Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson has submitted a proposal, under standing order 75, today, as shown at item 16 of today's Order of Business:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

"Labor reckless spending budget disaster is driving inflation, making mortgages more expensive and stealing from younger generations by making them compete with foreign owners for a home and forcing them to pay back the $l trillion debt in the future."

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.

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

Labor's reckless spending is far beyond the means of the Australian taxpayer, and this year's budget will be no different. Labor's reckless spending and terrible policies actively work to make Australians poorer. Under Labor's irresponsible spending and mass migration policies, our living standards have gone backwards. The record since Labor's election in 2022 is telling. Typical full-time workers now pay between 40 and 50 per cent of their earnings on their mortgages, up from 32 per cent in 2022. Average rent prices have increased more than 42 per cent in the past five years, with the average renter now having to spend more than a third of their income. Labor has committed many billions of dollars to improving housing supply without actually increasing it but refuses to do anything about demand by slashing immigration. Record numbers have arrived in the past year despite Labor's promises to reduce immigration.

Since 2022, Australia has experienced an eight per cent decline in disposable income, the biggest decline in the developed world. Real net disposable income has declined by almost $1,000 per household. More Australians than ever before—around seven per cent of the workforce—are working multiple jobs just to make ends meet.

Australians are paying more tax too. From 2022 to 2024, under the Albanese Labor government, tax revenue per capita increased by more than $2,700. This is due to factors like inflation from government spending, bracket creep and additional GST from rising prices of goods and services. Gross debt per capita is now more than $36,000, up from just over $33,000 in 2023. Gross debt reached an unwelcome milestone this year, tipping over $1 trillion. Government spending is around 27 per cent of GDP, even higher than during the pandemic. Don't even get me started on the net zero disaster, which has resulted in power prices rising around 40 per cent or more since 2022 and costing taxpayers many billions a year, much of it hidden from public view.

This is not sustainable. This cannot continue. Labor has been dangling the notion of a big reform budget addressing intergenerational inequity. The hypocrisy of it is breathtaking. For the past four years, Labor has been robbing young Australians of their future. Labor is also now robbing retirees and pensioners of their health rebates and breaking its promise to leave capital gains tax and negative gearing alone. The exodus of investors from housing is just going to increase rents even more.

Australia can do much better. One Nation has already shown the way, and this has been reinforced by the good voters of Farrer, who elected our candidate, David Farley, on the weekend. We've identified more than $90 billion that could be easily cut from government spending. We would put $40 billion back into Australians' pockets and pay down our crippling debt instead of bequeathing it to future generations. We will scrap net zero. This will reduce the cost of living and remove the straightjacket from our economic growth and development. We will slash immigration to reduce housing demand and ban foreign ownership to increase housing supply. Younger Australians can then look forward to a future in which they will own a home.

The 18th century English writer Samuel Johnson famously said:

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

What I've raised today is about the debt this government has put us in—the whole country—their overspend. And they keep saying to me, 'You don't support our policies.' I don't support your policies on housing because they have not worked. You put the money into a fund, and guess what? The houses haven't been built. You've got mass migration coming into the country—supply and demand. Wake up to yourselves. If you put good policies out there for the Australian people, you will get support from One Nation, but I haven't seen it yet.

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

We'll hear a lot about the Australian dream tonight, and I have to say, this government has done more to destroy the Australian dream than any other government in our history, and over the course of these four years they've had three housing gimmicks. The first housing gimmick was the Housing Future Fund, which has 10 billion bucks, and it built virtually no houses. It's been going around buying houses that other Australians could actually live in. The second gimmick was five per cent deposits. This is a grotesque scheme which has pump-primed house prices at the bottom end for younger Australians. The Prime Minister said there would be a 0.6 per cent increase in house prices over six years; we got a six per cent increase in six months. So this guy can't count. That's been a disaster. Now the third gimmick is going to be the big lie that fiddling around with taxes is going to fix the housing system.

The Prime Minister and the Treasurer must be honest tonight and say they believe that these tax increases will fix the housing crisis or materially change it. If they do not, why on Earth would they be lumping more taxes onto housing? Fifty per cent of the cost of a new house goes in government charges, fees and taxes. This is the last thing we need to see more taxes on. It's pretty simple: more tax equals fewer houses.

So those are the three gimmicks we've seen so far. Then we've seen a criminal failure to follow through on their promises, including red tape reduction, the National Construction Code—they've made that more convoluted and complex, not easier—and the EPBC Act, which they've also made more complex and convoluted. And Minister Watt has given himself God-like powers, where he sets the rules, he makes the laws of the land, rather than the parliament, and he's done no bilateral deals with the states. He's made none of the regulations. Instead of there being 26,000 houses ensnarled in EPBC, there are now 100,000 houses. So, as for the economic summit that we had last year, where Mr Chalmers or Dr Chalmers—whatever he calls himself now—had a talkfest in the cabinet room here, there's been no follow-through. So when we hear tonight these promises about how 'we're going to fix the housing system'—I mean, give me a break.

They promised they were going to get 75,000 more people into housing over 10 years, but that wouldn't even make up for the 120,000 deficit in supply that they have given the Australian people over these last four years. At the end of the day, they've been in government for four years. They've wasted almost $80 billion on housing to build 30,000 fewer houses a year. Who could believe that the government could be so inept as to commit $80 billion of taxpayer funds to build fewer houses than the last government?

Meanwhile, they have allowed 1.4 million people to migrate to Australia and have built only 600,000 houses at the same time. So they don't even model the impact of not building houses but allowing a lot of people in. When we have asked these questions at Senate estimates, Minister Gallagher has laughed and snarled at me for even suggesting that maybe it's a good idea to get the Treasury guys to say, 'Let's model the impact of having 1.4 million people come in and only building half a million houses.' Apparently I'm an idiot for asking for that modelling. Well, I don't think that's an unreasonable request, frankly.

At the end of the day, we all want the government to be the best government they can be. The problem is that we don't see any signs that they are learning from these failures. They haven't learnt that building bureaucracies and all this garbage in Canberra doesn't actually build houses. What you need to do is work out exactly what red tape you can get rid of and exactly which taxes you can cut, streamline or reduce. Instead, what we are going to hear tonight is, 'We've got a magic plan to impose more taxes on housing, which is going to magically create more houses.' When you look at the scoreboard, it's just not believable that these guys are ever going to have a plan that's going to get the country where it needs to be, which is at a quarter of a million houses a year. A quarter of a million houses a year is what we need. We used to get 200,000 houses a year under the last coalition government. Now, we get 170,000 houses a year under this government. That is ultimately going to be the metric upon which this government is measured, because on all the other metrics they have put out there they have failed.

If the government want to break their promises they have made, they will increase taxes. That's a political thing they have to live with. But the real impact is going to be on the people that aren't going to have a house because this government is so incompetent and hopeless.

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

I also rise to speak on this motion. I am pleased to have another opportunity to contribute to the debate that we have had over many years in this chamber on housing. Over many years our government has brought in attempt after attempt to try to increase supply and make a meaningful difference to the housing situation in this country. Over years and years, we have had the opposition, working in partnership with the Greens political party, block those attempts. But no-one can say we haven't been trying to come in here with a full agenda to make a meaningful difference on housing in this country.

We do that because, in our communities, we are seeing and feeling the experience of this housing crisis every single day. I know for members of my community in Adelaide that the increase in the cost of houses and the lack of supply in housing has had a material impact on the quality of life that they've been able to provide for themselves and their families. For young Australians, in particular, this is a question of intergenerational inequity. It's a question of being able to see what their parents and grandparents were able to achieve and looking at the kind of lifestyle and opportunity they can provide their own children and not being able to deliver that. That hurts. It's extremely painful for a family and a parent to not be able to provide that same level of opportunity or, indeed, a greater standard of opportunity and a greater standard of living than their parents or grandparents were able to provide. These are real emotions driven by a real problem, and it's a real problem that we are trying to fix.

This budget tonight, I know, will be focused on housing, focused on supply and, as we have been over the entire course of our government, focused on what we can do to make a meaningful difference on housing. For my generation and for Senator Walker's generation, this is the issue which is defining us. It is defining my peers. It is defining opportunity. It is defining family life. We need to do something about it.

But our government has been the only party in this chamber over the years that has consistently brought in a plan to do something about it and has consistently focused on supply. The opposition let this sit idle for almost a decade. They didn't even have a housing minister for most of their time in government. And One Nation bring motions like this, but they actually didn't turn up to this chamber when there were plans, policies and legislation on the table which would have had a meaningful impact on housing supply in this country. They either voted against it or did not show up. It's not okay for them to come into this chamber and seek to rewrite history on legislation for housing and on the government's plan for housing and what we have actually considered and had before us in this chamber over the years which would have made a difference and which would have made a difference sooner. It's what we see from One Nation, time and time again. They seek to sketch out a picture of our country which ignores the facts. They seek to sketch out a picture of our country which ignores the history and the contribution of migrants. They seek to sketch out a picture of our country which ignores the facts, like the kind of nonsense we have in here around foreign ownership and the competition for housing which just isn't resembled in the facts we have. They try to sketch out a version of our country, they try to sketch out a version of policy which belongs in the non-fiction section, and then they try to sketch in ideas and falsehoods which are just not true. The thing about this place is it keeps its receipts, because how you vote in this place is reflected on the record.

I urge those people who are supporting One Nation at the moment to go and look at their voting record. Go look at when they turned up in this chamber when we were debating serious legislation that had serious money on the table and when we had serious plans to fix the challenges we have in housing. Check if they were there and check how they voted.

One Nation sketch in falsehoods. They sketch out the real truth and history of our country, and they sketch out the real contribution so many people, especially migrants, are making in our country. They sketch out the facts on housing. They sketch out their participation in what has happened in housing over the last years, and their lack of engagement on the serious policy, their lack of engagement in the serious legislation. They sketch themselves in as people who have a solution yet offer no detail, no meaningful reform, and actually aren't at the table as serious players when it comes to public policy in this place.

Our budget will address intergenerational inequity, something I have been talking about since I was elected to this parliament. It is something many of us in this chamber care very, very deeply about. I have seen it experienced in my generation as my peers are having family and are unable to provide that backyard, that certainty of housing. Senator Walker's generation is experiencing it on a whole new level, feeling completely locked out. Our government is working to change it, and we are working to change it through legislation, policy and the budget tonight.

Charlotte Walker (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Listening to One Nation lecture this chamber about young Australians and housing affordability is pretty chopped. This is a party that has built an entire business model around keeping people angry while voting against the very reforms that would actually help them. Now, suddenly they're screaming, crying, throwing up on behalf of young people struggling with rent and mortgages—okay—because when housing reform comes before this parliament, One Nation's instinct is almost always the same: vote no, complain loudly then blame migrants for the consequences. That's the entire cycle. They are offering no solutions to younger Australians; they are offering scapegoats. It is incredibly telling that every complex economic issue somehow ends up in their worldview being the fault of immigrants, international students or foreigners. A fun fact for Senator Hanson: foreign buyers make up just 0.8 per cent of all buyers in Australia's housing market, and foreign purchases of existing homes have been banned.

Historically, Australia has underbuilt housing for years, construction costs have exploded globally, supply chains have been disrupted, wages have stagnated relative to housing costs, and governments everywhere have struggled with planning, bottlenecks and infrastructure lag. Those are the actual structural problems. But structural problems require serious policy work and One Nation is not a serious political party; it's a rage-bait machine. And the irony is unbelievable when they try to frame themselves as anti-elite outsiders while seeming pretty happy to take support from extremely wealthy interests and billionaires who benefit from keeping the status quo exactly as it is. Because let's be real here, the billionaires funding right-wing grievance politics are not lying awake at night worrying about a 25-year-old renter trying to save for a deposit in Adelaide; they are doing just fine.

The people hurt most by culture war politics are ordinary Australians who get fed anger instead of outcomes, and younger Australians are getting increasingly tired of it. They are tired of politicians treating their economic future like a comment section on Facebook. They are tired of hearing simplistic nonsense dressed up as economic analysis, and they're tired of being used as props by people who have absolutely no interest in delivering the reforms required to actually make housing more affordable. Because if One Nation genuinely cared about younger Australians, they would support increasing housing supply. They would support social and affordable housing. They would support practical medium-density development in our cities. They would support policies that help renters instead of just yelling into microphones about the system. Instead, they vote against reform and act shocked as the crisis continues. That is not leadership; that is their performance art.

While we're on the topic of younger Australians, it's interesting that Senator Hanson suddenly seems deeply concerned about us when, in her most recent instalment of 'please explain', she was perfectly happy to depict me as a child defecating and needing a nappy. For the record, I am 22 years old and have been out of nappies for about 20 years. Apparently young Australians are old enough to inherit climate instability, unaffordable housing, insecure work and economic pressures they did not create, but, if we step forward and participate in our democracy, we are ridiculed for our age. That attitude is part of why so many young Australians are disillusioned with politics in the first place.

I think my generation represents something One Nation clearly finds threatening—younger people entering public life who are informed, engaged and not interested in recycling the same tired fear campaigns from the nineties, because younger Australians are not stupid, and younger Australians aren't scared to question or get into the nitty-gritty, and that is intimidating to Senator Hanson. Young people like me turn up to parliament when required—not be off taking naps during question time just so you're fresh for your tough interviews on 'Sky after dark'. Senator Hanson likes to mock young people, yet she's terrified of the ABC and sitting next to the public on a plane, and she spends a large portion of her time worrying about how long her new MP will last in her shambles of a party.

Young Australians understand that migration has always been a part of Australia's economic story. We understand migrants are workers: nurses, teachers, tradies, researchers and small-business owners. We understand that you cannot build a stronger economy by permanently turning Australians against one another.

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

So let me get this straight. Senator Pauline Hanson thinks that the Labor Party is forcing young people to compete with foreign owners for a home. Alright, that's a great Sky News headline, but is it a valid, factual statement? Senator Hanson is so used to being a panellist on TV she forgets her actual job, paid by the taxpayer, is to represent Australians. It's to use all the facts available to create the best outcomes for ordinary people.

So let's look at the facts. Are Australian first home buyers missing out on owning a home because of foreign owners? From a very quick google you'll learn than less than two per cent of houses have foreign owners—less than two per cent. Senator Hanson, do you really think that is the key problem stopping first home buyers from getting into the housing market? Wake up, Senator. Did you know that Google is free? Foreign owners account for less than two per cent, which is about 44,000 dwellings. They tend to own just one house, and that is more often for new builds, not existing homes.

Let's compare that to the Australian property investors who own more than 10 properties each—yes, 10 each. That's a lot—far more than the average person. There are around 2½ thousand Australians who own or part own 10 or more rental properties. These investors control more than 33,200 rentals, which is equal to more than half of all the rentals in Tasmania. We also have ABS data that tells us that these property moguls are barely helping build supply. Only about 23 per cent of investor loans are for new housing. If we take racism out of it, what do we think is harming first home buyers by crowding out the market—someone owning one property or someone owning 10 existing homes?

Yeah, we need strong limits on foreign ownership in Australia! That's especially of our existing homes—wait! Once again, Senator Hanson didn't know Google is free. Foreign owners have been banned from buying established dwellings since mid last year. How are foreign owners taking homes away from Australians if they aren't even allowed to buy them anymore? As Senator Walker said, if Senator Hanson were here more often, she might actually know that. Senator Pauline Hanson, please explain; make that make sense.

We already have strong restrictions on foreign owners in the housing market, but we don't have strong restrictions on the people buying up a ridiculous number of houses and generally crowding out first home buyers from the market. Senator Hanson, just go and ask Gina Rinehart how many properties she's taken away from first home buyers. I'll give you a hint; it's many, many more than 10. This motion isn't trying to help people. It's based on racism and fake news.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I recall in November last year being here in the Senate and doing my job, and I recall other senators being in here doing their job. We were talking about housing and tax breaks for billionaires. But I can't remember if Senator Hanson was here during that. That's right; she was off on some junket with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago during a two-week sitting period, schmoozing with billionaires and no doubt talking about all of Trump's talking points and how wonderful it would be, while the rest of us were actually doing our job. Then, One Nation comes in here and starts putting on this kind of motion saying, 'Inflation is a result of government spending,' conveniently forgetting that President Trump—who your leader, Senator Hanson, was schmoozing with on a paid billionaire junket in Mar-a-Lago in November of last year—started a bloody war which has driven inflation through the roof.

I remember One Nation, at the start of this war, in February, coming out and cheering it on. There were images of Senator Hanson, images of Donald Trump and images of Gina Rinehart. I remember all the images and how you loved the war. It was great and terrific—because it fed into One Nation's racist attacks on Muslims and Islamophobia. That's what they did. They were feeding that trope, and they thought they had great images of Senator Hanson—not working here in the Senate, which she's paid to do by the Australian public, but schmoozing off in Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump. They had, no doubt, some lovely little images of Senator Hanson and Gina Rinehart, and no doubt they were negotiating the gift of the next expensive plane from Gina Rinehart, because you got sick. I understand Gina Rinehart doesn't like always travelling with Senator Hanson in her plane; I get that. I wouldn't want to be travelling around the country with Senator Hanson in my plane if I had one. So Gina Rinehart, instead of bringing Senator Hanson on her plane, buys her a plane!

The billionaire class absolutely owns One Nation, and then you come here and say that the reason Australians can't afford things is reckless government spending. Well, maybe it's because of the investor tax breaks that One Nation votes to keep every single time they're on. Maybe there's not enough money to build public housing because you refuse to tax fossil fuel profits. Maybe there's not enough money for public housing and to build the houses Australia needs because One Nation opposes ever putting any impost on the resources industry.

I've been watching One Nation come in here every day to defend Gina Rinehart, defend the minerals industry's 'get out of jail free' cards and defend fossil fuel profits, and it turns out that Gina's been watching it too—she bought you a plane! I don't think it's just because she doesn't want to have Senator Hanson in her plane; I think it's because Gina Rinehart, the billionaire class, own One Nation. They absolutely own One Nation.

We've been watching One Nation play distraction politics. Senator Hanson was off at Trump's Mar-a-Lago in November last year learning about distraction politics and how you can weaponise migration and weaponise attacks on migration to avoid taking on the one per cent and the billionaire class. That's the lesson Senator Hanson was getting at her CPAC trip with Donald Trump last year. She was learning how to weaponise migration and make us hate each other and fight amongst each other for tiny little scraps out of the system while the one per cent and billionaire class absolutely cream it in and steal from us—steal from the public purse, steal from public resources. That's what Senator Hanson was doing for two weeks in November of last year, not the job she is paid to do—to come here and be a senator for the public. She accepted this billionaire's gift, as One Nation always does, because that's who owns One Nation.

When we hear you talk about ordinary Australians and working Australians—from 10,000 feet above, in Gina Rinehart's jet—as though that's who you're fighting for, we see you. We see you in the corporate jets. We see you at Trump's mansion. We see you at these far-right billionaire funded conferences. And, increasingly, the Australian public is going to see you for what you are because you don't give a rat's about people who can't afford a mortgage. You want to create division and divide Australians against each other. You're playing by Trump's rulebook, and that rulebook is looking increasingly crap.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind senators about language use in the Senate. The time for the discussion has expired.