaks for wealthy property investors—$181 billion in tax breaks over the next 10 years—is also fuelling the crisis. South Australians contact me every single day telling me to urge this government to wind back these handouts. We know that Labor's policies and lack of ambition are making things worse, but don't be fooled into thinking the Liberals would be any better. It's ironic that yesterday the Liberals called the home guarantee scheme irresponsible, given that it was originally their own policy. It's also funny that Liberals are calling any housing policy irresponsible, given that they've recently dumped their widely criticised 'super for housing' policy.

Neither of the major parties truly have the interests of renters and first home buyers in their minds. They've had a quarter of a century to fix this, and instead they've spent a quarter of a century making things worse. Together, they have cooked housing in Australia, and they've landed us in a giant housing bin fire. Just last week, Labor, the Liberals and One Nation teamed up to vote down our urgency motion on housing. The major parties may not think this is urgent, but Australians do—89 per cent of Australians agree that we're in a housing crisis. They know because they're living it every day. Every Saturday morning, across our country, we see first home buyers standing alongside investors, being priced out of auctions, unable to secure housing for themselves.

First home buyers don't stand a chance. Our housing market is driven by speculation, not demand—not by the need to put a roof over everyone's head, instead by the desire to increase investment wealth. We've increased the demand for housing without increasing supply. As a consequence, we don't have a functioning housing system that looks after everybody, especially those most in need and vulnerable. We have a generational lottery, where young people are staring down the barrel of lifelong renting, precarious leases and a housing market that is rigged against them.

Housing should not be an intergenerational tug of war. House prices, especially those in lower and medium price brackets—where entrants and first home buyers are very focused—are not within the budget of first home buyers. They are rapidly growing in price—much faster than the house prices in higher brackets. That's about a lack of supply in that lower priced and mid-priced bracket. We're seeing declining rates of homeownership among young people and rising rates of homelessness. That's on the coalition for its years of policy failure and now on Labor for its failures to fix the tax system and build enough social and affordable homes.

We know where Labor's priorities lie. They're with the wealthy property investors and banks, not renters and not first home buyers. We know because bank profits are booming. Australia's biggest banks are expected to make over $30 billion in this financial year. They are making an enormous amount of income out of this crisis—more than $200,000 in profit over an average 30-year mortgage for a first home buyer. That's $200,000 off every mortgage of those first home buyers.

We can't keep going like this. We're in a crisis. I spent my life studying employment, and I know employment matters to a good life chance for kids and adults, but housing is even more critical, and we need to make sure that we build enough social and affordable houses, and we must end tax breaks which are delivering so much to the very wealthy property investors who don't need to increase their housing portfolios anything like that we need to put into—

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Senator.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Greens for putting forward this matter of urgency. It is a matter of urgency that the parliament consider the state of the nation's housing woes. The government brags that it's spending $43 billion on housing. It's actually more like $60 billion over the period of this government. It's $60 billion for what? I can tell you, it's for fewer houses than were built during the last government. I wonder whether the government at times just imagines that the Australian people are all idiots. I wonder whether that's the thought that enters their brain. I don't think people are impressed with the bragging about how much money's being spent, because a lot of it is being wasted. I think what people are looking for is government programs which actually build houses. I think that's what they want. I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation—that taxpayers' funds, if they're going to be used to support the development of housing, would actually result in more houses being built.

The scoreboard shows that we're down to about 170,000 houses a year on average, which is down from 200,000 on average under the last Liberal government. The so-called signature policy of the government, their Housing Australia Future Fund, has been going for two years. It's got $10 billion. It's built no houses. It's been buying houses. Mr Albanese and the good doctor—whatever he calls himself—turn up at auctions and holding up a paddle-pop stick and say: 'Can I buy this house? I've got to put it into my future fund. I need to buy some houses because I couldn't build any.' This is where we're at now in Australia. You've got a monolithic housing fund going around and buying houses because they couldn't build any. Meanwhile this organisation is mired in governance problems. It's got massive turnover. It's got a board which is collapsing. It's going so well down there that the government's appointed an observer to the board. They send someone down from the bowels of the Treasury, they dust off their overcoat or their cardigan, they turn up at the Housing Australia board meeting, and they don't have Christopher Pyne's cup on the wall to listen into what the monkey pod's saying. They didn't get that one. I wish they had Christopher Pyne's cup and the monkey pod. It could be good. But they don't have that. Instead they've got direct access. They're in the board room.

We found out at Senate estimates—and Senator Darmanin and I were able to hear this testimony—that the observer at the board is actually not an observer. They're actually a participant. They engage like a director. This brings the whole integrity of the fund into question. Is this board of Labor Party appointees and political hacks making judgements about housing investments based on what the best outcome for the people is, or are they bringing in their political considerations? I used to be an internal auditor, for my sins, and if I were doing an audit report—

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you miss it?

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't miss it, thank you very much. If I were doing a report on this, the first risk would be: why is a person who is not on the board in this meeting about the expenditure of large sums of public funds? I would be very worried about that.

We have seen from the first round of the HAFF tender that the biggest beneficiaries are the major superannuation investors, Senator Gallagher's best friends. They're the biggest beneficiaries of round 1 of the HAFF. They get 2.8 billion bucks. It's nice money. Easy money. I tell you what, if you're a super fund in Australia, you can take off your hat and put it in the street and it'll fill with money. It's a magic trick! There are rabbits and money in there. It's a good magic trick.

But this is not a laughing matter. The serious point here is that we have seen gross maladministration of the housing fund. We've seen fewer houses being built. Now we see this demand-driven home guarantee scheme which is driving up prices for first home buyers. I think the prices for first home buyers should go down because I think they've been driven up by this government, and it's making it unbearable for younger Australians to access their piece of the Australian dream. It's an absolute disgrace.

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

When the Greens say that housing is an urgent issue, I agree with them, but it is only this side of politics who wants to do something about it rather than just talk about it in this chamber. The Greens are the same party who have spent the last week chumming up with the coalition in this place. When we see the coalition and the Greens using the same talking points, you know it's just about politics, and the Australian people are going to get dudded time and time again. When we see the Greens huddle over at the coalition's adviser box trading tactics, as we have over the last week, we know that it's Australian renters and first home owners who will be the ones that lose out in this political game. To try and deny hardworking Australians the life-changing opportunity to own their own home with a five per cent deposit, as they have tried to do in this place over and over again, is disgusting. Quite frankly, I can't take this motion seriously. The hypocrisy is so obvious and so extreme that it is failing.

They're crying that five per cent deposits will make the banks richer, but what the coalition and Greens forget is that ordinary people need to go to see a bank or a mortgage broker to get a loan to buy a house. People like me, mums and dads from the burbs in Queensland, have to go to a bank to get a loan. That's been the way for many, many decades. In fact, I don't know anyone who could pay cash for their first home, so I don't know how you're going to buy a home without a loan. I don't know why people should be demonised for getting a loan, because that is the way people are buying homes, and it has been for a long time. So I'm sick of hearing this business about banks getting richer—demonising hardworking Australians who scrimp and save to try and get a loan together by saying that somehow saving towards a deposit is making a bank richer. It's ridiculous. I don't know anyone who could pay cash for a home, but I'd hazard a guess that the people opposite in the coalition know a few of them.

The coalition and the Greens want to slam the door in the face of the 190,000 Australians who have bought their first home with Labor's five per cent home deposits. That's 190,000 Australians who have bought their first home with a five per cent deposit. In my home state of Queensland, Labor's five per cent home deposits are making a real difference to Queensland families. I would suggest that the people arguing against it get out of this chamber and go and knock on some doors. Go and tell the Australian people and the people in Queensland—particularly those 190,000 people who have bought a home with our five per cent deposit—that you think they don't deserve to be in that home, that somehow a five per cent deposit is a bad thing. Go and do it. I dare you to. Because, in my part of the world, in the seat of Longman, in the booming growth corridor of Caboolture and its surrounds, 2,337 people have bought their first home. In the seat of Wright, 2,256 people are now in their own first home. In Groom, around the mighty city of Toowoomba, 1,217 people have used our five per cent deposit scheme to get their home. Finally, on the Sunshine Coast, in the seats of Fairfax and Fisher, 1,537 people have used this great Labor policy to buy a home. In those locations alone, Labor has helped more than 7,300 people to own their own home. That is 7,300 people the Greens and the coalition would prefer aren't in homes.

What an incredible turnaround we have seen in three short years, after a decade of neglect and denial by the Liberal Party, who have been aided in their political games by the Greens. They work together, they scheme together and they vote against five per cent deposits together. Do you guys go on holiday together too? Nothing would surprise me anymore. It's no wonder the Greens spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather and the coalition's housing spokesperson Michael Sukkar were both shown the door at the last election. That was not a coincidence. The Australian people are sick of the political games that the coalition and the Greens are playing on housing yet again.

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

Australia has hundreds of thousands of people who are homeless. Rents are skyrocketing. They are up by 44 per cent in just the last five years. That's $10,500 a year on top of the average rental bill. House prices in the capital of Queensland increased 1.8 per cent in just one month—a 22 per cent annual pace. Australians have been lied to and told this is only about supply. They can get away with this because no-one tells Australia how bad demand is. With 1.8 million permanent visa holders and 2.9 million temporary visa holders, we currently have 4.7 million non-citizen visa holders in this country. Is mum and dad having one investment property really causing the housing crisis? Come on. Or is having 4.7 million visa holders in the country outstripping supply? Running this program of mass migration is incredibly profitable for big business, especially our big four banks. This week, one of those banks, Westpac, posted a $7 billion profit.

There are some abusers of negative gearing. It could do with some tweaking. On the whole, however, it's a minor impact in the scheme of supply and demand. There's a far bigger problem than mum-and-dad landlords with one house negatively geared. There's a growing and worrying acceptance of foreign, corporate landlords in Australia. These predatory multinational corporations are backed by investment firms like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and First State. They only have one goal, which is to extract as much money as possible from the Australian population through gouged rents and siphon those profits out of the country tax free.

Last year, the Greens joined with the Labor government to give these foreign, corporate landlords a 15 per cent tax cut on the profits they're sending overseas with the build to rent act. One Nation stood strong on principle and opposed handing foreign corporations a 15 per cent tax break. We couldn't believe it. The fact is, Australia is still in a full-blown housing crisis. It's an assault from all sides on nearly every aspect of supply and demand. One Nation took to the election the most comprehensive policy to fix the housing crisis of any party. Many Australians agreed, which is part of the reason why we doubled our number of senators.

Here's our comprehensive plan on housing. End the mass migration program, which places huge strain on housing while only 0.6 per cent of migrants are building workers. We will establish people's mortgages—30-year, fixed interest rate mortgages issued by the government, similar to government bonds and replacing the government's Housing Australia Future Fund. We will allow people with HECS debts to roll their debts into their people's mortgage, allowing them to get into a home loan that the banks would never give them, at a cheaper rate. We will ban foreign purchases and foreign ownership of Australian housing and farmland. The Liberals and Labor have talked about a two-year pause on foreign buyers of new houses. Come on; be fair dinkum!

One Nation will extend that to new and existing houses, making the ban permanent while forcing current foreign owners to sell to an Australian within two years. We will implement a GST moratorium on building materials, cutting 10 per cent off the materials cost of building a home. We will conduct a root-and-branch gutting of the National Construction Code, especially changes that force every single new home to be completely NDIS wheelchair compliant, adding an estimated $50,000 to the cost of building each home. We will allow a person's superannuation account to invest in their home, closing the deposit gap while protecting their superannuation. We will boost the Australian timber industry to make housing materials as cheap as possible. And we will deport—remigrate—200,000 people.

One Nation's comprehensive plan takes care of all aspects of supply, demand, financing and cost. Only One Nation has a comprehensive housing plan.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say it is impressive how hard this government works to wreck young people's futures. Take Labor's so-called housing policy. They spin their five per cent deposit scheme as a helping hand onto the property ladder. But the reality is that it's more like a shove into deeper debt. You only have to look at the numbers to see that.

Property prices are now rising at the fastest pace in two years. In Melbourne, the median home costs nearly $974,000, while the median salary barely hovers around $70,000. How on earth is a young person, or even a family, supposed to make that work?

Instead of tackling the root causes, Labor refuses to touch the $181 billion in tax breaks for wealthy property investors—capital gains tax discounts and negative gearing. These giveaways inflate the market, push up prices and lock out first home buyers. Their five per cent deposit scheme has thrown petrol on the fire, turbocharging an already out-of-control housing crisis in this country.

For renters it's even worse. Rents have skyrocketed by 44 per cent in just five years! Essential workers—including nurses, teachers and ambos—can't afford to live in the communities they serve. More than 70 per cent of young people now believe they will never own a home. The odds are well and truly stacked against them.

But this isn't just a housing crisis. It's a morality crisis, a failure by consecutive governments to treat shelter as a basic human right. Housing schemes mean nothing for the thousands of people sleeping rough in cars across this country. In Victoria, 86 per cent of councils report a rise in homelessness while public housing towers are being demolished. The Australian dream of secure, affordable housing has been sold off and buried under decades of policies designed to protect investors, developers and the big banks. And those banks are on track to rake in $30 billion in profits this financial year! That's absolutely obscene and disgusting. Meanwhile, there's no serious plan to fix supply, no real investment in public or community housing, and no vision for long-term security.

The message from this government is clear. They will keep fuelling a system that rewards speculation over shelter and profit over people. The Greens will keep fighting to make housing a human right, not a plaything for the wealthy few.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The housing market in this country is rigged; it's a scam. It's rigged against young people and against people trying to buy a home for themselves. One of the key parts of that rigging is the capital gains tax discount. The CGT discount is the most regressive, unfair tax break anywhere in the Commonwealth tax code. It is so regressive that 50 per cent of the benefit—half of the dollar benefit—of the capital gains tax discount goes to the top one per cent of income earners in this country. That is grossly unfair. It is skewed massively to people who are the highest income earners in this country. For reference, in the original stage 3 tax cuts, which themselves were grossly unfair, only seven per cent of the benefit of the original stage 3 tax cuts went to the top one per cent highest income earners in the country, and yet—because the Greens came into here day after day after day and campaigned against those tax cuts, and many thousands of Australians out in the community did the same—Labor, quite rightly, with no mandate from the Australian people, in the last parliament, came in, and they knocked the rough edges off those tax cuts and they made them less unfair. I say to the Labor Party: if you can do that to the stage 3 tax cuts with no mandate from the Australian people, you better get to work on the capital gains tax discount.

There is a massive scam in this country. Whether you're a sparkie or a nurse or a cleaner, if you work for a living, you will pay double the tax compared to a property speculator who makes the same amount of money by flipping investment properties. There is something cooked about a tax system that punishes work relative to property speculation, but that is where we find ourselves—people who make a living flipping investment properties pay about half the tax of someone who goes to work to earn the same amount in a year. It's a disgrace and it's unfair.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every Australian, no matter where they live or what they earn, deserves the security of a place to call home, and we, on this side, acknowledge that. After nine long years of no housing policy under those opposite, finally, there is hope again for the would-be homeowners. Labor have not stood by and done nothing, like those opposite. We have a plan—a comprehensive, ambitious and practical plan—to build more homes, support renters and help more Australians achieve the dream of homeownership. Our vision is clear: to make housing more affordable and accessible and to ensure that everyone has a fair go in the housing market. We are investing in new homes across the country. We're supporting renters with fairer laws and greater protection. We're giving first home buyers a fighting chance to enter the market, and we are rebuilding our social housing system so that the most vulnerable Australians are not left behind, as they were in the almost decade under those opposite.

In stark contrast, the Liberal Party has no plan. For nine years, when they were in government, the coalition failed to deliver a single meaningful housing policy. They did not have a housing minister. That's how much importance they placed on housing. They come into this chamber with crocodile tears when they couldn't even appoint a housing minister for most of their time in office. When Australians cried out for action, they offered excuses. When real solutions were put forward, they chose to obstruct rather than support that legislation.

The Liberals and the Greens—Senator McKim's motion today is so hypocritical of him. He comes into this place—he was very happy to join with the Liberals and the Nationals to have no vote on our housing policy for the housing future fund, so we spent a week in this place having votes so we wouldn't have a vote on the legislation. For those in the Greens and in the opposition, it's very hypocritical to bring a motion like this when they have been the ones standing in the way. The Labor government invested $10 billion, and all they did was want to stall that and not vote against the legislation, for over a week, but vote not to have a vote. Their record is one of neglect, indifference and missed opportunities. While Australians struggled with sky-rocketing rents and housing shortages, the coalition sat on their hands and did nothing.

Labor is leading where the Liberals failed. Our $43 billion housing agenda is the most ambitious is the most ambitious in a generation. We're investing in homes, jobs and communities that will shape Australia's future. At the centre of this agenda is the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, a landmark investment designed to build 55,000 new social and affordable homes in just five years. Social and affordable homes have been neglected not just by those opposite when they were in government but by the Tasmanian Liberal governments. They invested nothing in social and affordable homes. Senator McKim would know that as well, coming from Tasmania. Shame on them as well.

This wasn't just a promise. It was a plan of action that the Albanese government has now delivered. We are breaking ground with new developments. We are supporting communities. We are actually providing homes, and we're building more homes across every state and territory to make sure that we get real value for every dollar that we invest. We will deliver for those in need. The investment will create thousands of jobs in construction and related industries while ensuring that more Australians have a secure roof over their heads.

We have those people on the other side coming in and talking about transparency and policy, and what have we seen this week? We had Mr Wilson from the other place going on television talking up how you should be able to use your super to put down your deposit which is not what it was meant for. Then we had the great campaigner for using your super to put down a deposit on a house—because if you don't have a rich parent then, like Malcolm Turnbull said, you wouldn't get one—drop it. That's just gone. How many housing policies have they had this week? Where is their interest aligned? It's not with the Australia people. (Time expired.)

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

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Barbara Pocock be agreed to.