In relation to order number 27, I've previously advised the Senate that the minister made a valid claim of public interest immunity over documents in the scope of this order—documents which directly related to the deliberations of the cabinet. I am unsurprised but happy to advise that the basic principles of Westminster government and of cabinet confidentiality have not changed since I last explained them to Senator Bragg in this place. Breaching this confidentiality would do serious harm to the ability of cabinets to conduct the business of government, and that is in the interests of all Australians and future Australians.

We know that this OPD circus is in no way about transparency, and it's certainly not about respecting the institutions and the powers of this Senate. If Senator Bragg respected the institutions of this parliament, he would not be abusing the Senate's power to order the production of documents. It is as simple as that. To have people in the so-called Liberal tradition—what's left of it—continuing with this flagrant and shocking abuse of the parliament's processes just shows how far the Liberal Party has drifted from the mainstream of Australian politics.

This is about one thing, really, plain and simple—besides the egos of the characters involved. It's about the coalition undercutting Australians who want to get ahead with a five per cent deposit. All of this is because Senator Bragg thinks that there's evidence there somewhere that the five per cent deposit scheme would cause some stratospheric rise in home prices. He will stand here in this chamber and argue that prices are going up too much because of five per cent deposits, and then he'll go outside the chamber and argue that prices have gone down too much because of our tax reforms.

That inconsistency doesn't trouble Senator Bragg and it doesn't trouble the modern Liberal Party, because consistency has stopped mattering to the characters who lead the modern Liberal Party. A belief in institutions has stopped mattering because they have left the mainstream. Senator Roberts has left planet Earth, essentially, and these guys have left the mainstream. We saw that on the weekend—the drift of the coalition. It's not enough to talk about polarisation. They've left the political centre. Mr Taylor, who leads this tiny—

I have a point of order on relevance. I fail to see how this has anything to do with the matter before the chamber.

These are generally wide-ranging debates. However, I will remind the minister of the topic before the Senate.

We are all trying to fathom how it is that this matter keeps being brought forward, and I'm doing my best to explain how it is that a once proud political party of the centre right has become so unmoored from where ordinary Australians are, from where Middle Australia is, that they have drifted off. On the weekend, we saw it. Mr Taylor was the first Liberal leader to join the conga line of supplicants. He went to this foreign funded, extremist CPAC conference on the weekend on his knees, apologising and grovelling to this offshore funded organisation. This party has lost its way completely.

I have a point of order on relevance. This is about an explanation about the provision of a document.

Senator Bragg, I appreciate that you have brought the minister back to that question. Rules of relevance are relaxed in these debates. I will remind the minister of what the question before the Senate is.

Senator Bragg raises relevance. In order to be a mainstream political party, you have to have relevance to the things that matter to mainstream Australians. Do you know what matters? Five per cent housing deposits matter to the hundreds of thousands of Australians who've taken advantage of them, who've got a roof over their heads that they can call their own, who are making their payments in a diligent and serious way and who Senator Bragg mocks every day of the week.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

I rise to again take note of this appalling explanation. I have to restate the objective here. Our job is to get to the bottom of things and to find out why things have gone wrong. What happened with the five per cent deposits was that, after they were uncapped and all the means testing was removed after the election, they pushed up the house prices at the entry-level point. The cheapest houses skyrocketed in their pricing, and the government have not given the modelling that they relied upon when they changed the scheme.

All the government needs to do is to provide the information without redactions, like we see here. Then this attendance motion will go away, and Minister Ayres won't have to come back and complain about having to do his job. What he is doing is complaining about having to do work. The work he has to do is to provide the explanations as to why the government took particular policy positions. In this case, they must explain the parameters and the assumptions used when they changed the five per cent deposit scheme, which has had an adverse impact on the Australian people. This five per cent deposit scheme has been a disaster for many Australians, because they are going to be left in negative equity or have paid too much for the price of their house. All we are trying to do is get to the bottom of things. But apparently that is not something appropriate for this Senate to undertake.

I say to the minister: he should go home, and the government should go home, and we should pack this parliament up and forget about it! The whole point of coming here is to get to the bottom of things and to make things better for the Australian people, but this scheme has been a disaster for many Australians, particularly those who were encouraged to take out 95 per cent loans and then smashed with tax increases which have destroyed the value of their houses and put those Australians into negative equity. When we ask the government how many people are in negative equity, they haven't got an idea. They haven't got a clue. They haven't got a clue, because almost all the work they do is covered up with redactions and black ink. We are trying to get to the bottom of this, just like we're trying to get to the bottom of the assumptions underpinning the tax hikes.

The government said that $77 billion of new taxes were needed to fix the housing system. What we have seen since the budget is fewer houses, higher rents and fewer mortgages to owner-occupiers. That is a trifecta of failure if ever there was one. The government say that they want us to have confidence in them and that they are doing the right thing by democracy. Then release the documents, or, as Mr Burns would say, 'Release the hounds!' Show us. Act with integrity. Let the Australian people inspect the assumptions that you relied upon when you made these judgements to uncap this scheme for five per cent deposits—which you peddled. You peddled it on your social media, and you said the 95 per cent mortgages were fantastic for everyone. Then you dumped these taxes onto the people, and it's pushed people in hundreds of suburbs, especially in Melbourne, into negative equity.

That is the job of this parliament—to get to the bottom of things, and we will never stop doing that. If we do then we're giving up on the Australian people. Whatever people's political opinions might be, I know that they want one thing. They want effective government and they want an opposition to hold the government to account, because that gives you the best outcomes for the people. For the government to be so arrogant and disgusting—endemic across this government—in their approach to orders of this Senate and in the way that they have treated people who try to get basic information is a disgrace. They appeal judgements made by the information commissioner through to the courts. They're now trying to impose costs onto people who dare to try and get information. They are darkening this democracy.

All you need to do is to look at the analysis by the Centre for Public Integrity, who remind us that this is the most secretive government since the Keating government. It's the most secretive government, as measured by their responses to Senate orders, as you've seen today. The minister has basically said, 'We're never going to give you the documents,' and he's going to complain about the Liberal Party. That's how committed he is to democracy! That's how he's going to spend his time. He is paid by the taxpayer to be a minister of the Crown. He refuses to give the information. All he's got to say is 'the Liberal Party is bad'. That is a disgusting response. It is an offensive response to people who love this country and just want to see the normal operation of this democracy be undertaken by the participants here in this chamber. That is our job. (Time expired)

I rise to take note of the minister's contribution here this morning. I want to express my disgust at the way in which he has come into this chamber today and just played pure politics when, out there, millions of Australians are struggling with rent they can't afford and with rising mortgage costs and a housing crisis that we have not ever seen before in living memory in the post World War II period. On every target, Labor is missing its goals, and it's leaving Australians in a cost-of-living and housing crisis of extreme terms. All its modelling and its cabinet's workings are failing the Australian public. We've heard a minister come here today and talk about institutions, about egos, about consistency—nothing about the problem that is facing renters and homebuyers, especially first home buyers.

When we look at the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council's latest report, with its Labor target of 1.2 million homes, which it critiques in terms of whether that target can be met, it makes the point—and we know—that Labor will not meet that target by December 2029. In fact, they're going to go well past that 2029 target. Recent ABS data tells us that the national accord is almost 95,000 houses behind that target. We know there's a crisis out there, and we are missing every target. We're especially missing targets in relation to building public housing. We used to have a proud 10 per cent of our housing supply stock for public housing. Now, we are at less than four per cent around the country. In a lot of places, it's much, much lower than that. And we hear Labor come into this place this morning and talk about their assumptions and their offerings, like the five per cent deposit scheme. The jewel in their crown that they talk about so often is the HAFF target to provide 40,000 new homes, so we're told, by mid-2029. What we know from the accounts provided in the analysis done by the Audit Office is that we are so far short of that target as to be laughable. It would be laughable if it weren't a tragedy. There have been 1,432 homes added to stock through the HAFF halfway through the program, so far short of its 40,000 target. A program where 1,432 houses have been added to stock—half of them purchased; not even really additional to the stock. So, even if the HAFF were to meet its target of 40,000 homes, it doesn't touch the sides of the crisis we are in, with 640,000 Australians living in severe housing stress every day.

It has been a year since Labor expanded the eligibility of the five per cent deposit scheme, and, since then, the average first home buyer mortgage has surged by $50,000. People have taken out huge loans that have put them at real risk of losing their homes, and they've faced increases in their mortgages and prices that have fallen. The Reserve Bank has warned that those first home buyers with big loans are the most at risk of falling into negative equity. We have a crisis there that is penetrating so many households where young people and first home buyers are most at risk. So Labor's policy has resulted in these massive increases in mortgage costs which severely affect those first home buyers, who are being bludgeoned with an interest rate policy which is actually a response to inflation caused by rising profits of massive multibillion-dollar organisations, like the banks. There was $30 billion in profit for the banks in the last financial year, and it's those first home buyers who are paying the price in rising mortgages.

This government is letting corporate profit driven inflation run wild. Banks and big supermarkets are making money, making bank, while those first home buyers are cowering under massive increases in their mortgages. Ordinary Australians are paying the price for a strategy which is causing and contributing to a growing housing crisis. The government needs to find solutions for those first home buyers that don't push them into greater risk of negative equity—and it's time that the big banks made a bigger contribution—which is so profitable and causing so much pain for those with growing and large mortgage debt. Housing, just like education and health, is an essential service. Labor has dropped the ball, and the minister has compounded the insult to this chamber today by failing to turn up here and give us the background, the information and the policy solutions that Australians want.

When the government released its housing policy, we warned about the debt trap, which is exactly what is happening. The debt trap has closed on young buyers. We warned about the negative equity arising. Here it is. Thank you, Labor! We warned about changes to capital gains tax. Look at the consequences. We warned about negative gearing being abolished. Here it is. We warned about interest rates increasing because of Labor government spending. Here it is. It's the perfect storm, thanks to the Labor Party. We will continue to expose this lazy, tired, dishonest, incompetent government.

I think it's really important that we talk again about why this discussion is one that needs our attention. The government have spoken often about their home deposit guarantee scheme and how it opened the door for young Australians to buy homes. At the time when that occurred, we alerted the government to concerns around the inflationary impacts of opening that up to absolutely everybody. The government insisted that wasn't going to happen, and yet it did. In the six months to December of last year, prices went up some six per cent, so there was an inflationary impact. Any reasonable person would probably surmise that would occur. The government insisted it wasn't going to occur, yet it did, and I think that points to their understanding of how our economy operates and also reflects somewhat on their ability to manage that economy and why Australians are struggling in the way that they are.

In addition to that, at the budget this year, the government then decided to make a raft of sweeping changes to our tax system in association with the Australian Greens that have created significant impacts to many Australians who are trying to save to buy a home and to those that already own property and particularly to those young Australians who purchased a dwelling under that five per cent guarantee scheme. Those opposite would suggest that it's scaremongering from those on this side of the chamber. It's not scaremongering; they are facts. They are facts that are also articulated by the Reserve Bank. I want to read to you something from the AFR that came out some 10 days ago. It wrote:

Releasing its six-monthly health check of the Australian financial system on Thursday, the RBA found households overall had enough savings and cash-flow buffers to manage the stress caused by rising interest rates and high inflation, but financial distress was building among low-income borrowers.

What's the context of that?

The Reserve Bank of Australia has warned that first home buyers who used the Albanese government's 5 per cent deposit scheme face a greater risk of falling into negative equity as property prices head towards their biggest correction in four decades, fuelled by four interest rate rises this year—

courtesy of the Albanese Labor government and 16 interest rate rises in total courtesy of the Albanese Labor government.

What those on the other side of the chamber, in association with the Australian Greens, wanted to call intergenerational equity, the RBA is now saying, has resulted in first home buyers most at risk of negative equity, and 'financial distress was building among low-income borrowers'. How's that for an own goal that young Australians pay for, that Australians who have scrimped and scraped for years to enter the housing market have to pay for? It's unbelievable, but it is real. It's perhaps a living nightmare for those people that have been impacted by it. We've spoken about it in this chamber before and we'll do it again now. This government has delivered a trifecta of failure on housing. We have fewer homes, we have higher rents and confidence in the housing market has been shattered. All of those things are as a result of the actions of this government. And now we have 15 per cent fewer construction apprentices as a result of the actions of this government, at a time when we need to build more houses. What else is going to happen here apart from the fact that they have crushed Australians with the cost-of-living crisis, that they have crushed small business with a cost-of-doing-business crisis, that in particular they have crushed the construction sector when we need more homes? How much worse can it get? A lot, sadly, which is why we need to get rid of this government as quickly as possible.

At the current rate, Australia is completing just 173,000 homes a year against a 240,000 requirement under this government's own target. At the current rate, this government will fall about 335,000 houses short of the 1.2 million target that they've set for themselves. It's just not good enough.

Question agreed to.