Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

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

Labor's housing agenda is another broken promise, with the Prime Minister doing a dirty deal with the Greens to ram through housing tax hikes that risk worsening the housing and rental shortage, all while the Government is already more than 100,000 homes short of its own target and now needs some 270,000 homes built each year by mid-2029.

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.

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

So far, we've had three iterations of this terrible budget. We had the first iteration on 12 May, where we first saw the 30 per cent tax. We had the second iteration of this terrible budget on 18 June, when the Prime Minister humiliated the Treasurer by announcing on his own letterhead a slew of changes to this budget on his own website, which also gutted this legislation that we'll be dealing with tomorrow and promised a future tranche of legislation would deal with the key definitions including what a new build would be. Then we had the third iteration of this budget on 23 June, when the Prime Minister announced that he'd been able to cobble together a deal with the Australian Greens on the passage of his budget bills.

Now, this third iteration, of course, has been conducted without any consultation with anyone and is another element of arbitrage that we're going to see in this market. But a precursor to all this was the knowledge in the Prime Minister's mind that he was going to change negative gearing and capital gains tax. The question is: when did he first make that judgement in his own mind that he was going to? Of course, in the past few years, the Prime Minister has sold a number of investment properties and has made a gain of at least $200,000. That wouldn't have been possible if the changes had been made. So the question is: when did the Prime Minister know he was going to make the changes? Has he engaged in insider trading of the sort where we've seen a person benefit from inside knowledge, make transactions, sell properties and then make changes later? I think the publications in today's press raised this spectre, that the Prime Minister has conducted himself in an improper way by engaging in insider trading in relation to his own personal property transactions.

But that is just one of the many issues with this budget. And, as I say, this third tranche of the budget, which was announced this week in the deal with the Greens, does raise the spectre of a new system in superannuation where some super funds will be able to go around and buy properties and buy houses but others will not be able to because they are, of course, self-managed super funds and Labor wants to punish individuals and families but protect their favourite vested interests. This is the golden thread of Australian Labor for these past four years, a constant commitment to look after the people that run their campaigns and that give them donations, their fellow travellers. That is what they've done, and this is just more evidence today that the government is more interested in protecting the profits and the interests of their friends than doing the right thing for the Australian people.

Of course, when you've announced three budgets or three versions of the same budget in a month, there are going to be wrinkles. We've seen today more evidence of these wrinkles in the form of death and divorce. When these things happen—and they happen to people—people will lose the benefits of negative gearing and the grandfathering that goes with them just because a spouse has died or there's been a divorce. Now how can that possibly be fair? The answers we heard in question time today from Minister Wong were totally inadequate, because the answer is they don't have any idea. They have no idea about the consequences of this budget, and that's because, when they did the regulatory impact analysis for these budget bills they were conducted on the basis of the Greens inquiry, not on the basis of the legislation presented to this parliament. The Greens model for capital gains tax and CGT reform was fundamentally different to the model that had been presented in the budget and is before this parliament today. The government has no idea of the impact. We do know that it will collapse supply, we do know that it will damage confidence and we do know that it will damage the ability of Australians to invest into their businesses and invest in their futures.

The other wrinkles we will have to sort out in future sittings of this parliament, because it can't be sustained that because a spouse has died or there's been a divorce someone should have a tax penalty. Surely that's not fair. I mean, even in the doctor evil brains that sometimes exist on the other side of this chamber, that can't be a fair and just outcome for Australian families.

I understand the real agenda here is to enrich vested interests. But surely, it can't be an agenda which hurts people because a family member has died or because there's been a divorce. There have been three iterations of this budget so far. They want to rush this bill through tomorrow. It's a disgrace, but I'm sure this won't be the last word.

Ellie Whiteaker (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I've been thinking a lot in recent days about: what's the point in coming to this building if you're not making a difference to people's lives outside of this building? I'm not sure there's a more important purpose than to come to this house and make changes that are necessary to help young Australians right across our country buy their own house, and ultimately that is at the heart of our budget measures and that has been at the heart of the work of the Albanese Labor government during the first term and over the last 12 months, since we were re-elected in May last year.

This budget is a reflection of the fact that, while we've done a lot of really good and important work, there is more work to do. We can do more to help young people own a home of their own. When I talk to young people around the country, they are really clear that they feel like they are doing everything right—working hard, saving their money—but they just can't get their foot in the door. We've heard a lot of drama, a lot of hyperbole from those opposite about our tax measures and about what it will mean for the housing market, what it will mean for young people. They talk a lot about the idea that we're taking away aspiration from young people. I think they like to try to fool the young people of this country into believing that they might be able to make it, to invest in property, to own five or six or seven properties and make money at the end of it. But the truth is, most young Australians, most young working Australians, will not be able to achieve that dream. They can't climb the ladder because the first few steps have been taken away. We should be really clear about who ripped those steps out of the ladder. It was those opposite while they were in government, when they sat on their hands for nine years and did nothing to build more homes, did nothing to help young Australians realise the dream of homeownership, when they barely had a housing minister for most of their time in government.

We should also be clear about the tax mechanisms that incentivised investment in housing and made it a really appealing way to make money. Sure, I don't begrudge those who have, under previous arrangements—under the capital gains tax arrangements—made money from those arrangements. But the reality is that it has meant that my generation and the generation below mine have not had the same opportunity to enter the property market. They can't even buy their first home, let alone their second or their third or their fourth. Our government believes that it should not be easier to buy your fifth home than it is to buy your first.

In 1999, I was only six years old. John Howard, as the Prime Minister, changed the tax arrangements to give property investors and other investors a really generous discount on the amount of tax they paid on their profits. Those are the changes that we are seeking to change because, since then, house prices have risen in a way that has made it completely impossible for most ordinary young Australians to buy their first home. Labor says that is unacceptable. That is not an arrangement that we will allow to continue. We will not stand by and let young people miss out on the opportunity to own their first home.

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

It's clear that our housing system—our housing crisis—is a matter of public importance, so I'm delighted to stand up and talk about it. That crisis has a number of parents. It has parents on both sides of this house. This motion only acknowledges Labor's role, and it is a very significant role over decades, in being a parent to this crisis. But we have to acknowledge that there were decades of inaction on the conservative side of politics that have landed us in the spot where we are today, where we have millions of people in dire housing insecurity.

We were warned about this as an outcome of deliberate policy decisions many years ago. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute put out a report two decades ago sounding the alarm that our housing system is and was, from that time 20 years ago, structurally unsustainable from an intergenerational perspective. We had tax policy put in place that would bring that result, and it surely has. Those researchers warned us the burden would fall most heavily on young people, those denied homeownership and those increasingly dependent—the 31 per cent of Australians now who are totally dependent—on rental accommodation. What did the Labor and Liberal governments do in response to all of that data, all of that prediction and all of that reliable research? They did nothing. We've kept in place a tax policy which has failed us and has landed generations of people in a disastrous housing situation.

Most Australians—nearly 90 per cent—use the language of and recognise this as a crisis. They recognise it as a crisis whether they are parents or grandparents or young people or people at school. The committee I'm chairing, the Select Committee on Intergenerational Housing Inequity, at present has had submissions from people who are 13 years old talking about the fear and the loss of hope that that very young generation has about the state of housing affordability that lies ahead for them. It is a dominant concern for so many Australians and no surprise, given that house prices have increased by 400 per cent since 1989, courtesy of both the major parties. And those are the Treasurer's own numbers.

Over recent decades we've experienced a really significant fall in homeownership, nowhere more seriously than for young people aged 25 to 34, where homeownership has fallen from 61 per cent in 1981 to 43 per cent in 2021. It's only gone down further from that. Young people are giving up hope, and they've turned to rental accommodation, where they are facing massive increases in rent as a consequence. So many young people in every city in Australia are living in serious financial stress because of rent rises that make it impossible to afford groceries and a social life and are destined to feel genuine insecurity in their housing.

We've been pushing for a long, long time—more than a quarter century—to get rid of those unfair property investor tax perks that have priced so many people out of their home, and we wanted to cap the grandfathering provisions to one investment property. That's been our policy for a long time. If the budget had actually done that, we would have an extra $33 billion on the table to build the public housing that we know we need. Baking in the advantage that's there for those who already got in on the housing investment gravy train means that we are failing to put the money that we need to and that we could have put into that public housing. Treasury's own numbers show that 54 per cent of the lost revenue from the CGT discount in 2022-23, which is around $13 billion, went to the richest one per cent of taxpayers. We've been advantaging the very wealthy at the cost of the very poor and the young.

This motion acknowledges the government's falling short of its own housing target, yet where do the Liberals stand on this question of building social housing? Where do they stand on the question of capping rents, and where do they stand on the essential policies we need to deal with homelessness across our country? The solutions on the table from the Liberal Party are to raid superannuation, for young people to reach into their savings which might give them a retirement income that gives them a decent standard of living, and to use it to get to their house. The other solution that's offered is to reduce the interest rate buffer and expose them to more risk in the housing market and more insecurity in their lives. The hypocrisy here is rank. We have a housing crisis. We need solutions. Neither party have them. (Time expired)

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) | Link to this | Hansard source

I feel it is extraordinary to have a conga line of Labor backbenchers coming out to talk about housing supply when every single one of their policies in the last four years has been designed, whether by intent or by incompetence, to make it harder for Australians to own their own home. My least favourite at the moment is the five per cent deposit scheme, which not only drove up house prices but, in combination with the out-of-control spending and higher inflation under this government, has meant that those Australians who went into that program are now faced with having more debt than equity. What a shocking position to put people who are desperately trying to get into their own first home in, and it's one that the coalition warned about. We said: 'This is a failed policy. It will end up leaving people worse off.' That's exactly the situation that we're left in.

The most recent budget—it's terrible. It's anti-aspirational, and it is not delivering more houses. We know that Labor is more than 100,000 dwellings behind the 1.2 million housing target by mid-2029. It will miss this target by more than 200,000 houses. This is a government that is planning to fail. It is extraordinary to me that there is no understanding of the basic economics of when you have out-of-control spending, when you drive up inflation to some of the highest rates in the advanced economies, when you drive up interest rates—for people listening, inflation is a term that's used a lot but not always well understood. Inflation simply means you pay more. You pay more for your groceries. You pay more for your rent. You pay more for your shoes and your clothes and every other thing in your life. It also means that the RBA, whose only purpose in life is to keep inflation to a band, is then forced to increase interest rates. If you're a young person seeking to get into the housing market, the Labor government's out-of-control spending has pushed up inflation, made it harder for you to buy every single thing in your life and then also driven up interest rates, which means that the deposit you've worked so hard to build is worth less. Your bank is going to lend you less with a higher interest rate.

Of course, the final thing is that, once Labor's finished spending their money, they come after yours. It also increases taxes. This is the trifecta of antihousing policy. Thanks very much to Labor, because we have the highest inflation and the highest interest rates for the G7, for many developed countries, and Australia is unfortunately the winner in that competition.

Housing is incredibly important. Australia, unlike many other countries, still has a goal for people to own their own home. Many other countries have already given that up. They have long-term rentals and that is an accepted way of life. But in Australia the idea of owning your own home is a dream, an aspiration that everybody aspires to. But, under this Labor government, you are worse off every day. And the budget, in its latest round, will only make that harder.

The changes to capital gains tax mean that if you seek to buy a home or, potentially, to rent out a room, you are now disadvantaged under this government's policy settings. I'm not sure why this was such a burningly urgent priority for the Prime Minister, a man who has benefited from the John Howard reforms to capital gains tax of many years ago. He was happy to take the gearing and happy to take the tax benefit. Yet now that he's out of the investor property market, he's willing to leave everybody else in deep water. I think it is mean spirited and—worse—means that Australians who wish to own their own home and wish to benefit from the great country we live in are destined, under this Labor government, to have higher prices, higher inflation, higher taxes and no access to a new home.

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

I always enjoy these debates because Senator Bragg wanders into the chamber, points at Australia's housing crisis and somehow concludes that the people who spent a decade ignoring it are the ones with all the answers. Today's motion is no different. Apparently, Labor's housing agenda is a broken promise. Apparently, we're doing 'dirty deals'. And, apparently, we're making the housing crisis worse.

I know we're only a few days away from the midwinter break, but I think Australians deserve a little bit more than a political press release read into Hansard. Let's touch some grass for a moment. Australia has a housing crisis. Nobody on this side denies that. Young people know it, renters know it and people trying to save for a deposit know it. There is unquestionably a housing challenge. The actual question is: who is actually doing something about it?

When those opposite had nearly a decade in government, they treated housing like an optional extra. For a lot of that period, they didn't even have a housing minister; that sounds to me like a skill issue. House prices were skyrocketing, rents were climbing, social housing waiting lists were growing, and the coalition's response was, 'She'll be right.' Now they come in here acting shocked that Australia has a housing shortage. That's a bit like spending 10 years ignoring a leaking roof and then demanding to know why the carpet is wet when there's a storm.

What is the Albanese Labor government actually doing? We're delivering a $47 billion homes for Australia plan. We're working towards 1.2 million new homes. We're delivering 55,000 social and affordable rental homes and 100,000 homes reserved for first home buyers. We're investing in infrastructure, training more tradies and cutting red tape to get homes built. And, importantly, we're recognising something that young Australians have been saying for years: housing isn't just a supply problem; it's also about fairness. For too long we've had a system where it can feel easier to build a portfolio of investment properties than to buy your first home.

I know the coalition get very nervous whenever anyone suggests the tax system should work for first home buyers as well as investors. They've spent weeks predicting catastrophe, talking about how, apparently, the sky is falling—the rental market will collapse, and civilisation itself is hanging by a thread. They seem to be having a crash-out of epic proportions. If you listen to the coalition rhetoric over the years, you'd think every reform ever proposed was moments away from ending life as we know it. Our reforms are designed to encourage investment into new housing supply and help level the playing field for first home buyers. The government's estimates suggest around 75,000 additional first home buyers will be able to enter the market over the coming decade.

I find it interesting that the coalition has suddenly become deeply concerned about renters. This is the same coalition that opposed the Housing Australia Future Fund, opposed help-to-buy and opposed build-to-rent. It is the same coalition whose first instinct, every time a housing measure appears, is to vote against it and then complain that not enough houses are being built. It's a bit of a chopped political strategy to block the housing policies, delay the housing policies, vote against the housing policies and then bring this motion complaining about housing.

At some point everyone has to ask, 'What exactly is their plan here?' So far, the answer seems to be preserving the status quo. The status quo is what got us here. It's true that housing challenges built up over decades, and they won't be solved overnight. Nobody seriously believes that, but progress is happening. Housing commencements are up. Construction cost inflation has fallen dramatically from the peaks we inherited. More builders are entering the industry. Hundreds of thousands of homes have been completed since Labor came to office. That doesn't mean the job is finished, but it does mean we're moving in the right direction.

Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Infrastructure) | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, that's an extraordinary contribution from Labor over there, when their own Treasury documents tell them that they will actually build 35,000 fewer homes for Australians with these measures. Labor has broken yet another promise to the Australian people. The Prime Minister said he would not do a deal with the Greens, and now Labor are ramming through a dirty budget deal with the Greens to pass one of the most deceptive budgets in our nation's history. This government is a failure. Labor has not only failed to be honest about their budget but failed to manage migration, failed to deliver housing supply and failed young Australians and families who are working hard and trying to buy a home.

Everywhere I go, I am being told the same thing. People feel that this government has let them down. Parents are worried that their children will never be able to move out of home. I have three children, and I feel as though they are going to be living with me forever. Young Australians are working, they're saving, they're doing everything they can, but that dream of owning their own home is slipping further and further away and is almost completely out of touch with Labor's latest budget. The Australian dream of owning a home that I got to experience and that my parents got to experience is not something that this generation of young Australians will ever have. Even a basic unit is now unaffordable for many young people who would once have seen that as their first step into the market. That is the reality of living under this terrible Labor government who, for those who want to live near where they grew up, the dream of homeownership is entirely dead because this government is saying the only homes that you can go and buy will be brand new builds. Where are brand new builds happening? They're happening in outer suburbs, a long way away from where these young people have grown up. So it's saying that, if you want to own a home, you can live a long way away from your family, your friends and the community that you've grown up with.

Labor keeps saying that the overseas net migration numbers are coming down, but 301,000 migrants came to Australia to December 2025. How many homes did we build in that time? Not 301,000. Labor keep telling us that the numbers are coming down, but it's fair to say that that is not showing in the housing market. You tell that to the families that are lining up to get a rental. You tell that to the young couple that are going to an auction to bid on their first home. Under Labor, about 1.6 million people have come to Australia, while only about 600,000 homes have been built. The problem is right in front of them, and they will continue to ignore it. There are not enough homes, prices have risen beyond control and young Australians are again being pushed to the back of the queue.

It's fair to say that the median house price in Australia has reached records that I never thought that I would see in my lifetime. But it's okay because, for the Prime Minister and his cabinet, they already own their homes, so they're laughing at the capital gains that they're making. But how's that for the young Australians that are just trying to get in?

Labor promised that they would deliver 1.2 million homes by June 2029. That's their own target that they set, and they are nowhere near it. Labor is not building at the pace that is required, and the government is more than 100,000 homes short of where it needs to be. Australia now needs about 270,000 homes built each year by mid-2029 to meet Labor's own target. If that's a test, Labor are failing at their own test. The question for the Prime Minister is simple. If he's going to bring more people into the country than the number of homes being built, where are those people supposed to live?

Labor promised homes, and they've not delivered anything like the homes that Australians need. Labor promised no new taxes. Labor promised not to negotiate with the Greens. Labor has lied to the Australian people, and the dirty deal with the Greens is the latest of a long list of Labor lies.

The coalition will fight this bad Labor government and its dirty deals with the Greens. We will fight for lower migration that matches our housing capacity, more homes, faster approvals and a housing market where young Australians who work hard still have a chance to own one.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the discussion has expired.