Albanese Government Housing Bill is a Sham

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I say the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and related bills introduce a seriously flawed concept—many flawed concepts. The Housing Australia Future Fund Bill establishes the Housing Australia Future Fund to make funds available for Housing Australia to make grants and loans in relation to acute housing needs, social housing or affordable housing—more bureaucracy. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023 renames the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation to Housing Australia—more bureaucracy. This is a clear difference between the Liberal and Labor parties. The Liberal Party name their reckless, wasteful market interventions as corporations. The Labor Party give their reckless, wasteful market interventions grander names. ‘Housing Australia’ sounds so big, so comforting and so reassuring, yet it falsely implies the Prime Minister has the housing crisis sorted when he is way off target. He’s making it worse.

Prime Minister Albanese’s solution is not to slow down the obscene level of immigration pouring into cities without homes for people to occupy. His solution is not to address foreign investors buying and locking up new homes so they can be sold as brand-new in a few years time when values increase. His solution is not to address short-term rentals pushing the long-term rentals out of the housing market. No, his solution is an investment fund that will make no noticeable improvement to the housing crisis.

Here’s the data around that. The Australian Bureau of Statistics puts the number of Australian dwellings at 10 million. This bill pretends to add 30,000 new dwellings, or a 0.3 per cent increase. The total value of Australian dwellings is just under $10 trillion. We need as much as $1 trillion worth of new housing by 2030 to meet the needs of everyday Australians, including migrants. This government is offering $2.5 billion. That’s 0.025 per cent.

The government can’t build enough homes to fix this. Only private enterprise can meet Australia’s needs. What created this mess? Red tape, green tape and blue tape created this mess, and high interest rates from a flawed Reserve Bank strategy and inflation from bad government management created the mess. The only thing that will work is getting government out of the way and letting free enterprise fix this mess. Anything else is dishonesty—reckless dishonesty. The Housing Australia Future Fund Bill is dishonest. Not only does this bill not solve the housing problem for people who are already here; it does not solve the housing problems for the millions that will arrive by 2030. Either that Albanese government is deliberately misrepresenting the outcome of the bill or there is more here than the paperwork suggests.

Let’s see what else we have here. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023 streamlines the functions of Housing Australia—oddly, by making it bigger—establishes an annual review mechanism for the National Housing Infrastructure Facility and extends the Commonwealth guarantee of the liabilities of Housing Australia to apply to contracts entered into until 30 June 2028. This last one is interesting. In Queensland a number of construction companies have gone broke recently. The main reason is that, thanks to the government, we have high inflation and home builders use fixed-price contracts. The last thing you want in a fixed-price contract is high inflation taking the profit margin and pushing the builder into a loss on every home they build. Who is going to build the homes now that private enterprise can no longer shoulder their fair share of the burden? Well, the government, of course—so it says—or is it? I’m sure Anthony Albanese’s mates in those big union superannuation funds are out there recruiting builders as we speak.

The Acting Deputy President: Order, Senator Roberts! Remember to refer to the Prime Minister by his correct title.

Senator Roberts: Prime Minister Albanese’s mates in those big union superannuation funds are out there recruiting builders as we speak, ready to open their construction division to build and own Australian housing. If the project runs over budget, who cares? It’s taxpayer money. After all, the government is giving a liability guarantee, so just shovel that government money right in there.

The bill will distort the housing construction market. On one hand, suppliers are under pressure to hold costs down to make private-sector construction affordable for everyday Australians to build and own their homes. On the other hand, Housing Australia will be out there paying top dollar to get their materials and labour to deliver the homes to keep their jobs. What could go wrong with that? The Albanese government could have worked with the supply chain and with banks to put in place supply chain security to keep existing builders in business. Instead, it went the Soviet route again, pushed the private sector aside and let the government build it.

The third part of this package is the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023. That streamlining thing I mentioned earlier apparently extends to creating a whole new advisory body called the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council to advise the Commonwealth government on matters related to housing supply and affordability. It’s more bureaucracy. We already have the Productivity Commission and the Australian Bureau of Statistics to provide this economic statistical data. We have a federal department to advise the minister on housing. Now we have a whole new body as well—more bureaucrats. Where is the corresponding reduction in the department’s budget allocation, reflecting a substantially reduced workload? Bigger government is the Labor Party’s answer to everything. History would disagree.

The numbers on this bill do not add up. The Housing Australia Future Fund, HAFF, will receive $10 billion to fund the delivery of 30,000 social and affordable homes and allocate an additional $330 million to acute housing needs over the HAFF’s first five years. Oh, really? I noticed, though, that the budget line item for this bill is $15.2 billion. The explanatory memorandum states the Housing Australia Future Fund ‘would be credited with $10 billion as soon as practicable after establishment.’ Where’s the other $5 billion going? Once invested, the Housing Australia Future Fund would provide up to $500 million per year to support social and affordable housing. That’s a five per cent return on investment, which is nice if you can get it in the current investment market. The Future Fund can’t. Their return on funds invested in the 2022 calendar year was negative 3.7 per cent. The fund would be reduced and no houses built—borrowed money, interest costs, lost money, no homes built. Even at a five per cent return on investment, a $500 million dividend for five years—that’s $2½ billion—divided by the 30,000 homes is $83,300 per home. One may speculate that these are going to be really tiny homes, yet the truth is likely far worse than that.

What would a home built by this Labor government actually look like? Subdivisions will be of the modern design, with narrow streets, because cars are an environmental sin, and we will never have the generation capacity for everyday Australians to use electric cars. Those are for the city elites, in the nomenclature. Eliminating excavation for obsolete parking garages will save money. Residents will instead walk or ride children’s scooters. Shopping will be delivered by drone from BlackRock and Vanguard-owned businesses like Amazon, Coles and Woolworths. Cameras will keep you safe and inside your 15-minute allocated region. Are cameras coming out of the $83,000 for each house or are local governments paying for those?

Home units will be constructed to the four corners of each block, and the landscaping which used to soften these buildings will no longer be allowed, because pointless plants waste water. Canberra’s posh Red Hill suburb, where senior bureaucrats live, gets beauty while everyday Australians get utility. They get cell blocks, really. Ceilings will be lowered, walkways narrowed and walls made thinner to squeeze additional units into low-rise blocks without lifts, with a daily water allowance of 120 litres per person. I remember receiving a presentation on that target back in 2019. A standard bathtub holds 180 litres, so baths are every bit as much the environmental vandals as gas stoves. Don’t laugh, Senator Duniam. Toilets will be half flush only. I don’t get this one. Is there a little electric charge that zaps you if you flush twice? How does that save water? Smart water meters will police water limits and make home and balcony gardens impossible to keep watered. So purchasing food from corporate supermarkets and corporate takeaways will be the only way to eat. Smart electricity meters will police our daily energy allowance and remotely switch off unapproved appliances.

All of these things are the current ideology of modern urban design, stated in writing. Many of these are already evident in council building codes. Smart meters are being deployed as we speak. Once the reality of having to sell a home built to these standards is removed by government ownership, all of these measures will be standard. Even if you apply Hive home ideology, can the cost come down to $83,000 per house? I doubt it. But to use a yardstick of $400,000 or more is to ignore the real intent of the bill. It is a principle we are hearing a lot, lately: you will own nothing and be happy, or else.

After the bill passes, the minister will decide where and how the money will be spent. After the bill passes, we’ll get the details. Disbursements, including grants made under the scheme, will be a budget measure, meaning the Senate can’t disallow them. The legislation does not include the rules around who can and can’t get a grant or disbursement, so this bill is really a $2.5 billion blank cheque. Clause 49 would allow the future fund board to use derivatives for certain purposes. This could include using derivatives as a risk management tool or to achieve indirect exposure to assets that it could not otherwise achieve. That sounds terrifying. I look forward to the minister’s explaining the intention of this section in the committee stage. We have questions for you.

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023 ‘establishes the council as an independent statutory advisory body to inform the Commonwealth’s approach to housing policy by delivering independent advice to the government on options to improve housing supply and affordability’. This is more bureaucracy. Does this suggest that the bureaucrats have been giving poor advice to the government? We already have a Commonwealth department of housing. What’s gone wrong with that department that we need this whole new additional body? Or is this just another opportunity for jobs for your mates among union bosses and among the union superannuation industry?

This bill should have been about getting people into their own homes. That requires making life easier for private-sector homebuilders and for private homeownership, which will take demand out of rental accommodation and free up homes at more-realistic prices for those who can only rent. Instead, Prime Minister Albanese is using government construction to push private homebuilders out of the market and entrench renting over owning. There is a lot of additional bureaucracy and a lot of economic and social harm for proportionally little benefit, for almost no benefit.

One Nation opposes this Soviet-style reckless, wasteful market intervention. One Nation proposes getting down to basics: cutting immigration until housing and infrastructure catch up; cutting red tape, green tape and blue UN tape; comprehensively reforming taxation to give Australians a fair go; shrinking government to fit the Constitution; and getting the government the hell out of people’s lives, enabling people to make choices that suit people’s and families’ needs. We do not need more bureaucrats and more waste; we need more houses, real houses. We need a return to basics. Let the tradies of Australia get on with the job.