Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Treasury laws amendment Unlocking Supply of Family Homes Bill 2025. When I introduced this bill in November last year, Australia's housing market was already under pressure. At that time, the national average auction clearance rate was around 65 per cent and the RBA's cash rate was 3.6 per cent. Today it's a very different situation. The national auction clearance rate is around 55 per cent, which is actually its highest level in 11 weeks, and the cash rate is at 4.35 per cent. Just yesterday, the ANZ bank warned that property prices could fall by as much as 15 per cent. That's the difference that 10 months and a Labor budget can make to the Australian housing market.

Confidence has clearly fallen. It's clearly tanked. Borrowing costs are higher and buyers are under immense pressure. In a market like this, we should be asking a very simple question: why would anyone want to downsize? But that's precisely why this bill is needed right now. We should be making it easier, not harder, for Australians to make sensible decisions about their own homes. This is a very practical, sensible and simple reform that addresses two problems at once. It can help improve the supply of family sized homes available to younger Australians while giving older Australians greater flexibility to make housing and retirement decisions that suit their circumstances.

The bill builds on the coalition's original downsizer contribution policy which was introduced in 2017-18. The principle behind that policy was very straightforward, indeed. If an older Australian wants to move from a large family home into a home that better suits their needs as they get older, we shouldn't put unnecessary financial or administrative barriers in their way. In fact, we should be making that path easier for them. When that large home that they've had is available to the market, another Australian family has the opportunity to move into it. So that's the economic logic behind this bill—increasing the flow of homes that are available to all Australians. We need more homes in Australia, most importantly, but we also need to make better use of the homes that we already have.

The Australian housing market is under enormous strain right now. Younger Australians are working extremely hard. They're saving diligently. They're doing everything that's expected of them, and yet increasingly they can't find homes that meet their needs and meet their budgets. The dream of owning your own home, particularly owning a family home, has never felt so far out of reach for young Australians.

I've previously spoken in this place about a woman named Julia, a 27-year-old lawyer from Melbourne who wrote to me about the difficulty that she and her husband were having finding a home where they can raise their family. They're both in good jobs. They're both doing all the right things. Her husband's an electrician. She's a lawyer, as I said. They're not asking for anything extravagant. They want a three-bedroom home, a backyard, a shed and somewhere that they can raise their children. I don't think that's unreasonable. But, despite their two incomes, they're being priced out of the kind of home that they need. This is a story that's being repeated right across the country.

At the same time, there are older Australians who are living in homes that are larger than they need and no longer suitable for their lifestyle or mobility needs. In this current market, when confidence is so weak and property values are so uncertain, there is even less incentive to make a major housing move. That's why we should be looking at every possible practical lever available to keep housing stock flowing, and this bill does exactly that. It makes three very straightforward changes to the existing downsizer contribution rules. Firstly, it lowers the minimum age of eligibility from 55 to 50. Secondly, it extends the period in which downsizer contributions can be made after a settlement from 90 days to one year. Thirdly, it increases the maximum contribution into superannuation from $300,000 to $500,000 per person. That means that an eligible couple could potentially, on the sale of their home, contribute $1 million from the sale of that home into their superannuation without penalties. The existing requirement to have owned their own home for 10 years before they do that remains. This is not a wholesale rewrite of the system; it's simply keeping up with modern markets. It's a targeted improvement to a policy that is already working.

Since 2018-19, almost 100,000 Australians have made downsizer contributions on the sale of their homes into their superannuation. So that's almost 100,000 Australians that have used a policy that was designed by the former coalition government to make a housing transition whilst strengthening their retirement savings, both of which are good things. The coalition is proposing to make that policy work for more Australians. The current age threshold can discourage Australians that are in their 50s from making a housing decision that may be completely appropriate for their circumstances. Downsizing is not something that becomes relevant the moment you turn 55. It can happen when your children have left home. It can happen when a property that you have right now becomes too expensive or difficult to maintain. It can happen when mobility issues arise or it can simply happen because people decide that they no longer need or want to maintain a large family home or a large garden. The decision is very, very personal. The government should not be telling Australians to wait until an arbitrary age before they can access an incentive that may help them make decisions for themselves. Lowering the age to 50 gives Australians greater flexibility to make that decision when the time is right for them.

The existing $300,000 limit was set at a time when housing values were very different to what they are today. Family homes have increased substantially in value over those years. A $300,000 contribution may no longer provide the same meaningful incentive that it once did. Increasing the limit to $500,000 better reflects the values of housing assets that Australians have accumulated over decades. For a couple, it means that there's the potential to put up to $1 million of the proceeds of the sale of their family home into their superannuation for their retirement income. Importantly, this is not a tax deduction. The money is coming from an existing asset: the family home. The reform simply gives Australians more flexibility to move those proceeds into their retirement savings.

The current 90-day period can create unnecessary pressure, and selling a family home and finding the right replacement property is not always something that can be done within a period of three months, particularly in a market facing the uncertainty that we're facing now. Someone may sell their home and then discover that the smaller or more accessible property that they had in mind simply isn't available. They should not then be forced into making a rushed housing decision, something that they might want to live with for the rest of their lives, simply to meet an arbitrary administrative deadline. So extending the contribution window to 12 months allows people to sell first and take their time to find the right home before making that contribution. That's common sense.

It's important to note that this bill is entirely voluntary. It doesn't force anybody to downsize. It doesn't interfere with the family home. It doesn't tell older Australians how they should live or where they should live. It simply removes some of the financial and administrative barriers that can make downsizing your home less attractive. Older Australians get greater choice, younger Australians get the potential benefit of a more family sized home coming onto the market, and the housing market gets yet another mechanism for making better use of the housing stock that we already have. That's why this is an intergenerational housing measure.

Labor likes to talk a lot about intergenerational fairness. Well, here is an opportunity to actually deliver it with the mechanisms that we already have. Younger Australians need more opportunities to access those family sized homes, and older Australians deserve greater choice over how and where they choose to live. These objectives are not in conflict. In fact, they can reinforce each other. When an older couple moves from that four-bedroom family home into a smaller home that better suits their needs, that family home does not disappear; it becomes available to another Australian family. That could be a young couple trying to enter the market, a family with young children that need more space or a family moving from an apartment into a home with a backyard. But it's about keeping that housing stock moving rather than seeing these artificial blockages in the arteries of the housing market.

That matters because Labor's housing policies have failed to deliver the homes that Australians need. Let's not forget Labor promised 1.2 million new homes, but Australia is struggling to build at the pace that is required. The government have presided over an historic housing construction collapse, and at the same time they've also overseen an incredible rise in the number of new migrants to Australia. Our population growth has surged because of Labor's out-of-control migration policy. Under Labor, Australia is building around 170,000 homes per year. That compares to the 200,000 per year that were built under the coalition government. Labor has spent tens of billions of dollars —billions, not millions—on housing, and at the same time it's making it more difficult and more expensive to build houses. The government's own tax changes are expected to mean that 35,000 fewer homes are built over the next decade. That should be a warning bell to everybody—the idea that you would make tax changes that would build fewer homes and have that written in black and white in your own budget papers. Fewer homes and higher rents—how can that be a policy for intergenerational fairness? We know that this is true because mortgage applications have fallen so sharply just since May's budget. The economists are now warning that weaker demand will flow through to fewer transactions, less construction and tighter housing supply. You cannot solve a housing shortage by taxing investment, by smashing confidence and by making it harder to build.

Australians need more homes, not fewer homes. We need to make it cheaper and easier to build new homes, but we also need to make better use of the homes that we already have, and that's why the coalition has a comprehensive housing agenda.

We would scrap Labor's housing taxes—those terrible taxes that are discouraging investment and discouraging new builds and that are taxing those that are doing the saving to buy their first home. We would cut red tape, and we would cut the green tape that is making it so much more difficult and more expensive to build a new home. We would simplify the National Construction Code while preserving core safety standards, and that would have the potential to cut the cost of building a new home by up to $70,000. That National Construction Code used to be 200 pages. It used to be a document that would fit in the glove box of a tradie's ute. Now you need the ute to carry around the 2,000 pages of the National Construction Code. We will also establish a $5 billion housing infrastructure fund to help unlock the 400,000 new homes by investing in the essential infrastructure that allows housing developments to proceed, and we would also remove the ineffective and inefficient housing programs and bureaucracies that have failed to deliver the homes that Australians were promised by Labor.

But not every housing reform needs to involve billions of dollars of government spending. Sometimes the best thing you can do is simply remove a barrier. Government can just get out of the way. And that's exactly what this bill does. It takes a policy that was introduced by the former coalition government, makes it more flexible, more contemporary and more relevant to the housing market and the problems that Australians are facing today. It recognises that there are thousands of Australians who may want to make a different housing choice but need greater flexibility to do so, and it recognises that retirement security and housing supply can be two parts of the same policy solution. It recognises, too, that we need to make better use of the housing stock that we have right now, not just build new houses. That's on top of building new houses. We need to give Australians greater freedom and greater choice to make decisions that suit their circumstances, not be dictated to by government edict, and we need to stop putting unnecessary barriers in the way.

The coalition believes that homeownership is a foundation to strong families, to strong communities and to a strong society. Family homes and families should be at the centre of every policy decision that is made. Young Australians should be able to work hard. They should be able to save, and they should be able to aspire to buy a home. That's not unreasonable. Older Australians should have the freedom to make decisions about housing and retirement that work for them. This bill brings those two interests together. It won't solve Australia's housing crisis on its own—we know that; we're not saying that it will—but it is one part of the policy solution, the policy agenda, the policy suite that will actually deliver for Australians what everybody wants.

There's no excuse for Labor to oppose a practical reform that can help. When the housing market is under pressure, we should be using every sensible lever that's available to us. We should be making it easier for homes to change hands, not harder, and certainly not more expensive. We should be giving older Australians more choice, not fewer options, and we should be doing everything that we can to give young Australians a better chance of finding a home in which they can build their future. Australia needs more homes—of that, we are in complete agreement—and we need to make better use of the homes that we already have. This bill helps to do both, so I commend this bill to the Senate.

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

I think it's fair to say that, under this Labor government, the dream that Australians have of owning their own home has never been further from reach. Australia has a serious housing supply problem, and younger Australians are increasingly struggling to find homes that meet their needs but, more importantly, fit within their budgets. For many young Australians, getting into a family home now means moving kilometres away from where they grew up, which means moving away from the communities that they grew up in, their friends, their families and the lifestyle that they have grown accustomed to. There are older Australians who are living in homes that are larger than they need or no longer suited to their lifestyle or mobility needs. That's why this bill matters. It's about making downsizing easier, not harder, while helping more family homes come back onto the market.

When this bill was first introduced in November, national auction clearance rates were around 65 per cent and the RBA cash rate was at 3.6 per cent. Now, the national clearance rates of auctions are around 55 per cent, the cash rate is 4.35 per cent and the ANZ is warning that property prices could fall by almost 15 per cent. That is the difference that 10 months and a terrible Labor budget has made to the Australian housing market. In that environment, the case for making it easier for older Australians to downsize and free up family homes has only become stronger.

This bill is simple, practical reform that helps address two problems at once: housing supply for younger Australians and retirement security for older Australians. It builds on the coalition's original downsizer contribution policy introduced back in 2017-18. The principle is straightforward: make it easier for older Australians to move into homes that better suit their needs while freeing up larger homes for young families looking to get into the market. At a time when housing supply is under enormous pressure, we should be looking at every single practical way that we can get more existing homes moving through the market.

The existing downsizer contribution policy already provides an incentive to people to make that move. Expanding it means that more Australians can access that incentive earlier, and it allows them greater flexibility. When a larger home comes onto the market, it can provide an opportunity for a young family to enter the market or move into a home that better suits their growing family. This is all about making better use of the housing stock that we already have.

So what does this bill do? Well, this bill makes three straightforward changes to the existing downsizer contribution rules. It will lower the eligibility age from 55 to 50. It will extend the contribution window from 90 days to one year after settlement. And it will increase the contribution limit from $300,000 to $500,000 per person. That means that a couple could potentially contribute up to $1 million from the sale of their family home. The existing requirement to have owned the home for at least 10 years remains. Other existing eligibility requirements also remain in place. The contribution remains a non-concessional contribution and does not count towards the annual contribution caps.

Why lower the age? The current age threshold can discourage people from making appropriate housing decisions in their 50s simply because they are not yet eligible for the incentive. Downsizing decisions are highly personal and can happen well before the age of retirement. Let's be honest; under this Labor government, Australians are going to have to work longer and harder to be able to afford their retirement. For example, when children have left the home, circumstances change or a larger property becomes more expensive or more difficult to maintain. Lowering the age to 50 gives Australians greater flexibility to make that decision when it is right for them rather than making them wait until they meet an arbitrary age threshold.

Why the $500,000 limit? The value of family homes has increased significantly since the existing $300,000 limit was established. A higher contribution limit better reflects the value of housing assets Australians have accumulated over decades. For a couple, the ability to contribute up to $1 million provides a meaningful incentive to consider downsizing while allowing more of the proceeds of the family home to be directed towards retirement savings.

The reform does not give people a tax deduction. It simply gives them greater flexibility to move the proceeds of an existing asset into their superannuation. Selling a family home and finding the right replacement property doesn't always happen within 90 days. The current 90-day window can create unnecessary pressure on people to make a major housing decision in a very short timeframe.

Extending the window to 12 months gives older Australians greater flexibility to sell first, find the right home and then decide whether they'd like to make a contribution to their super. This is particularly important in a tight housing market, where finding an appropriate, smaller or more accessible home can take time. Importantly, this bill does not force anyone to make the decision to downsize. It does not interfere with the family home. It simply removes some of the financial and administrative barriers that can make downsizing less attractive. Older Australians get greater choice and flexibility over how they use the proceeds of the sale of their home, and younger Australians get the potential benefit of more family-sized homes coming onto the market.

Labor talks a big game on intergenerational fairness. It was the justification for their housing taxes after all. If Labor really cares about intergenerational fairness, they should support this bill. This is an intergenerational housing measure. Younger Australians need more opportunities to access family-sized homes. Older Australians deserve greater choice over where and how they live and how they want to manage their retirement. Helping an older couple move from a four-bedroom family home into one that better suits their needs can create an opportunity for another family to move into that larger home.

This bill makes that transition easier. It gives the older Australians more flexibility while helping more established homes to move back through the market. That is good for housing mobility, good for younger families trying to find a suitable home and good for older Australians who want to take control of the next stage of their lives. And unlike so much of Labor's housing agenda, this does not depend on another government fund, another bureaucracy or another promise that occurs years into the future. These homes already exist. The bill simply makes it easier for them to come back onto the market. That is exactly the kind of practical reform we should be supporting when Australia is already facing a serious housing shortage.

The coalition believes homeownership is foundational to strong families, strong communities and a strong society. Young Australians should be able to work hard, save and aspire to own their own home. Older Australians should also have the freedom to make decisions about their housing and retirement that suit their circumstances. This bill works on supporting the interests of both older and younger Australians.

Labor has delivered a trifecta of failure on housing. They're delivering fewer homes and higher rents, and confidence in the housing market has been smashed. Westpac mortgage applications have plunged 20 per cent since Labor's May budget, a clear warning that buyers and investors are losing confidence in the housing market. Labor's own budget forecast its tax changes would mean 35,000 fewer homes, and economists are warning weaker mortgage demand will flow through to fewer transactions, less construction and even tighter housing supply. You cannot solve a housing crisis and shortage by taxing housing investment, smashing confidence and making it harder, not easier, to build new homes.

Labor promised 1.2 million homes by 2029, but the government is struggling to deliver on that ambition. Labor has failed on housing supply, spending $80 billion to build 30,000 fewer homes a year than under the coalition. Under Labor, Australia is building around 170,000 homes a year, compared with around 200,000 homes a year under the coalition. And let's not forget the migration numbers that they are bringing into Australia, which place further strain on the housing market. The Albanese government has made it harder and more expensive to build new homes. There are higher taxes on tradies and thousands of pages of new regulations, and a great, big, new government bureaucracy has turned the Australian dream of homeownership into a nightmare.

We want Australia to be the best place in the world to live and raise a family. The coalition will make it cheaper and easier to build new homes by axing all of Labor's taxes on families and tradies. We'll slash red and green tape, and we will get rid of Labor's failed housing bureaucracy. We'll establish a $5 billion housing infrastructure fund to help unlock 400,000 new homes, including in regional Australia, by funding essential last-mile infrastructure such as water, sewerage, power and access roads. We'll reserve the first home buyers five per cent deposit scheme for Australian citizens only, and we'll simplify the National Construction Code while preserving core safety standards. This will cut the cost of building a new home by up to $70,000. We will abolish Labor's ineffective Housing Australia Future Fund, as well as their build-to-rent tax breaks for multinationals. We'll axe Labor's housing taxes, increasing the number of homes by 35,000.

Australia needs more homes, and we need to make better use of the homes that we already have. We should be removing barriers to people making housing decisions to suit their circumstances, not putting more barriers in the way. This bill gives older Australians more choice, strengthens retirement security and can help free up larger homes for younger families. It is voluntary, it's targeted and it's practical. Of course, it won't solve Australia's housing crisis all on its own, but that is no excuse for Labor to oppose a measure that can make a real difference today. I support this bill.

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Women) | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend my colleague Senator Blyth for her comments and Senator Hume for bringing forward this bill, the Unlocking Supply of Family Homes Bill 2025. We have a housing crisis in our country. This isn't something that we can pretend isn't happening. We have to have tangible measures in place that help us solve that crisis, and this is an example of that. This is core to who we are and what our values are. We believe that homeownership is foundational to strong families, to strong communities and to a strong society. We believe that every single person that hopes to have their own home, to buy their own home, should be able to do that. We believe that government should get out of their way so that they can do that, and we are very concerned about the way this government is managing our economy and the impacts that that is having on everyday Australians.

This government has delivered an absolute trifecta of failure on housing. We have fewer homes, we have higher rents, and confidence in our country and in our housing market has completely collapsed. I was working in financial services during the GFC in 2008, in the home loan sector, and we had about 48 hours to pivot the entire lending policy of one of Australia's major banks. That was a really tough time and a really tough period globally and for our country. In the last couple of weeks, I've had conversations with some colleagues who I worked with at that time. They have told me that it is worse today. It is worse now, under this Albanese Labor government, than it was in 2008 with the GFC. We need to let that sink in for a minute and think about what the actions of this government and the policies of this government are doing to create that, compound it and make it worse. I think the budgetary measures in relation to the CGT, negative gearing and SMSF borrowing have clearly impacted that. They have impacted confidence and they will impact housing supply.

What this bill does is turn it back the other way. It actually unlocks the supply of housing, and it is aptly named the Unlocking Supply of Family Homes Bill 2025. We have people who are in homes that are too large for them. They have more space than they need, but there are barriers that are preventing them from exiting those homes. They will be financially worse off if they do that. So it makes complete sense to put measures in place to change that.

To give you some historical context, when Senator Hume introduced this bill in November 2025, the national average for auction clearance rates was around 65 per cent, and the RBA's cash rate was 3.6 per cent. Now, today, after this government has had more time to trash our economy, the clearance rates have dropped to 55 per cent, and the cash rate is 4.35 per cent, noting we've had 13 interest rate rises under this Albanese Labor government. The ANZ bank is warning that property prices could slump by 15 per cent. This is a crashing of our economy. This is a serious concern. That's the difference of 10 months and an Albanese Labor budget that has caused a crisis in our housing market.

But, for a moment, don't just think about the headlines that some in this chamber have been speaking of. 'It's great. This is what we want, so more young people can enter the market.' Think for a moment that this is a crash in economic confidence, but also for a moment think about all of the young people who, last year, those opposite said were getting their first opportunity to enter the market with the five per cent deposit scheme—that that was a great signal and a great opportunity for them to own their own home. 'Look at what the Albanese government has done for you.'

Those are the very same people that will be first impacted by negative equity, based on what this government did next. You have drawn in these people who have used all of their life savings to enter the market, and, once you've got them, you've basically pushed them and drowned them. That's not something that I'm making up. That's a reality. That is what negative equity is. It is when you owe more on your home than it's worth. Negative equity isn't whether you're ahead on your repayments or not; it's when your asset is worth less than what you paid for it. That is what has happened and will continue to happen to many of those people who entered that scheme if this continues.

Then the question is: Why would anybody want to downsize in this market? Why would they bother? Why would they take that risk? They would just stay where they are because there are costs and risks with downsizing. You have costs to pay to sell your property, and you don't know what you're going to be able to buy. You don't know what's going to be out there, because, like you, others are hanging onto properties. That's why we need to make downsizing easier, not harder.

This bill provides a simple, practical reform that helps address two problems at one time: housing supply for younger Australians and retirement security for older Australians. It builds on the coalition's original downsizer contribution policy, which was introduced in 2017-18. The principle is pretty straightforward. It makes it easier for older Australians to move into homes that better suit their needs, while freeing up larger family homes for young families to buy. At a time when housing supply is under extremely intense pressure, we should be looking at every practical way to get more existing homes into the market.

What problem are we trying to solve? It's an access problem and a supply problem. The dream of owning your own home has absolutely never been further out of reach. We have young Australians who are struggling to find homes that meet their needs and are within their budgets, and then we have older Australians who are living in homes that are too large and not suitable for their lifestyle or for their mobility needs. So we have this double whammy, at both ends, and we're not doing anything to enable one to flow into the other. Expanding this policy means more Australians can access that incentive earlier and with greater flexibility. When a larger family home comes into the market, it can provide an opportunity for a younger family to enter the market or move into a home that better suits their growing family.

This bill is going to do three very straightforward things to change the existing downsizer contribution rules. No. 1, it will lower the eligibility age from 55 to 50. That's a pretty simple mechanism, and it would be quite effective. No. 2, it extends the contribution window from 90 days to one year after settlement. Why is this important? It is because you can't always get things done in 90 days. Three months is a very short window. If you're allowed to have that extra window that takes you to 12 months, it provides people with greater options but it also gives them time to plan what they're going to do, particularly in a volatile market like what we are starting to see now, where they actually might not know what they're going to get for their own home until they sell it. You actually can't make those plans until you know what your tangible outcomes are going to be. This is something that the people that have created the current set of rules and the budget changes that we've seen from this government haven't thought about.

The government, with the assistance of Treasury, has taken the approach of looking at these things in a very black-and-white fashion without having a look at how people actually have to make decisions in their own lives, which is very different from a spreadsheet and a formula, and we've seen that now unfold publicly. A great example of that is the widows tax, which, shamefully, those on the other side and, I'm sad to say, also the Australian Greens voted for, knowing the impact it would have, knowing the harm that it would cause but still choosing to legislate it, still choosing to pass it, because it provided a public opportunity to wave a win in the air instead of doing the job that we're asked to do here, which is to make Australian laws robust and the best that they can possibly be. It is not saying, 'We'll just get it across the line so we can say we won, and we'll fix it later.' Australians deserve better than that. They deserve a government that is better than that. They deserve treatment that reflects the enormity of the challenges that they're facing, not greater confusion when things are already hard enough. That's why we've seen this collapse in confidence.

The third thing that this bill does is increase the contribution limit from $300,000 to $500,000 per person. This means a couple could potentially contribute up to $1 million from the sale of their family home. The existing requirement is that you have to have owned your home for 10 years, and that would remain unchanged. All the other existing eligibility requirements would remain in place, and the contribution would remain a non-concessional contribution and wouldn't count towards the annual contribution caps. With three very simple changes—lowering the age from 55 to 50, extending the window from 90 days to a year after settlement and increasing the contribution limit from $300,000 to $500,000. I don't know why anybody would object to that at any point in time, but I especially don't know why anybody would object to that in the current environment in which we find ourselves, which I remind everyone is the complete crushing of confidence by this government in the housing market, where Australians do not feel confident to buy. We talk about why the auction clearance rates have dropped. They've dropped because there is no confidence in the market and they have dropped because there have been 13 interest rate rises under this government. How do we not remember that? How can we forget 13 rate rises under this government in four years?

And then, at the budget, we have them deciding to tax all classes of assets at a minimum 30 per cent of CGT, including small businesses, including shares, including ETFs, including the savings that young people squirrel away in order to save for their first home because it is so unattainable. The reason they claim they did that is to make housing cheaper. I still fail to understand how taxing someone's small business makes a house over here cheaper. I fail to understand it, because it doesn't. It's not because I lack the comprehension; it's because it actually has no relatability to it.

The next thing this government have done, with the assistance of the Greens, is blindsided people with self-managed super funds by taking away or banning limited recourse borrowing for property. Explain to me why an industry super fund can own housing in this country but Australians that have an SMSF cannot. Why do we have two sets of rules? Why are we only allowing institutional investors to invest in housing in our country?

The problem—let's step away from the inequity of that—is that this is again going to reduce supply in our housing market at a time when we cannot afford to lose any supply at all. SMSFs often purchase, off the plan, properties that go into the rental market, because someone who owns an SMSF can't live in those properties. They have to be arm's-length transactions. So the houses that they are purchasing go into the rental market, and this government has taken that away as well.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise today to speak to Senator Hume's private senator's bill, the Unlocking Supply of Family Homes Bill 2025, which is the opposition's perspective on yet another suggestion to a Labor government bereft of solutions to Australia's housing crisis. There are no holds barred. If you want to solve the housing crisis, we are here to help. Yes, it is a supply issue. This bill addresses the supply issue. We're happy to help if you want to turn it into government legislation, and we can pass that today.

But it's also a demand issue. A couple of weeks ago, in the productivity inquiry that the Senate's currently holding, we heard from Mike Pezzullo, the former secretary of Home Affairs, that we have a record high number of temporary visa holders in this country right now. There are three million temporary visa holders in a population that's not even 30 million yet, so more than 10 per cent of our current population are temporary visa holders, all needing somewhere to live on a temporary basis. If Australians are wondering why rents are skyrocketing out of control, it's because there is increased demand on rental properties, particularly at that lower end of the market, and similarly with houses.

We've put a lot of suggestions on the table on how the government could seek to solve this issue, or at least put some downward pressure on demand, by getting their out-of-control immigration program under control and also by getting red tape out of the construction sector. We know that, when the housing construction code was put in place, it was a document of about yea thickness. Now, I wouldn't even be able to fit the folders on my desk, with the amount of red tape that builders need to comply with in order to construct a home in this country. We know that in excess of 40 per cent of the cost of a new house and land build is local, state and federal government taxes. That's a fact.

If you want to know why young people can't get in to homes, it's because we've made it really hard. We've also got an economy where their take-home pay is either headed to state governments or Canberra, in terms of taxes, or out the door at the grocery aisle because of increased inflation. So their take-home pay is buying less and less each and every week.

GDP per capita under this government is in the toilet. That really just means that your pay packet isn't buying what it used to. Why? It's because inflation is so high—and that's not because of the Middle East. The Reserve Bank governor has made clear time and time again that this government's spending profile is what is making it harder and harder to get inflation under control, and that's why you've seen 13 rate rises under Labor. They're not fixing the economy. They're not stopping their runaway spending. So the only lever that the Reserve Bank governor has in her kit is ratcheting up rates to try to dampen demand.

Thankfully, we didn't see another rate rise, but inflation remains too high. We are top of the league table when it comes to international comparisons with countries like Australia. So, rightfully, young people in particular, who are trying to get into their own homes, are unable to save as much as they would have once, because more of their take-home pay is being spent on buying everyday goods. Electricity has gone up by in excess of 30 per cent. I could go on, but we are here to talk about housing supply.

One of the other suggestions that the Labor Party has taken on board is a suggestion that the coalition took to the last election, which was to invest in enabling infrastructure. We have $5 billion on the table particularly to help local councils, as well as other entities, to get the last-mile infrastructure needed to open up new blocks, whether that is your kerbing or access roads or power, water and electricity. When we go out and talk to local councils and we say, 'Why haven't you got that development up and going?' what we hear is, 'Well, Shadow Minister McKenzie, we haven't been able to afford the sewerage costs,' or, 'We can't afford the additional power connections,' or, 'It's taking two years for state-owned power corporations to actually get the power on.'

Government can actually do some of those suggestions. So we are putting that amount of money on the table, and it's good to see the Labor government has taken up part of that. We know that there's in excess of $5 billion worth of projects around the country to get these blocks opened up. The government hasn't put $5 billion into it. We would encourage them to match our commitment, because our assessment is that that will raise in excess of 400,000 new homes, particularly those house and land packages that are for young people in those lower first-entry markets. Unlocking the door of their new home and getting on with paying it off is one of the great joys of life over time. We need to get construction and productivity back on track, and that is something that the Senate is looking at. I know Senator Bragg will be talking a lot about that in the National Press Club today.

When Senator Hume introduced this bill back in November, the national average for auction clearance rates was around 65 per cent and the RBA's cash rate was 3.6 per cent. Now national clearance rates are at 55 per cent, and I note that in news in just now we are seeing the CBA sounding the alarm, having seen a 15 per cent drop in bank loan applications since the budget tax crackdown. Whilst the Labor Party are talking a big game on increasing supply, they're doing nothing on demand. Their taxes are seeing the housing market crash and, as Senator Kovacic said earlier, that is leading to a significant drop in confidence across the country. We need to get confidence back in this country, as well as a belief that we can solve these complex problems together. There are no simple solutions. They are complicated and require parties of government to be working in the national interest, not in their own political interest, to get the job done.

So why would anyone want to downsize in this kind of market? If you're an older Australian, you're sitting in the family home, it's just you and the missus rattling around in your four-bedroom home in a lovely leafy suburb, you're thinking you don't want to keep mowing this lawn and you'd rather be playing pickleball or golf and seeing the grandkids a bit more, why would you downsize in a market where you've just seen 10, 12 or 15 per cent drop off the price of the asset that you and your wife have literally spent the last 30 years paying off? Nobody would be wanting to downsize in this market. That's why we need to make downsizing easier, not harder. So this is a very simple, practical reform increasing the supply of homes to younger Australians and giving retirement security for older Australians. As we know and as other contributors have made clear, the dream of owning your own home has never been further out of reach than ever before in our country's history. The average median income multiple that is required is in excess of 13 times what it was 20 years ago to be able to purchase a home. That is simply locking people out, and they are losing hope.

We want to actually make sure that we're increasing supply of homes not just in the outer suburbs in those house-and-land package situations but also in some of the suburbs that are closer to capital cities and, importantly, in regional capitals. I think of my own home state, Bendigo, a regional capital in excess of 110,000 people now—we'd like more—and it is a wonderful place to live, to have a great globally focused career and to raise a family. But, in making sure that housing remains affordable in places like Bendigo, we want to also see downsizing as an option.

So the bill provides for flexibility to do three things: it lowers the minimum age of eligibility from 55 years to 50 years; it extends the period of time to make downsizer contributions after settlements from 90 days to a year; and the maximum amount of contribution has increased from $300,000 to $500,000, which is good news for those who are seeking to downsize. Why did we lower the age on this particular bill? Because—I know, now that I am in my late 50s—retirement has snuck up on us. We've got to get all our ducks in order, shall we say. So having those conversations with your partner, your children and your workplace, making those plans earlier rather than later, will actually mean a better outcome for your retirement and gives Australians a lot more flexibility. Why did we limit the contributions to $500,000? That's a simple recognition that the value of the family home, despite the recent downturn under Labor, has increased since the limit was established many, many years ago. I think, for a couple, the ability to contribute up to $1 million provides a meaningful incentive to consider downsizing while allowing more of the proceeds of the family home to be directed towards retirement savings. As we know, the greatest asset that most Australians have when they retire is when they've managed after a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice to own their own home.

As more and more Australians have considerable superannuation savings in order to fund their retirement, making that transition between asset classes easier is much, much more important. I think this has been made clear in others' contributions. This bill doesn't force anyone to downsize. It is just another opportunity for Australians to look at their assets, their retirement and their lifestyle choices and make decisions about their future rather than have a government dictate what they think Australians should be doing, what asset classes they think Australians should be investing in.

As we have seen, Labor ruled out 50 times that they would be touching negative gearing, a key investment particularly for teachers, nurses and coppers. That's who are using negative gearing in this country to actually help fund their retirement—working-class Australians. Instead of telling that group of Australians that they were coming after their retirement savings before the last election, so that Australians could make an informed decision about where to cast their vote, the Labor Party lied. The Prime Minister lied. Every time he was asked, 'Are you going to be making changes to negative gearing?' he said, 'No, no, no.' Australians believed him, and that is why the rage in communities, in Labor Party suburbs, is so palpable. They feel the last budget has been foisted upon them. It's forcing them to make decisions about their own retirement, their home and their investment properties that they were assured prior to the last election wouldn't happen. Labor talks a lot about intergenerational fairness and then does exactly the opposite.

Jessica Collins (NSW, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak to the Treasury laws amendment Unlocking Supply of Family Homes Bill 2025. I want to thank Senator Hume for bringing this very practical, excellent bill forward. It's a sensible bit of policy and at the right time in response, of course, to Labor's disastrous budget that we have seen has absolutely decimated our housing market at a time when it really didn't need it. What we see in this bill is a measure trying to increase supply, which is what our housing market needs right now. It's a brilliant piece. It introduces flexibility and incentives to free up some of those family homes.

This reform complements the coalition's original downsizer contribution, which was introduced in 2017-18 and allowed over-55s to contribute part of the sale of their home to superannuation. With all of the brouhaha that we've had from Labor's worst budget ever, those opposite forget that we are actually in the midst of a housing crisis. When they handed down their budget, the housing market crashed. Confidence crashed, and it did absolutely nothing to lift supply. I speak to young adults all the time, and you know what they're saying to me? They're moving back in to the family home with mum and dad because they can't afford to save for a deposit and they can't afford to rent.

In my home state of New South Wales and in Sydney city, we have record rents at the moment. The average rent in Sydney is $850 a week. If you are in a unit, the median price is between $800 and $1,000.50 every week—just for a unit. That's an extraordinary amount of money when your wages aren't necessarily going up, but the prices are going up around you—your rents are going up, and you can't get milk and bread. For my family, I go every day to the supermarket to get three litres of milk and a loaf of bread. You can't get that for under $10. They are just the very essentials for my family. Prices are going up; everything's going up, which makes it harder and harder for young people and young adults to save for their first home and get into the housing market. Of course, right now, that housing market is crashing. The other effect that's having is that these young adults are putting off having children because they can't afford save up for a family home and get their family started, or they're moving further and further away from their family, from their roots and the places where they grew up. I don't think that's intergenerational fairness; I think that's wrong. I think we need to do something about it.

This bill is a step in the direction of providing more supply. We know that supply is key to solving this problem in the housing market. Labor has provided no real supply measures. Billions of dollars, yes. More houses, no. Regulation is up. Compliance is up. Construction costs are absolutely through the roof, up about 45 per cent under Labor. There are labour constraints. Approvals processes are years behind, and there's a public sector that is crowding out the private sector. All those sole and small tradies that are trying to start a business, build a business, so they can build homes for families, young people, are all getting squeezed out by the public sector.

Taxes and Labor's budget are sucking up supply. They've completely crashed the market, and they've wiped out wealth right across the country. We know, at the same time, that they're not building up supply. They've got a mass migration agenda. Demand is still high. There are a lot of people here in Australia that have just arrived in Australia that are looking for somewhere to live on top of everybody else that's already here in Australia that is looking for somewhere to live. It should be all shoulders to the wheel on boosting supply, not raising taxes and not taxing capital wealth.

Let's just take a little look at the numbers for today's position. Thanks to Labor's catapult launch into the dreams of Australian families, national clearance rates are at 55 per cent. It's the highest it's been in 11 weeks, but it's been declining over the year. The cash rate is at 4.35 per cent, and ANZ is warning that property prices could decline by almost 15 per cent, wiping out the property values right across Australia. Families and young people that have just bought into the market are going into negative equity. We heard from Senator Pocock before about the homelessness crisis that is being driven by the market at the moment, by the economy, and all of this is going to take years to recover from.

The numbers are actually also looking worse than were originally forecast. The speed of the slump is unprecedented, and it's causing experts to review their forecasts sooner than expected. The June quarter saw the largest quarterly decline, at the start of the downturn, in more than 30 years of data. It was bad, and it's going to get worse. And, of course, this is all the shock from Labor's disastrous budget. And yet they stand there and they back it in. They say it's good for first home buyers. But what about everyone else? What about the hard work and sweat and tears—everything that went into buying those houses, only to find everything crash underneath them? Families right across Australia are experiencing mortgage stress. Great job, Labor! You are hitting the socialist nail on the head with your wealth distribution agenda.

This bill is a simple and practical reform that helps address two problems at once: housing supply for younger Australians and retirement security for older Australians. It builds on the coalition's original downsizer contribution policy, which was reduced a few years ago. It makes it easier for older Australians to move into homes that better suit their needs but also frees up larger family homes for younger families. This is giving incentive and flexibility into the market. It will really help young Australians achieve that great Australian dream of owning their own home. So how does it work? The bill will lower the eligibility rate to access a downsizer contribution from 55 to 50 years of age, and it will also allow contributions into superannuation to take place one year after settlement—currently it's 90 days.

It also increases the superannuation contribution amount from $300,000 to $500,000 per person. Doing quick maths on that, that's a million bucks per couple. It's a good incentive. It's not just an innovative reform; it's a sensible one too. For those of us who live in major Australian cities, capital cities, where the average cost of a home is well into the millions, it makes complete sense to increase the amount that can be contributed to superannuation after a sale.

Increasing the contribution window makes sense too. Three months is a long time, but it can put unnecessary pressure on some couples to make a huge decision in an uncomfortable timeframe. As we heard from Senator Kovacic before, there are complications in trying to get that settlement out quickly. Pushing it to a year gives flexibility and peace of mind to comfortably make that decision too.

We are the party of choice, and this bill is in time and step with this. We wouldn't force anyone to downsize. They have that choice. That opportunity and option would be there. Giving couples a choice to do so where they wouldn't find themselves otherwise in the lurch is what Liberal thinking is all about. We want to make the idea of downsizing more attractive and more accessible. It boosts supply. It gets those big houses out to young people.

In my home state of New South Wales, the state Labor government is hell-bent on building more apartments, squeezing all these new families in Australia into apartments along train lines. I don't think that's the great Australian dream. I don't think that's what we all signed up for. I don't think we're all going out every single day, working our guts out, to end up in a little apartment on the train line. It suits some but not everybody. Freeing up these family homes is a good thing to do. The benefits will be more room for the kids and more babies for the extra rooms. That's also why I love this policy. It's pro family. What I hear from a lot of young people is that they're having fewer children because of the housing crisis. It's too hard to get bigger homes these days to fit your kids in. So we've got to do something about that.

This bill is about intergenerational housing. I invite my Labor colleagues to support Senator Hume's bill because they've got to do something about housing supply and the next generation that's looking for stability. The coalition will make it cheaper and easier to build new homes by axing Labor's taxes on families and tradies and by slashing red tape and green tape, and we will be getting rid of Labor's failed housing bureaucracy. There's $10 billion that's been poured into housing, and what have we seen from it? They said the Housing Australia Future Fund—

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Tourism) | Link to this | Hansard source

It's for women fleeing domestic violence.

Jessica Collins (NSW, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, that's exactly right. Thank you for the interjection, Assistant Minister Nita Green. Yes, 4,000 homes are meant to go to vulnerable women and children. Every single estimates, I ask how many of those houses have been built and how many are going to vulnerable women and children. If you have the numbers on that I will take the interjection right now.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Tourism) | Link to this | Hansard source

I've seen it with my own eyes.

Jessica Collins (NSW, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

No numbers on that? They cannot tell me how many homes are actually being built and delivered to vulnerable women and children through the Housing Australia Future Fund as they promised. They're not tracking it because they don't really care. That's the issue.

The coalition will establish a $5 billion housing infrastructure fund to help unlock up to 400,000 new homes, especially in regional Australia.

Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) | Link to this | Hansard source

It now being 11.34, the time for this debate has expired. Senator Collins, you will be in continuation.